Yesterday to get to the National Park we'd had to head a little out of the way, so today the plan was to get back on the route heading west. Unfortunately this wasn't as easy as it sounds with the free maps we were using (we'd been assured they were concise enough by the tourist information), it is a nice place to get lost though. Anyway after about 45 minutes of wasted time we were heading along the state highway to a windy DoC. We picked up and soon found the...

We were off on the road again this morning and were heading to a National Park area- Abel Tasman which apparently is a "NZ must do". The weather was nice and as per usual the drive was filled with fantastic scenery. We arrived around lunch time and decided to make the most of the sunshine by walking around the coastal track. The track took us down to the beach where we had a paddle in the freezing sea and set off back to the campsite. Two hours later...

We were off on the road again this morning and were heading to a National Park area- Abel Tasman which apparently is a "NZ must do". The weather was nice and as per usual the drive was filled with fantastic scenery. We arrived around lunch time and decided to make the most of the sunshine by walking around the coastal track. The track took us down to the beach where we had a paddle in the freezing sea and set off back to the campsite. Two hours later...

Rather than staying in Wellington city for another night, where there wasn't that much to do we decided to stay in one of its suburbs and hopefully do a walk. We regretfully told the rental company the CD player had packed up and en route to the next campsite had to stop at a garage for a repair. Surprise, surprise two garages later we were no nearer and now had to visit a different garage tomorrow as soon as we get off the ferry, great. We found the site eas...

For the second time on our trip we packed away a wet tent at 6.00am and set off to the ferry port as we were travelling across to the south island on a cruiser which should take about three hours. We got a bit of a panic on at one stage when there was an accident on the highway and we got stuck in traffic, we arrived with only 10 minutes to spare. We sat in some comfy chairs once on the ferry and caught up on the news. We found out that there has been a cyclon...