Today, despite the howl of the wind and rain around my 'Friday 13th horror movie end of the world' hostel I woke up before dawn in the hope that I might see penguins down at the beach. It was still very dark when I got down there, like last night I could barely see anything! As it became lighter I walked along the beach and only found penguin tracks, from the sea to the grassy sand dunes :( The sunrise was beautiful, and the wind and rain had finally stopped mak...

Again I was up early to watch the sunrise, this time from St Kilda beach (St Kilda NZ not Au!). It was a bright sunny day with no wind so I decided to drive over the hills back to the Otago Peninsula, stopping to admire the view of the sea on both sides. I stopped at a little cafe in Portobello for breakfast and then drove on to the peninsula. I didn't see any penguins this time, just an albatross circling above. The views were amazing, the ocean was so blue! And...

This morning I was up early to watch the sunrise over the lake. It had stopped raining & the sun was out so I then headed into the town to get coffee & toast. I had a quick look round in the daylight, then as the rain started I planned my route to Dunedin. There were a few options & would include pretty views - however I spent so long planning it all I then didn't actually have time to stop and admire any of them! (Plus while the drive to Dunedin was ...

The day had started off with a row with Andy about why I'd bought so much stuff if I knew I only had 15kg luggage limit to fly to queenstown (as I tried to offload some of my belongings into Andys case), however we needn't have worried as when I checked in, my case that had been 18kg at Heathrow, 21kg in Auckland (despite having taken some stuff out) was now only 13kg - 2kg underweight!! However the other excitement was that as I checked in I was asked to see a ...

We woke up to pouring rain again, but by 9 it had eased off and by 10 it was brilliant sunshine. Again we had some breakfast in a beachside cafe and we're ready to hit the road around 10. This part of the great ocean road is the original road and pretty much follows alongside the coast. It was built as an employment programme after WW1 to employ the men returning from the war To our right the coastline is a mixture of beaches with soft golden sand and bright bl...