Happy birthday Dad! Sleeping in was great this morning. Today we booked a winery tour to visit 4 vineyards, some artist colonies and a brewery. We had breakfast on the balcony of the hostel, and were picked up a bit early. Before the tour started, we went to a hill top view of Nelson, something we're finding New Zealand has plenty of. We found ourselves to be surrounded by Aussies on the tour, but they were a fun bunch from the Gold Coast of Brisbane. The t...

Left Wellington this morning and took an 8:25am ferry across to Picton. It took about 3 hours. The ferry had 7 decks with a few restaurants and movie theater so it wasn't so bad. Although the waters were a bit choppy and both got a little queasy. The bus met us in Picton and then we headed off to Nelson, the sunniest place in New Zealand. The south island is a bit different from the north in that it has tons of pine trees. The north island is grassy green rolling...

Note to all travellers: If it's bright and sunny one day, you should do outdoor activities then. Save the indoor activities for the rainy days. This morning, we awoke to freezing temps and rain. We decided that free attractions were still a good place to start, so we headed for a tour of the parliment building at 12:00. We arrived early to ensure a place in the tour, and found we were the first of what would be a group of 5. Lynn, our tour guide, was famili...

Today we drove down to Wellington, or "Windy Welly" as they call it. When we first arrived, we drove to the top of an over look of the city. New Zealand's capital city, Wellington looks and feels much like San Fransisco with it's hillside houses, museums, and great cafes. The only difference is you can walk from one end of the city to the other in about 10 minutes. After checking into the Wellington YHA hostel, we were out on the town in search of f...

This morning we left Rotorua for Lake Taupo. We stopped at 10am to watch a geyser eruption and also saw some boiling mud pools. The driver told us not to put any of the mud on our face as a spa treatment as people have done this in the past and badly scalded their skin. Darwin awards anyone? Afterward, we made a stop at some outdoor thermal hot springs but Matt and I decided to hang out in the warm cafe instead. When I was walking over to the bus, the driver ask...