Our final kia ora... Our time in New Zealand has come to an end :(. After Franz we zipped up to Picton, stayed in a free spot for the night en route and got the ferry over to Wellington the next morning. When we were on the ferry, we saw a pod of at least 10 dolphins swimming by the side of it - really cool to see! From Wellington we drove 5 and a half hours north to Waitomo. About an hour away from Wellington, we heard on the radio that there had just been a...

From Queenstown we drove to the Franz Josef Glacier, with a night pitstop at Lake Wanaka. We were due to do a skydive over Franz Josef the afternoon we arrived, but the rain was pouring. Instead, we spent the afternoon in a hot pool and got rebooked onto a skydive at 7.30 the next morning, So this morning we were up before the sun was, keen to see a clear blue sky. Hooray! As the sky turned lighter, there were no clouds in sight. A minibus picked us up f...

The South Island, New Zealand. What a place! In Lake Tekapo we got our hiking boots on (not literally - couldn't fit them in the backpacks) and climbed Mt John to the summit. It took just shy of an hour and a half to tramp the steep track to the height of 1,029m. From the top there are amazing views of surrounding snowy mountain ranges and Lake Tekapo, Lake Alexandrina and Lake McGregor (altogether, the Mackenzie Basin). Lake Tekapo is a blazing turquoise co...

Grab yourself a seat and put the kettle on, this may be a long blog... Since our last blog we've visited Taupo, Wellington, Kaikoura and Christchurch. And we have fallen in love with New Zealand. A few hours drive from Rotorua, we arrived late near Taupo and stayed in a campsite in the thermal valley. It was pitch black and freezing cold; the temperature hasn't gone much above 12 degrees so far. The next morning we drove into town to see Lake Taupo, a lak...

Kia ora from Rotorua. This morning we drove to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. It's probably one of the coolest places on Earth, and it feels like you could be on a different planet entirely. Wai-O-Tapu has the largest area of surface thermal activity in the Taupo Volcanic Zone, covering 18 sq.km. As we approached in Zosma, to could see steam coming up in random places and the stench became stronger. We walked around the reserve to see it's collapsed crat...