So we left Queenstown and headed for our 8 hour trip to Christchurch where we met up with Tim Makower. Tim had got rid of his housemate so we had a room while in Christchurch. Christchurch is very similar to England - so we watched punters on the Avon, went to Oxford, educated Tim by taking him to the Art gallery (where we played around in the childrens section!) and visited the museum. Apart from that you would have presumed we were back in Chester as we ate ...

Well we did the Glacier Ice Climbing. We were kitted up in jackets, waterproof trousers, boots, crampons, rucksacks and ice axes, and set about on the 1 hour hike to the foot of the glacier. Once there we walked up the carved steps until our guide decided it was time to head off the track and make our own, much slower, progress up the ice. Once he’d found his favourite wall he set up all the ropes, only to discover the walkers had used it for carving prac...

Labor weekend was to spent with some more family, this time up in the Marlborough Sounds. John and Derek first took us to Garnes Bay, which is a Clunies Ross Family Trust to prevent the NZ government getting their hands on it (it is in the middle of a conservation area). Then we were taken round to Carol's in Canoe Bay, where the large house faces the bay where they farm mussels. Unfortunately it rained for the entire visit, but that wasn't to stop our ho...

So with a sad farewell to Lo and Richard we jumped onto the Bluebridge Ferry. It was a lovely calm crossing (although it still took longer than was timetabled) and there was no sign of the 12m swell we have seen on photos. We were met off the ferry by Patrice, who is the sweetest woman we have met. John and Patrice maurice welcomed us into their home and treated us like royalty - we even had whitebait patties for tea. Within an hour of us arriving every cousin/re...

We have had a lovely time at Lo and Richard's anmd are sad to be leaving especially as it means packing everything back into rucksacks. We finally managed to be around in a place for long enough to attend a quiz night (stu had been waiting for a while). We were fueled with lots of smarties (and called ourselves the smarties) and managed to get quite a few questions right including the exchange rate for mexical pesos (not surprisingly) and the author of L...