After a brief lunch stop at the mostly uninspiring Westport we turned inland to take a look at Bullers Gorge. We had heard that the countries longest swing bridge spans the gorge and that there was a flying fox. First thing we did on arrival was cross the swing bridge which was thrilling enough in itself, with the water pretty high and active below us. After taking a walk around on the opposite bank where we saw some great examples of native bush, we all chose to...

Punakaiki or Pancake rocks is an area of coast where the seaside rocks have beeon worn away to look like stacks of pancakes. There are also some outstanding blowholes which are at their most impressive at high tide. We arrived in the afternoon and gound out that the next high tide wouldn't be until 9pm or 9am the next morning. We had a look around the impressive rocks and surrounding area which is full of interesting rainforest, flax undergrowth as well as won...

Us being us and them being them our scheduled leaving time of 5pm was more like 6:30 by the time we had met up with Tom and Rachel and got going towards Arthurs Pass and the West Coast. We soon realised that what with all the photo stops, general slowness of our vans getting up hills and the small problem of nightfall that we were not going to make it all the way to Arthurs Pass before it got dark so we set a more realistic goal of finding a decent free camp site...

On Friday the 24th of October I turned 33 years old. After Katie cooked me my all time favourite breakfast of smoked salmon with scrambled eggs and Tabasco sauce on English muffins it was time for a birthday visit to the Chiropractor! Once he had finished snapping my spine and sorting out my prolapsed disc problem for that day the fun could really begin. We were off to the Antarctic Experience. Katies parents had kindly bought me two tickets to experience complet...

Things are starting to settle down towards what some people might call normality albeit that we are 11,684 miles away from home! We have settled into a place that we can temporarily call home and having our own space (well at least a bedroom and a bathroom of our own) makes a great change from sleeping in the van for 4 weeks. My job is all signed and sealed and after a frustrating 6 hours spent sitting in NZ immigration I have my work permit. The same cannot sadl...