The flight to Auckland was a mere 90 minutes, we were met at the airport by our good friend Jason. It felt like we'd arrived home, a familiar face and laughing constantly from the second we started talking. Within half an hour we had arrived at their home and were getting to know their lovely little boy Connor. Oyoyoyoy! Unbeknown to us, Kelly and Jason had arranged for a few of their friends over too, people we'd met previously and got on really well with. We ...

The drive to Picton from Christchurch was familiarly stunning. The route took us through Seddon, a small town at the epicentre of the 5.7 earthquake that jolted the South Island just a couple of days prior. There didn't seem to be too much damage, however the small town looked eerily deserted. Picton is a tiny town on the Marlborough Sound, this is where the brave catch the ferry to the North Island. It's also wine growing country (we even passed out favourite ...

The coach to Greymouth would have been ok, if not for the overexcited driver whose regular and long commentaries that just waffled banal nonsense "have a sausage, have two. Maybe you could try an egg, that's right, that's the one" or "I love the train, the best thing about it is, if you look down to the left of your seat, you'll find a plug socket. Great for drying your hair". The scenery was very different too, everything seemed a little flatter, the terrain wa...

From Wanaka, we headed back to Queenstown for another couple of days. We loved the atmosphere of the place so much, we didn't mind a short backtrack before heading to Fox Glacier. The journey from QT to Fox was awesome, the heavy rain on the preceding day had caused hundreds if not thousands of instant waterfalls, a few of which spilled out on to the road. The mountain road threaded its way through the dark green covered peaks, the lush rain forest threatened to ...

This was the day Jan nearly killed a man. We sat in the second to front seats on the coach, Jan was secretly eating some trail mix for breakfast before the coach departed. As we got underway, the driver advised us all of the safety features of the coach, our route and then after about 10 minutes that he had a severe allergy to peanuts and that even the smell of them would make him very ill. Jan was mortified, she clamped her hood over her mouth and sat face cover...