After Hanmer we headed down the west coast to Franz Joseff to see the glaciers which are now retreating unfortunately, nonetheless they were still pretty impressive. Our bad weather curse once again struck as we waited around for 2 days for the weather to clear so that we could go on a heli-hike (fly over the glaciers in a helicopter, then hike on the glaciers) but all trips kept getting canceled. We did take a walk down to the head of the two galciers, Franz Jos...

After arriving on the South Island there were only two weeks left and far too many things to see, so we had narrowed down our "things to see". First stop was Kaikoura, for the Whale-watching. We caught the weather on a good day, it was very cloudy, but we were told that it was perfect weather and sea conditions for viewing the whales. So we headed out on our extremely expensive boat to find some Sperm Whales. They were named sperm whales because the wha...

On the way to South island we had a one night stopover in Wellington. Katherine (Inca trail) lives in an apartment in Wellington, and offered for us to stay the night. We met up with Katherine and Hamish on the evening when they had finished work and they took us up to a viewing point over Wellington. Wellington is the capital and one of the biggest cities in NZ and is situated near a harbour where there is also a nice little beach. We went out for a meal at a Th...

After leaving Taupo we headed across to the East coast to a place called Hawkes Bay which is where Ian and Chris live. The route across to Hawkes Bay went through mountains and beautiful scenery including 2 waterfalls which was a nice to have break from the drive. We met up with Ian and Chris again in Napier and we went Ta Mata Peak and Bluff Hill which had beautiful views of the surrounding wineries, mountains and rivers. On the evening we stayed at Ian and Chri...

We were due to meet our friends Ian, Chris and Katherine (we met them on the Inca Trail in Peru) at their holiday home in Taupo on the Friday evening we had a few days to spare so we decided we would do the Tongariro crossing which is a 19.4km trek through the Tongariro National Park. On the way down to Tongariro we stopped off at Huka Falls which is a huge dam used for generating power, due to the dam a very picturesque water fall was produced. The colour of the...