The ferry over to Wellington from Picton was a trip down memory lane for Tom. He remembered taking 'The Pride of Cherbourg' over to France when he was younger. The crossing itself was excellent with the sun shining and the wind blowing while we watched the wonderful scenery slowly pass us by. We then powered across the Cook Strait and docked in Wellington harbour. We had read about a really convenient camper-site right in the centre of the city and we dec...

We arrived in Blenheim - Marlborough wine country - and booked straight onto a wine tasting day. The trip included visits to eight different wineries of our choice, plus some additional stops, during our seven hours. We got picked up at 10am and went straight to our first winery, Montana. This is a wine which we drink at home, so it was quite exciting to get a look at how it was made. This is one of the biggest wineries in the Marlborough region so was very ...

We woke up early and continued our drive across the country and to the Hanmer Springs. Hanmer Springs is known for its thermal pools and is rated highly in the Lonely Planet, so figured we best make a stop here. The pools are all open air with some heated as much as 42°C. It was lovely having a relaxing afternoon, they even had a full sized swimming pool which no-one was using. This meant while everyone was having serious relaxation, Sarah was being thrown ar...

Our next day we had a long drive ahead, but with some pretty cool stops to break it up. We started to head north from Queenstown, first hitting Wanaka. It is not too dissimilar to Queenstown, but with less tourists. It was so picture perfect with the lakes and mountains surrounding it, we loved it. We then headed on to our first real destination of the day, the Fox Glacier. We parked up and started our walk up to it, getting us to about 80 meters away. The s...

We set off for Queenstown early to make sure that we could see as much as we could that the little town had to offer. During the journey we stopped several times at various scenic stops along the way - the whole route is full of mountains and lakes. It was a fairly quick drive so we had arrived by lunchtime. We swerved into the first camp site we saw within walking distance of the centre and headed out for lunch. Feeling suitably full we strolled around in t...