Today we drove alone the Tasman shoreline which gave us the most scenic drive we've had so far on this trip. Our main stop today was an hour walk around Cape Foulwind and Tauranga Bay, which we weren't exactly thrilled about in the morning, until about three-quarters of the way through when we came to a viewing point and saw a huge seal colony! We spent far too long looking at and commenting on how cute the seals were, to the point we thought our driver...

Leaving for Westport this morning also meant leaving Nat, Ryan and TomTom behind - our first casualties of the trip. It hit Aidan and I a lot harder than we had anticipated as we didn't realise how close we had gotten with them in such a short space of time. The weather seemed to reflect our mood as it rained pretty much all day, meaning our stop at Nelson Lake wasn't as nice as it could've been. Due to the rubbish weather, our driver decided to do a more direc...

An absolutely brilliant night in Wellington was slightly ruined by the departure of the bus at 7.15am to get the ferry across to the south island. This also meant myself and Nat running around at 7am to make sure the boys actually got on the bus and didn't miss the ferry! Once we boarded, everyone completely crashed out. The rest of us who couldn't get comfy enough to sleep spent the journey playing cards, chatting and eating. Then about 3 hours into the fe...

Today was another quiet day for me. With still no voice, I spent my time whispering my input into conversations and getting annoyed that I couldn't talk even after resting my voice the day before. We had quite a distance to travel today so our driver Mangee put his foot down to try and get us to Wellington as quickly as possible. I spent the majority of my time today with Nat as she was the only one who could understand me/read my mind, and she also came to...

I have no voice. Like absolutely nothing. No sound whatsoever. I woke up earlier to go to the pharmacy for my throat only to find when I got there that I couldn't explain what was wrong. So after an entertaining game of charades I left with a big bag of medicine, hoping I would get my voice back soon. After a quick stop for lunch in Turangi, our driver Mangee made the executive decision to not make us do a 'short' hour walk after the Tongariro Crossing ...