Rotorua Our first encounter with Rotorua..the delightful smell! Thanks to all the geothermal activity in the area, it absolutely stinks of eggs. Rotten ones. Yuk! As I am still feeling under the weather, we try to seek out some nice low key ways to pass the time. We stumble across the sky gondola, and after the great ride up the one in QT we decide this will be just perfect. Well, it was somewhat more windy in Rotorua than QT...and halfway up, our irrational th...

Wellington We are really pleased to hear onboard the ferry that the forecast for Wellington is rain. Rain for the next 5 days!! After navigating our way out of the ferry terminal and towards Upper Hutt where our campsite is, we are a little overwhelmed by how populated the area is. This appears to be worlds apart from everywhere on the south island! After getting our bearings for the area, we decide to head into Wellington city centre the next day to explore. Fi...

5th Oct - Blenheim Following on from a recommendation from a lovely welsh couple we met weeks ago in Lake Tekapo we booked ourselves onto a “wine tour by bike” in the Marlborough region. What a great combination...wine tasting and cycling. After being collected by one of the owners, Nigel, from our campsite we soon arrive at the HQ and are kitted out with bicycles, helmets and bottles of water (we are told we should make sure we keep drinking the water) Ni...

On the 30th Sept - we arrived in Wannaka and went in search of cinema paradiso - we had heard stories of sofas and cups of tea! This sounded like our sort of cinema....We got ourselves two tickets to watch Tarantinos new flick - "Inglourious Basterds"With a few hours to kill, we had a wander round the town centre and Andy was daring enough to get a haircut - not much can go wrong when you're just asking them to shave your head. A success, he looked like...

Sat 26th Sept - Te Anau – Gateway to Milfod Sound! On arriving in Te Anau, we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves at a lovely campsite on the shore of Lake Te Anau – and the sun was shining! Such a beautiful day! First off, we booked ourselves onto a tour to Milford Sound. We would be picked up by coach the next morning at 8.30! Perfect. Our campsite is in a great location, on the lakefront (Te Anau Lake) and a 10 min walk from where the shops/re...