Wellington and Napier Arrived in Wellington a day early on the ferry giving us more time on the North Island. We booked into a cheap hotel using lastminute.com and got a room for the night much nicer and cheaper than any of the hostels. Zoe very happy due to creature comforts!! We really enjoyed Wellington. We went to the 'Te Papa Museum', which was huge. Spent ages there looking around lots of different aspects of New Zealand including geography/landscape, ide...

Abel Tasman National Park We left Nelson on the 17th heading for the Abel Tasman National Park stopping at a few arts and crafts places on route. Today I decided that we would be doing some fishing and so directed Nick to the 'Anatoki Salmon Farm' where you can catch your own Fish. This was hilarious, not being natural fishermen the lady gave us a few pointers and sent us down to the lake with a rod, box, net and Knife. Nick caught a big Salmon almost immediatel...

Nelson Another rainy day meant we put in lots of miles on the way up to Nelson, stopping at the Pancakes rocks on route. Surprisingly impressive with good blow hole action. Greymouth was almost as exciting as it sounds so we didn't spend long here. It felt good to be in a city when we arrived in Nelson so we did a bit of shopping, went to a wierd old-style fake village called Founders and checked out a few bars in the evening. Nick is enjoying sampling lots of ...

Fox Glacier Ice climbing Today we woke up knowing that we were going to scale a glacier, very exciting. We were joined by two Germans and a Guide (Simon) for the day. Once fully kitted up with what looked like killing weapons (Nick looked very pleased about this) we headed for the ice. It was quite a trek up onto the Glacier, luckily our valley scrambling earlier in the week had prepared us well. But once on the Glacier everywhere you looked was just awesome. Sim...

West Coast Walking Nick decided that today was the day for some easy walking, nothing too strenuous. We headed for the Blue Pools and after a brief look at the massive Trout we started the Big Blue Valley Walk. It was only two hours each way, but we were basically scaling waterfalls and scrambling through the valley for the whole walk. We were exhausted when we got back, but good fun. Showering today took the form or a Glacial River, Nick assured me this was ben...