A belated Happy New Year from New Zealand! Hope you all had a great festive season and are surviving the 'Big Freeze' OK. The UK actually made the front page of the newspapers in New Zealand the other day because of your weather! Needless to say it isn't quite as cold here - we've had very mixed weather (you can get 4 seasons in one day here) but it definitely isn't freezing!

Our trip around North Island in the run up to Christmas was great. We've been right up to the northern tip of the country, stood on 90 mile beach (it's actully 90km long not 90 miles - but that's still pretty long!), had fish and chips at the best fish shop in the country - and yes it did live up to it's reputation! We've driven over mountains, around lakes, on beaches (don't tell the hire car company!) and through valleys - there isn't a straight road in the country and the view seems to get better around every corner. It truely is a beautiful country.

Christmas was spent on Cook's Beach (everything is called Cook around here - I think it's gone to Robin's head!) in a great little cabin. The owners John and Di, and their family, very kindly invited us to join them for Christmas dinner - which was a feast of baked ham, salmon and salads sat out on their terrace over looking the beach - it's a hard life. And yes Robin did go for a swim on Christmas day - complete with Christmas hat from his cracker! Boxing Day saw more beach action - we visited a couple of stunning beaches just around the bay and ended up on Hot Water Beach - where you can dig your own hot pool in the sand. There is a hot spring immediately under the beach, so you dig a big whole and relax in the hot spring water. Great fun but the blisters are only just healing - we're not used to manual labour!

Then we headed through the thermal reserves in the middle of the island - very dramatic but very smelly!! Lots of sulphur, boiling mud, fizzing geysers and green lakes - really amazing. Then after a quick stop in Taupo it was down to Wellington for the New Year celebrations, and they didn't disappoint. A very drunk, riotous night was had by all a full 13 hours before you lot sang Ol' Langs Ein! (Don't know how you spell that but you get the idea!)

South Island has been no less impressive. We went on a wine tour in the Marlborough region courtesey of Santa Claus (though I think Family Thacker had something to do with it!) which was a great day out. We went walking in the Abel Tasman National Park - a whole 16km around windy coastal tracks! (Lindsey are you proud of me!?!) Stunning scenery though and you get to go on a speedboat first which was a great laugh. Then it was down to Kaikoura to go whale watching, and they didn't disappoint. We saw 3 sperm whales (and yes Robin does keep doing the sperm joke...) one of them started pinging our boat with his sonar - you could hear it hitting the boat as he tried to work out what we were - really amazing. Then we got the obligatory 'tail in the air' photo as they dive to the depths before heading off across the bay to see a pod of dusky dolphins up close and personal. They were swimming in the wake of the boat trying to race us - we were about 3ft from them.

On the wildlife front we've also seen seals, sealions, the mighty albatross and cute yellow eyed penguins wadling up the beach. But really it's all about the scenery here. Today we're off to Milford Sound in the fjords, tomorrow its Mount Cook and then on to the Franz Josef Glacier before we pass through the Southern Alps mountain range to get back to Christchurch and our flight to South America. Lots of driving but its worth every mile. x