A tiny town in the north east of the south island, the sole reason for visiting here is the promise of swimming with dolphins and whale watching, although these can be tough to do in winter as the seas become rough and the operators frequently refuse to set sail for fear of seasick punters filling the decks with vomit. As has usually been the case on our trip so far, we got lucky, however, and managed to get out onto the ocean on the first day of asking. Dolphin...

After our detour to Wellington for the rugby, we set about taking up in the South island where we had left off: Queenstown. We arrived back late in the evening after our 400 mile journey from Picton and the north of the island, near the ferry crossing to Wellington. Through no skill on our part, we had luckily timed our visit to Queenstown to coincide with the start of the ski season; so we had booked the following day on the slopes of Coronet Peak, overlooking ...

We first hit Wellington halfway through our road trip, staying for 2 nights before getting the ferry across to Picton and the south island; unfortunately, the awful the weather had meant that all we had managed to do was get to the impressively free Te Papa museum and watch the new Indiana Jones film. That was fine, however, as we knew we were coming back for the All Blacks v Ireland game ten days later. Fittingly, we met up with our Irish friends Sile and Kev f...

We'd heard that Milford Sound was at its most impressive in the rain, but this didn't make it any more tempting to venture out of the campervan into the bad weather. We did have a 2-for-1 voucher for the boat cruise, however, so before long we'd boarded the boat and were ready to visit the fiord. The rain continued throughout the trip, which is hardly surprising considering it's rainforest, but it did mean that we were treated to the most fantastic waterfalls. W...

We headed off down the West coast following our Abel Tasman 'tramp', as the kiwis call them, taking in a night in humdrum Greymouth after using our camper 'kitchen' for only the second time to cook a sublime spaghetti bolognaise. Waking up for the umpteenth time to a freezing van, we quickly carried on down to the world famous Franz Josef Glacier and booked in for a hike the following day. Though this is supposed to be 'off season', near a hundred people turned ...