As soon as Fran left big sis and other half Alex arrived for a week of fun in Queenstown, it was amazing to see them and in between the hang overs and speed jet boating on the Kawara river we squeezed a few days snowboarding and of course hit the Luge track again!! With Fran and Deb and Alex gone we found ourselves a nice Alpine style house to rent with our mates Rich and Hannah and settled down for our first long stay anywahere so far. With nearly three months ...

Frans Travel Update: On Saturday we went to Cathedral Cove first which was breathtaking! the water was so clear and it was so strange to see these random large rocks coming out of the sea! We then went to Mercury Bay. NZ is a volcanic Island and as such has hot springs. We went to the beach were you can dig wholes in the sand and the hot water fills them up. Depending on where you dig will depend on how hot the water is. It can get scolding as well which is ...

We finally arrived in Queenstown for Jonny's birthday so we got stuck into lots of crazy activities. We hired Quad bikes for the afternoon and drove over some really fun, very wet and muddy terrain and then attempted to knock each other off the slightly icy Luge track. With only a couple of days left with us we got Fran into a pair of snowboard boots and headed off up Coronet Peak snow field for some snowboarding lessons!! Just to make sure Fran went home nee...

We entered the South Island and had quite a bit of driving to do to get to our final stop Queenstown. We stayed a few nights in Picton and Nelson, in Picton we took the hostel dog for a walk around the coast and ended up loosing him. Luckily he came back after lots of shouting, because that could have been hard to explain! We then set off on the long road trip to Franz Josef where we did a glacier walk along the fox glacier. This glacier is a huge lump of ice...

Tongariro National Park was our next stop on the way down the north island with Fran still travelling with us and the van we bought in Aukland running really well. The park is so breath-taking, especially against bright blue skies it centres around three active volcanoes, Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu, which erupted in 1995 and in 1996. You can see the lava flow diagrams around the lodge we stayed in which tell you where to run to in case of another eruption!...