Hello loyal followers, So this morning started with a common running theme on this trip . . . a hangover after last night's fancy dress party antics. We boarded the bus at 9am where we were waved off by our amazing hosts and headed down the coast to Franz Josef. Our first stop was in Pukekura and the Bushman's centre. The centre offers an insight into how people used to make a living through timber milling, possum trapping and helicopter deer-recovery. The tou...

Hello Everyone, So after a rather heavy night the night before the next morning was a bit of a challenge for quite a few people with some people worse than others. We checked out the hostel at 9am and boarded the bus ready to leave and headed south to Lake Mahinapua. Our first stop was at Cape Foulwind after a half an hour drive where we went for a 1hour walk around Tauranga bay to visit one on New Zealand's largest seal colonies. The point of the bay is also t...

Hello Everyone, So today started a little later than usual due to only a short 3hour drive to Westport. We checked out our 8 man dorm at 10am and put our bags on the new coach which we would be on for the next five nights. Another reason the bus was leaving later was due to other people doing activities and half day trips into the national park because of the bus arriving late the evening before. To waste time we decided to chill out in the TV room and meet some...

Hello our faithful followers! So after a month of being in New Zealand we finally started our journey over to the south island. After a very early start we boarded the Interislander ferry to the south island. The water was a bit choppy through the cook straight but other than that it was a smooth 3 hour journey into the port at Picton. We drove for about 45 min until we got to Nelson, this used to be the stop on the journey until it changed last year, however ...

Hello Everyone, After leaving River Valley early afternoon we headed through a town called Bulls. They had the ingenious idea of naming everything in the town after bulls - Banks are Bank-a-bull and the town hall was social-a-bull. Unfortunately the weather had turned for the worse so we grabbed some food and headed back on the bus to Wellington. Finally after a 6 hour drive we arrived in Wellington. We were dropped off at our hostel on our own as the rest of t...