We arrived in Queenstown, after travelling around New Zealand on long empty roads, entering Queenstown was like London in rush hour. Queenstown is packed full as it is the school holidays at the moment and everyone comes here skiing. We only just about found somewhere to stay. It's a pretty town but packed full of Ski shops and cosy little cafes with log fires. It rained the entire time we were there. Queenstown is supposed to be the adventure capital but ...

We stayed over night at Lake Tekapo in a brand new hostel right on the Lake with an excellent view. The next morning we went straight to Mount Cook to do one of the walks. We did the Hooker Valley walk, which took about 3 hours. Mount Cook was huge and you could spot glaciers on the mountain which stood out as a pure blue ice. We crossed over the river on a swing bridge, a long thin wooden bridge and beneath us was a freezing cold river thundering past. One area ...

While our car was in the garage we decided not to waste a day and we went up to Mt Hutt for a day of skiing. After a few goes on the magic carpet I decided I needed something a bit harder, so Chris came with me up to the next step on the beginners scale, it was a much longer steeper beginners slope. The chair lift was an adventure in itself! Anyway it didn't go too smoothly, I fell over quite a lot, twice I fell over the side of the boundary luckily it was still ...

We went to Porters ski field not far from Christchurch for a bit of Skiing. Chris can Ski but I cannot (although I did have that 1 hour lesson in the indoor place in Leeds). Porters is just a small place which has the advantage of being cheap and not busy. I got ski lessons for the day, although the beginners slope was barely a slope at all, but it really helped me. By the end of the day I was doing a few turns and hadn't fallen over which is an achievement in it...

After a long 7 months in Australia we finally left for New Zealand, after saying a tearful goodbye. We have had such an excellent adventure there, we left from Brisbane where we started our trip and even though it was still about 17-18 degrees everyone had their scarves and big coats on and outdoor heaters for the pub gardens!! We flew into Chistchurch and it was a very cold -1, we haven't been that cold in a very very long time. But we were well prepared with ou...