On the Thursday our first winery was Montana as we were doing the morning tour of the winery. It was just us and the guide so it really was a personalised tour! It was very interesting and so much of the process in mechanical - from the picking of the grapes to the squeezing and bottling (which happens in Auckland as more than 60% of their wines are exported!) We sampled many wines including an ancient grape Sauvignon Gris - which is not a mix of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris - it is a grape all on its own!

Our next stop was Cloudy Bay. Now you may know this is a very expensive wine but in my opinion not the best Sauv Blanc. I don't think it is value for money at all. The have a complementary tasting of 2 wines but they give you a tiny amount and they were really quite snobbish. We didn't stop long as we felt not welcome at all!!

So on to Spy Valley. Paul was not sure about this winery but I had read about it and wanted to go. Also I am pretty sure we have drank some of their Sauv Blanc. Well this had to be the best winery of the day! The girl was friendly and very informative. All tastings were free and we tried about 10 wines. What I really liked is that all the wine comes from the vineyards that you can see. Imagine drinking a pinot noir and see the vines it has came from? Pretty awesome! We bought 3 bottles of wine - a Pinot Gris, a Rose (pinot grape - yummy!) and the most delicious Riesling ever! Now I am not normally a fan but their wines were excellent. I particularly liked their dessert wine which was Sauv Blanc and was made totally in error but is absolutely delicious!

We then went onto Clos Henri which is a French winery using NZ grapes. Some of their wines were good but others were very French! We done the tasting (which was $5) and then moved on to Nautilus. Here we sampled some bubbles, Suav blanc and pinot gris. We bought their sparkling which was lovely and we are keeping this for our last night in NZ.

After all those tastings (don't worry Paul did not have all of them as he was driving!) we stopped off at a state park for some home made lunch. We then went on to Nelson where we stayed the night at a very family friendly campsite! We did get a game of crazy golf which ended up being a draw - but we will play again in Orlando and we will see who will be the winner then!

On the Friday we done quite a lot of driving but we did stop off at the Pancake rocks and blowhole. The rocks are called pancakes as the rock formation looks like a stack of pancakes! I was very excited about the blowhole but as it was low tide it was a bit disappointing. It was more spit than a blow! But the waters were very rough and it was quite an extreme place to visit. Tonight we are staying in a conservation park. There are many of these throughout NZ and we stayed in Lake Ianthe on the West Coast. This was a lovely wee spot on a beautiful lake. Unfortunately when we arrived it was pouring of rain! But it did dry up for long enough for us to have a yummy BBQ and sit outside having our dinner and wine. It did start raining again so we went inside and played cards - I am the rummy queen!!

The following morning (Saturday) it was still a little damp but we made our way to the glaciers. Now this is quite something. After the ice age the geography of the mountains means that the ice compacts on top of the mountain and forms glaciers - mental! We managed to walk up to about 100m of the ice at the Franz Josef glacier. The river which runs along the walkway had blocks of ice in it as it was coming from the glacier. There were also lots of waterfalls coming off the mountains - it really was beautiful. The walk to the glacier was about 2 hours and was full of amazing views.

We then drove upto one of the lakes to have some lunch. Thankfully it had dried up a bit so we sat lakeside and enjoyed our homemade sandwiches. We then hit the road and drove to Wanaka were we spent the night. So far we have had most of our meals in the campervan but tonight we ate out in town and have a nice meal in one of their ale houses. I really like Wanaka as it is on a really pretty lake and is such a nice wee place.

On the Sunday morning we decided to have breakfast in town and we had a hearty full breakfast in this lovely wee café. Their baked goods were amazing! We then set off for Queenstown which is only about 1.5 hours from Wanaka. We arrived in Queenstown and booked ourselves into the holiday camp for 2 nights and then set off exploring. Our first stop was the Skyline gondolas which goes all the way up the mountain. Whilst up there we done the luge which was amazing fun! It was like a go kart sledge which you race down part of the mountain. We had awesome fun and you could hear me WOOOing around most of the course.

After making our way down the mountain we walked into town. My allergies were pretty bad here so I got some more medicine to try and control them. As it was so warm and still sunny, after dinner we went to the lakeside and watched lots of kids and some adults jumping off the pier into the lake. The water was freezing but they were having great fun. I think Paul was ready to join them! As I was suffering a bit with the allergies we called it an early night and we back to the campervan.

On the Monday morning we went to the Kiwi bird park as I really wanted to see kiwis and as they are so endangered, conservation parks are really the only place to see them. We were in luck as a baby kiwi had recently been born and he had just been put on show. They are such unusual birds but I really like them. The baby was so cute as he was only about 2 weeks old. There was a really interesting conservation talk which described the plight of so many of the native species of birds. The stoats are a real problem as they kill about 40 baby kiwi every night - so they are trying to catch all the pests to prevent the total wipe out of all their native species. As you can tell I am really into the conservation of animals and I really enjoyed the bird park.

We then went to have some lunch in an Irish pub! I have tried to stay away from Irish bars but this one was offering good food. We then had a bit of a rest to let our food settle as we were going on the jet boat in the afternoon. This is a high speed boat which does lots of spins and gets you wet! It was awesome fun and we also got to see quite a bit of the lake and rivers.

Thankfully the allergy medicine was working well and I felt much better today. The pollen count seemed to be very high around the lake as even Paul had felt it. That night we went to a very fancy Italian restaurant and had some good food and wine.