Christchurch has a great feel to it, we had a great wander around the city taking in the beautiful botanical gardens and an excellent art gallery, not to mention some nice bars, one with a fire and sofa outside!!! cool. So here we are at the end of New Zealand and what a trip we have had. Such contrasts from beautiful beaches, mountains, forests, sea and small towns... and where are all the people!!? Eventually we banned saying what a beautiful view it was as we...

Some more rain led us to the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Museum as it was the only indoor activity in the area (bored of rain now). It was actually really interesting and very sobering to watch film of the mountain rescue guides attempt rescues that only sometimes result in them saving the persons life. Enough doom and gloom - the sun came out the next day, so we could actually see Mount Cook (the highest peak in NZ), hooray! Once again it was impressive scenery, I...

We skilfully dodged any adrenaline sports in Queenstown (SO yesterday..) and went for a ridiculously hard walk up a nearby mountain. We are both still feeling the after-effects in our legs 3 days later but it did mean that we burned off enough calories to have another Hokey-Pokey ice-cream (vanilla with bits of honeycomb - mmm...). Anyway - you will see the fabulous view that we were rewarded with at the top. We really can't believe how gorgeous the scenery is ov...

Milford Sound is one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand. Apparently. We couldn't see it through the cloud and rain. We had planned a really long walk which sounded stunning from the description we had read but we quickly canned that idea and had a game of scrabble instead (there is nothing whatsoever at Milford sound - no shops, cafe's - nada). It was REALLY raining, not just a little bit. The one bonus of rain in the area is that it produces hundreds of...

Lake Wanaka is a lovely place with an amazing atmosphere and feel to it. The Lake is surrounded by mountains and the great outdoors. Everywhere you look there is a view. We were lucky enough to have a friend who lives just outside Wanaka in a beautiful house and they put us up for the night and fed us extremely well which was fantastic after the rains of Franz Josef! It is an idyllic place to live. The following morning their new chickens had laid their first egg...