Catlins From Otago (see entry How much wildlife can you see in 3 days?) we headed further south after a brief look around a very wet Dunedin. The Catlins region is one the least visited in NZ and for this reason it was one I (Frank) was quite looking forward to seeing it, the wildlife continued popping up but much more fragmented vs Otago peninsula, nonetheless it was great to see Royal Spoonbills (now Claire's favourite bird!), plenty more seals and assorted ...

How much wildlife can you see in 3 days? Much like the Banks peninsula mentioned in a previous entry the Otago version is another set of ex-volcanos, again with a lot of pasture land on it but there was a lot more than sheep to keep us interested here. This place is an absolute haven for wildlife and therefore rocked my little world in a pretty big way. Where to start...we saw 4 types of albatross including the 2nd biggest in the world with a wing span of gr...

Akaroa and a bit of a conservation diatribe After stocking up at good old Pak 'n' Save we drove out to the Banks peninsula via the most hairy route possible, it had drop offs from the gravel track on one side and hardly any room for vehicles coming the other way. We had some seat of your pants journeys in NZ last time and this one was well up there. The journey was broken by spotting some kingfishers and taking in some spectacular scenery - the peninsula is ma...

Back in NZ Here's what I can remember of the first 2-3 weeks of our 2nd stint in NZ, we are going to be updating the later bits soon. We arrive back in Christchurch after a relatively trouble free and sporadically wonderful journey. Only issue was we hadn't printed out our onward itinerary from NZ without which we couldn't enter the country and so had to do some mad dashings around Sydney airport trying to get stuff printed out which was way more painful tha...

QUICK UPDATE: for those of you who don't know, Claire and I are back in the UK at the moment, we returned from New Zealand in April as Claire's mum was taken seriously ill, sadly she passed away in June and we decided not to go back to NZ til the end of their winter/our summer and have been staying with Claire's dad in the middle of the beautiful Chiltern hills in Bucks not far from High Wycombe. So as we are at the end of our summer (what summer?!) and after a b...