We hit the South Island after a brief stop in Wellington. We had a great day for our crossing to Picton so we thought we would make the most of it on dry land and drive down to to a little place called Renwick. We hired some bikes and got a map of the local wineries in the area (put 2 + 2 together...). 6 wineries later and a stop in an English pub we dropped our bikes off and spent the night in a cool little hostel. The following day we drove to Kaikoura which i...

 Tongariro CrossingThe 17km hike over the Tongariro Crossing was well worth it and understandably the best one day walk in New Zealand. After a long climb we reached the Red Crater which is still an active volcano and last erupted in 1995. It was quite amazing as we walked around the crater with smoke rising from the ground. After a steep decent we reached Emerald Lakes where we stopped for lunch before our last ascent to central crater followed by a 3 hour ...

Me and Jo have split up and gone our separate ways. Before this happened we explored the far north after our first scheduled dive was cancelled. We went to 90 mile beach and Cape Reinga which is where the Tasman and Pacific sea meet. This was the last day of the good weather before Cyclone Betty struck. We drove back to the Bay of Islands in time for another dive we had booked only for it to be cancelled again due to high winds. After heading back through Auc...

Kia-ora! We arrived in New Zealand early evening and in time to meet Jenny, Alex and Beth for pizza and catch ups, it was great. The next day we started our search for a campervan. We went to the renoundly pricey backpacker market but everything seemed reasonably priced. We found two possibilties but we held on a day as we weren't in a hurry and the price may go down. We went back the next day only to find out one of them had sold so we set our sights on th...