After a wonderful 4 months in New Zealand, we said good-bye. Left Christchurch on an early flight to Melbourne, Australia in the pouring rain. Kind of sad to leave, but we're ready for the next part of our adventure. Melbourne is a lovely city and we're so happy that we came here. Some of the buildings remind me of London, even though this is a relatively young city. On the other hand, the skyscrapers remind me of Chicago. Either way, it's a great place.....

We're back in Kurow at Sublime Wines with Steve & Fenella and their family. Such a lovely place about 3 hours South of Christchurch, just outside of Oamaru and about 45 minutes from the boulders pictured above. We were here before helping put the nets on the grapes, and were happy to come back to help pick grapes and take the nets off. The pinot noir & pinot gris grapes are really sweet & nice. Seems the harvest throughout the Waitaki Valley has bee...

Trying not to wallow in our disappointment, we got our act together and went on to Abel Tasman National Park. The weather is beautiful and so is the scenary. Windy roads and rocky coastline with little beaches here and there. We camped at the beginning of the walk we wanted to do and I'm fairly certain that we saw a kiwi bird last night right before we were going to bed. They're very rare now and are only seen at night... We got up fairly early and did the w...

Still can't believe our stuff is gone...just feel sick and have no appetite. Today we spent the day walking all around Nelson looking on side streets, in dumpsters, in parks, on paths...anywhere that our stuff may have been dumped. Still nothing.

Sorry for the long delay in writing. It's actually April 22nd but I wanted to pick this up where I left off, and let you know why I stopped writing. On March 27th, just as we were getting ready to leave Nelson to go on to Abel Tasman National Park, our van was broken into and most of our stuff stolen. We had stopped at the Famers Market and had parked on a busy street next to a park, locked things up and were away from the vehicle from 9:30am to 11:30am. When w...