We visited the Hobbiton film set on the weekend. Its about 2 hours south of Auckland. All of the set has been reconstructed again as they have recently been there filming the 2 new Hobbit films. I'm not a big Lord of the Rings fan but the tour was really interesting, unfortunately we had no hard core fans on our tour, apparently people go on the tours dressed up and re-enact scenes from the film. Had to watch the first film after going to see on TV what we ha...

When we got to Wellington it was raining again.We had a look around the city and went to the museum to see the infamous Britten motorbike, designed and built by New Zealander John Britten.From Wellington we headed up the east coast to Greytown where we stayed on a local council campsite and met an American who gave us his email address and invited us to stay with him if we ever go back to San Francisco, and forgot to mention it was still raining, and spent the ni...

On the way from Richmond to Picton we did a number of one day walks such as the Nydia Track and a section of the Queen Charlotte Track.The weather has been really good for about 2 weeks now, with no rain or wind.Walking on the tracks or anywhere near any trees there is a constant sound of sekado's (really big black bug things) in the trees, they sound a bit like a grasshopper.The noise they make there must be thousands of them up there but thankfully although you...

On the way from Richmond to Picton we did a number of one day walks such as the Nydia Track and a section of the Queen Charlotte Track.The weather has been really good for about 2 weeks now, with no rain or wind.Walking on the tracks or anywhere near any trees there is a constant sound of sekado's (really big black bug things) in the trees, they sound a bit like a grasshopper.The noise they make there must be thousands of them up there but thankfully although you...

We are now at Richmond, close to Nelson slowly working our way back to Picton to get ferry back across to North Island.