On the road again! It all began one Saturday morning, very very early...we bid our amiable hosts goodbye and set off for the horizon once again! After a rather turbulent but otherwise uneventful flight from Auckland to Christchurch, we trotted off to a worrying looking back corner of the airport where our next plane to Hokitika was due to leave. When Cal saw the size of the aeroplane that worrying was not helped - it was tiny! A 20 seater. After a short prayer session on behalf of Cal's vomitous belly, the flight guy announced we were getting ready to board in 5 minutes. Matt began to get excited about the adventure ahead whilst Cal still did not look too good. 5 mins passed and the attendant came back, but this time to announce that the flight was cancelled due to bad weather on the West Coast, so we'd have to go by bus instead. Matt grimaced, Cal beamed.

So after a bus trip through snow topped mountains and sweeping valleys on winding back roads with high winds and a very reckless driver we arrived in Hokitika. A friendly taxi driver informed us that the town only had 39 streets, and within half an hour of arrival we had trotted up and down them all twice! Now a quiet but charming tourist town with lots and lots of pretty jade and shell jewellery  that we couldn't afford, apparently Hokitika was once a roaring social centre with over 100 music halls on the main street. Hard to imagine now! We went for a stroll one night to see a glow worm dell, a big open topped cave with undergrowth up the walls and thousands and thousands of little lights like stars all the way up it! Very cool. 

Then another bus came and we were off to Punakaiki further north. It really felt like the wild West Coast up there, native bush and undergrowth covering rocky mountains that stretched right down to the beach, and then some lovely blustery beaches with rocks and white crashing breakers dotted all aloing the bay. No buildings there but for a cafe and a few hostels for the sightseers. Our hostel was right on the beach and had a room in a gypsy style caravan next to a hot outdoor spa pool which we took a dip in when the stars came out. Very nice. Punakaiki is on the tourist map because of the pancake rocks, huge towers of rocks with flat round formations in them that look like big stacks of pancakes. Awesome, and in some of the rocks there are blowholes so that when the wind gets up and the tide is in the waves crash in and spray is forced up the funnels and out in a big jet high above the rocks. Only one of them was really in full force, the chimney pot, but it really did look like a steaming kettle, you expected the spray to be hot - but no! Brr!

We also discovered in Punakaiki a little cave off the road, which on further inspection with a torch then opened out (after a bit of crawling in the mud) into a huge caver with a river at the bottom, and at the back a tunnel which went back and back and back into the mountain side. We followed it for about 5 minutes and switched off our torches, we couldn't hear anything except each other and couldn't see even our hands in front of our faces. My we felt like the Famous Five (and Cal tried hard to focus on that and not to think of the film 'The Cave' seen on a Mexican bus!).

The next day we were on the road again and arrived in Franz Joseph (glacier country) up in the forested mountains. Franz was billed as the night life centre of the area - we struggled to see it, with its one cafe, two tourist shops and a garage! The road in was full of beautiful scenery and many stories from the coach driver. Intercity buses here are quite thoughtful and not only give you a most informative commentary, but also stop in all the beautiful places so that you can take photos. Franz was wet and cold. The hostel on the other hand was warm with free soup. Matt's heart was instantly warmed! We took a guided trip onto Franz glacier the next day which was AWESOME we walked and climbed and skidded on ice that had been in this valley for thousands of years. It was really strange to look around you and see clear blueish white ice and packed down snow all around you. It was really raining hard though, and despite the big coats they gave us, being soaked through and chilled with the freezing wind off the ice even Matt was perished. The hot chocolate at the end was welcomed with open arms!

The next day we hopped on another coach and headed for Wanaka town sitting on a big clear lake amid mountains. In the summer, all about water sports - slightly less to do in the autumn time! A very cool little town though. Something however had caught Matt's attention - Puzzling World! He begged, we went. It's a kind of museum to optical illusions with lots of weird and wonderful things and plenty of toys and puzzles to play with. The steeply sloping floors in one of the rooms can make you feel you need a sit down and a strong cup of tea though! Matt was in his element. In the evening we chilled out and looked around the town and considered our next move............

Well Queenstown here we are, the adventure capital of the world they say, A bungy jump on every cliff face, a lake full of speed boats, rivers of white water rafting, sky full of jumpers and gliders and helicopters....... you name it, it's here. So what we do? Well we went for a hike up a monstrous vertical hill and forest before looking out of the entire town of QT it was a cool sight for those who could still breathe. We decided it was far to cold to swim in the lake or even kayak, it is almost winter after all. Even Matt has worn trousers 3 times here! Thanks to Easter, a rugby match and some bike race or other, all accommodation over the weekend was booked up in Queenstown so we were forced to keep up our 'town a day' pace and move on!  

NZ's most visited attraction - Milford Sound. Named by a Welshman from Milford Haven, he also named the valley that leads to it - the Cleddau Valley. We thought it sounded Welsh! Incredibly beautiful scenery in the middle of dense forests, a hostel (the only place to stay for miles) at the foot of a mountain and next to a crystal clear river. Lots of stops on the way to see the beauty and even a drink from one of the mountain streams on the bus driver's assurances of safety! The road follows a big tunnel in the rock which replaced an almost vertical wall of mountain that the postman had to scale twice a week before the tunnel came along! Brave little man. We went for a stunning but chilly early morning cruise on the fiord which leads out to the Tasman sea. Deep deep waters and high mountains either side. We saw a seal posing on a rock pretending it was warm in the pathetic sun! The free tea and coffee with a free muffin thrown in too all helped though.  

Aftyer jumping in a bus with a crazy dive company that had some spare seats on our way back out of Milford, we spent a night in Te Anau  - another peaceful mountain town on a big lake. The highlight here was a film that we watched called Ata Whenua, made by a local helicopter pilot of all the beautiful sights that he'd seen over his 25 years of flying. They built the cinema just for that film! Beautiful. And then we bid the West Coast goodbye...

After a very brief tour of the South East, a short stay in Dunedin (which included a long walk to the steepest inhabited street in the world) and a few more bus rides we arrived in Oamaru and settled in to a week of making the most of home comforts! Pavlovas, pottery and possums, jigsaws and jumpers, some quality time with Mum and Dad Townsend and a lot of rather obsessive Lord of the Rings reading by the fire on Cal's part made for a good week. Before the end of the week we were off again still with Mum and Dad T - to Mount Cook (New Zealand's tallest mountain) and Lake Tekapo - once an isolated beauty spot, now a mecca for Asian tourists! In true Townsend style both stops involved a fairly long walk but our efforts were rewarded by some lovely views! After a few days in Timaru with some more of Cal's family who long abandoned the mother land, we hit Christchurch for an afternoon and then were kindly delivered to the airport by Cal's cousin Mark where we bedded down in a makeshift refugee camp on the cold hard floor with countless other pitiful  cheap skates unwilling to pay for a bed for the night only to leave it at 3am! And that marked the end of our stay in New Zealand.