Happy NY everyone. It's been a busy few weeks. Sarah flew in on NYE and the four of us drove up to Able Tasman National Park the next day to go Kayaking for 3 days. The coast there is pristine as you would expect and although it was the busiest time of year we managed to find a few good campsites. As everyone probably knows by now, Ged and Wal told us they had decided to get married which was cause for celebration (lucky we had stopped at Cloudy Bay winery on the way up). After that we headed back to Christchurch where Wal and Ged went back to work and we went on a road trip around the South Island. Highlights were the Mount Cook National Park, Shotover Boat at Queenstown, Horse Riding in the Rees-Dart Valley (where they shot parts of Lord of the Rings), and a day hiking on the Fox Glacier. Also of note was Sarah and I trying to pitch a tent in torrential rain on the west coast on the night of her 30th birthday. We'd planned for a nice night camping on the beach with a camp fire etc. and ended up sleeping in the car (we didn't quite trust the tent to keep up dry). The west coast had over 250mm of rain in 24 hours (almost Melbourne's annual rainfall). Click on the photo albums if you want to see some snap shots. Sarah flew back to Melbourne this morning to finish her last 3 weeks of work before starting her pilgrimage to meet me in Spain. I'm heading to Glenorchy tomorrow morning to hike the "Rees-Dart Track". Sadly the digital camera has been playing up and I've sent it to Auckland for some repairs, so there won't be any photo's for the next few weeks.