So after our four flights we made it back to the Western world in the form of Auckland in the north island. Walking out of the airport into a cold rainy day and fresh air was the best. Don't get me wrong Asia had been amazing but some cold fresh air was like a piece of heaven and a lot like home!. Auckland is a nice enough city although we didn't get much chance to see it all. We did wander around the harbour salivating at all the lovely restaurants and just pottered around stocking up on warm clothes as well as feeding up on cooked breakfasts, red wine, red meat and cheese platters :0)

We sorted ourselves out with a car and after a couple of days started our road trip down to Christchurch to meet Chris and Charlotte.

Our first port of call was the Waitomo Caves where we did a caving tour. Togged out in full winter wet suits and particularly stylish white wellie boots we swam, crawled and climbed our way through caves 80m underground and along the way saw huge caverns covered in glow worms. We also had to do a few jumps backwards into what seemed like black holes which our guide assured us we water pools. One such jump was called 'the leap of faith' and saw us jumping backwards of quite a high ledge into our rubber rings. Unfortunately i was a bit small for mine and fell though the ring and got half trapped under the water. I was shouting "I'm stuck, I'm stuck" gasping for air whilst trying to pull my self back through the ring whilst Fred and the guide couldn't stop laughing! I managed to right myself and had that moment where you either burst into tears or laughter - i opted for the laughter and we chuckled all the way back. The guide had never seen anything like it....could only happen to me!

The following day we drove onwards to Whakapapa in the hope of doing some snowboarding as there had been a lot of snow, unfortunately the weather was so bad we couldn't go so drove on south. It was gutting but our first sight of snowy mountains which were just incredible.

Our route from there to Wellington took us through some beautiful countryside, windy roads with stunning mountains, hillsides and coastline. I really have never seen such a beautiful country. On top of which we got the ferry from Wellington to Picton in the south island and traveled through the Marlborough sounds which were breathtaking, zig zaging hills dropping into the sea and the odd remote house along the shoreline.

From Picton we took the Queen Charlotte Drive along the coast which wound its way through the sounds to Havelok 'the mussel capital of the world' where we of course had ourselves a platter of different mussels. We headed inland from there through one of NZ many national parks to St Arnaud and the Rainbow ski valley where there was apparently lots of snow. When we arrived it was FREEZING and there was a bit of snow but we were assured it would dump overnight in time for the opening of the slopes for the new ski season....and dump it did, we woke up to a beautiful white world. After a really hairy windy mountain drive with snow chains to the ski valley we were welcomed with blue skies and fresh powder - i though i'd died and gone to heaven! It was also perfect conditions for Fred to try his hand on a board. So i spent a blissful afternoon carving up the piste - it was soooooo good to be back in the snow. Fred pick up boarding no problem (surprise, surprise!) and had a great afternoon as well. The journey down was worse than coming up, 4WD drives trucks spinning off the roads but we made it down safely and in high hopes for another day on the slopes the following day.

We drove some of the way to the slopes the next day but the roads we even worse and were covered in ice and all the cars were crashing into each other, so we decided that it was just a bit to dangerous to go up so sadly decide to move on. We cheered ourselves up with the though of our next port of call and wine tasting :0)

So heading east we hit the Marlborough wine country and spent a lovely day visiting vineyards and trying some excellent, some ok and some downright awful wines and obviously made a few purchases along the way. The whole area is really beautiful, vineyards as far as the eye can see surrounded by snow capped mountains.

After lots of wine we felt we needed a little sea air so the next day headed south along the coast to Kaikoura in the hope if doing some whale watching. Unfortunately when we arrived all the trips were canceled due to bad weather so we are hoping to go back before we leave to try again. We did on the way however stop off and saw loads of fur seals lazing around on the rocks they were really funny and lovely to watch. We then drove onwards down the coast to Christchurch where we picked Chris and Charlotte up from the airport and 'Team Bean' ware back together again!