It felt as if we could have been back in Thailand as our minbus swerved onto the other side of the road to avoid the numerous potholes on our way from the airport. After meeting Becky at the Nadi Bay Resort following her 24 hour flight from England, and discarding our jumpers and snow boots, we headed down to the bar to start our 'holiday.' Getting to 'The Beachouse' on the Coral Coast the following morning was not going to be as easy as we'd first hoped as inev...

Awesome week at The Beachouse. Full blog to come when we find an internet cafe not charging silly money!

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...