We woke excited to be finally on our way. A quick breakfast at home, an easy transfer to the airport and we were on our way to LA. We were flying Virgin this time which was fine - not as good as Qantas in my opinion but the kids had a screen in front of them with plenty of movies to watch so they were happy. Unfortunately we landed in LAX behind a number of other aircraft so getting through customs and immigration took a long time. By the time we picked up our...

We drove out of Queenstown toward Cromwell. It was a lovely day again and an easy drive through the vineyards of Central Otago. A short 45 mins later and we were in Bannockburn - home of some of the best Pinot noir producers in New Zealand. Unfortunately two of the wineries I wanted to visit I (Felton Rd and Terra Sancta) were both closed as they had both sold all their wine (a good problem to have) but Mt Difficulty was open so we walked up and did a lovely tast...

We woke in our lovely house in Waitomo, packed and had an easy drive up to Auckland airport. A uneventful flight down to Queenstown. We were blessed with a beautiful clear day as we flew over the southern ranges mountains - in particular Mt Cook. We landed and marvelled at the beautiful mountains either side of Queenstown. We caught a taxi into town to our apartment on Adelaide St. It's a great place with a lovely view of the water. We dropped our bags and then...

We woke to the blissful silence and a still warm fire in the slow burning fireplace. It was a glorious sunrise with mists in the valleys. We had a delicious breakfast of farm fresh eggs and bread made by our host - Sam. We then met Sam to feed the alpacas. They are skittish animals but with some feed we were able to coax them to eat from our hands - they have lovely soft eyes and are peaceful animals. We drove down into Taupo to the eye-site tourist informati...

We arrived back in Auckland at the ferry terminal downtown and Spencer and I went off to get the hire car. A bit of schlepping later and we were in our new commodore SV6 and fanging it down Highway 1 south. We made good time and arrived at the small seaside town of Thames for lunch. We found a suitably dodgy bakery (custard tart of course) and refuelled. Leigh took over driving and we drove up the western side of the peninsula. What an amazing road! - not a st...