We arrived safely in Christchurch on the 18th January 2007. Its a very green pleasant place, with a feel not too disimilar to Cambridge! Sadly on the 19th we heard the news that Jen's Grandad Albert had passed away. He will be greatly missed. We've been keeping in touch with Albert's brother, Uncle Charlie, who we saw recently in Narooma, Oz.

The following day we picked up the campervan from Escape Rentals. Our van is called Maui, as it depicts the legend of the demigod Maui. He used a magic fishook to pull the North Island out of the sea; his canoe is the South Island and Stewart Island is the anchor stone that held his canoe steady as he did this. Both sides of the van are quite different, having been painted by different artists in a competition. One side depicts Maui slowing down the sun (see uploaded photos). Our first destination was Akaroa, a small French Settlement on the coast. We did the beautiful Heritage Park Walk from here, with stunning views of the bay. We sampled the local dish, whitebait fritter sandwiches!

We moved on to Geraldine, well known for its fruit produce (jams, drinks, sauces..) made by Barkers, very delicious. Unfortunately the bad weather stopped us from walking but we did manage a short walk around Peel Forest to see the 9m circumference tree. We saw The Queen in the small cinema there, which was full of old sofas.

We got to Lake Tekapo on the 24th, where we were amazed by the turquoise colour of the water, created by rock flour, finely ground particles of rock held in suspension in the glacial melt water. Lake Tekapo has the clearest night sky in the whole of NZ, which was a truly amazing sight. There is an observatory on the top of Mount John (1031m) which we walked to. We took a trip to Lake McGregor, and walked from there to Lake Alexandrina. Having got quite into walking, we did another walk the following morning around the peninsula, with gorgeous views of Motuariki island.

We drove to Mount Cook (Aoraki) on the 26th Jan, had a look round the tiny village there, and had tasty Red Curry soup in the Mountaineers Cafe. We looked longingly at the luxuroius Hermitage Hotel. We tramped all the way up to Sealy Tarns, off the Kea Point Track, giving us the best views of Mount Cook. This was a tough walk (to 1768m) with steep tracks but it was well worth it. We walked the Hooker Valley in the afternoon, which took us to the terminus of the Hooker Glacier.

We were sad to leave Mount Cook, but we had at least got the recipe for the Thai Red Curry soup. Twizel was a little disappointing, not least because of the weather. Apparently we missed the highlight of Twizel's year by one day, which was the Wine and Salmon festival.

Oamaru (30th Jan) was an odd place too, where the streets are dominated by ridiculous looking cars driven by boy-racers (and girl-racers too!) - we did manage to see the rare yellow-eye penguins, and a couple of seals on the beach. The highlight here however was the blue penguin colony. We waited on the beach until dusk, and watched about 100 of them come ashore, absolutely stunning sight. They waddled in their little groups, waiting for each other before heading off to their nests on land. Very cute. With little else to do here, we went to the cinema to see Deja Vu, starring Denzel Washington. There was a nice park at Oamaru, but otherwise not much to say about the place.

Moeraki was a lovely little place on the coast, famous for its boulders (pictured) which are almost perfectly spherical and scattered on the beach. Its believed that they were eroded from the mudstone cliffs behind and that subsequent erosion has exposed an internal network of veins, making them look like turtle shells. We stayed on a lovely campsite where the German hosts made us warm bread rolls in the morning. On a walk to the lighthouse (where we saw more, apparently rare yellow eye penguins!) we met a family from Prague who took pity on us and gave us a lift back to the campsite! On the Heritage and Millenium walk we came across more seals on the beach - most evenings they sit on rocks or the beach to get warm.

Dunedin gave us a chance to stock up, but there was little else there of interest. We carried onto Owaka and stayed near Surat Bay (3rd February). We met a lovely retired couple (Val & Tony) who took pity on us in our small cramped van, and invited us into their mansion-like campervan for a bottle of wine! On the beach there we came across more seals and sea lions. The Catlins is an area of immense beauty and wildlife. We saw the Purakannui waterfalls (the most photographed in NZ apparently) and did the Catlins River Walk, followed by a picnic in the middle of nowhere (Tawanui camp ground) on a sunny day, brilliant. That night we headed to Curio Bay, where on a walk along the beach that night we saw the very rare (!) Hector's Dolphins. These dolphins are unusual because they spend a lot of time near the shore swimming close to surfers and bathers. The next day we visited the Petrified Forest, an area of great natural historic interest. Here we saw fossilised trees, 160 million years old from the Jurassic era. They also provide proof of NZ's location in Gondwanaland. Here, we saw more (extremely rare ?!) yellow-eyed penguins! We've seen so many of the things, we don't believe they're rare at all!

We made our way through Invercargill where we bought pedometers! On the way to Riverton we saw Stewart Island in the distance. We saw the famous Riverton Rocks, but weren't too impressed with those! The walk around Moore's Reserve was great, but we thought we were being followed by a low-flying helicopter, Jack Bauer style.

We drove past McCracken's rest to Manapouri, where we discovered a lovely quiet campsite right on the shores of the lake. The next day we got a water taxi over to the forest and did the circle track walk and hopeview hut walk, giving us our first glimpse of the stunning Doubtful Sound. The next day we boarded the boat and did the cruise through the Doubtful Sound, all the way to the Tasman Sea. On the way we were amazed to see a large pod of Bottlenose dolphins swim with us (pictured). These dolphins were huge, apparently they can be as big as 3m. We also spotted some sealions. On the way there we stopped off at the underground powerstation, where they use water from the lakes to power the nearby Aluminium smelting unit and some of the power supplying the national grid.

We got to Queenstown on the 9th February where we saw the Remarkables and Lake Wakatipu. We stayed near Arrowtown, which is a Goldmining area and there is a historical Chinese Settlement there. We did the fantastic Sawpit Gully Trail which bought us back down the river, where people were doing Lord of the Rings tours (yes Nicola, we were there 2 years ago). We wached the mad bungy-jumpers diving off the bridge nearby and drove on, neither of us tempted in the slightest. We met a guy called Dougall, originally from Sussex, who had built a house near our campsite which was fantastic; he tried to sell it to us, and his dog Hokey-Pokey too!

On the way to Wanaka (11th Feb) we stopped at Puzzle World, where we took the challenge of the 3D maze, perhaps walking about 2-3km or so. The Illusion Hall there was very good. It was so hot that day we decided to pop into the Cinema Paradiso, where all the seats are sofas and theres a Morris Minor in the corner! Unfortunately we were too slow in getting the home-made cookies during the intermission. (the film was Prestige, with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale - quite good, bit dark but we can recommend it). We stayed at the best campsite ever. It had fantastic views all around, and the sites were very spacious. We met a nice Canadian couple there. She was a teacher and he was in Aviation, he assured us aviation is the safest form of travel. That day we did the most gruelling walk ever; the clim to Mount Roy's summit (1578m) and 16km long was well worth the climb but our legs couldn't move the following day. Luckily our campsite had a spa and sauna so we made full use of that!

On the 13th February we drove through the beautiful Haast Pass to the Glaciers. We had lunch at Jackson's bay (a bit of a detour, whoops...... quote "shouldnt the sea be on our left???"). The next morning (St Valentine's Day) we took a guided walk up the Franz Josef Glacier. We had to wear crampons, which was fun, although there were a few moments where we heard ice tumbling down from high up on the glaciers. Some of the ice appears blue, because of the refraction of light through the compressed ice. The amazing thing about these glaciers is that they are moving 70cm a day, and they are near temperate rainforest. We drove up to Hokitika, where we bought Jade (Greenstone) for each other, as is traditional here.

From Hokitika we drove to Arthur's Pass, where we did a couple of walks in the forest. The first walk (Bealey Track) had us scrambling over rocks for several kilometres. The second was much easier, just to the Bridal Veil falls. As there were no powered sites we stayed in a budget hostel double room, with the most uncomfortable bed ever. David woke up at 5.30 in agony. Several hours later, and after several doses of Diclofenac and Diazepam (which made me sleep for hours in the day!) he was much better, perhaps a little too elated?!

We're now in Kaikoura, another lovely campsite here with a Spa, bliss. Tomorrow morning we're booked on the 6.15 am Whale Watching boat tour, and afterwards we're heading to Christchurch brifely, to see if we can get a more comfortable van! Afterwards we're off to Hamner Springs to the hot rock pools....

Congratulations to Jules and Jake on their engagement!