Wednesday 1st Feb 2012. A nice ly-in again and then we were picked up to go...wine tasting!! We set off at 11 and arrived back at around 6. There wre 8 of us in total, including a couple who thort they knew what they were talking about, rara. actually they were ok but gave the impression they wouldnt be! We were taken to 5 wineries in total, and tried 1.5 bottles of wine in total. i tried mainly whites, a) as i wanted to see which whites i liked and b) that was ...

Tuesday 31st Jan 2012 We had a bit of a lazy morning yesterday and then set off in the car towards golden bay and abel tasman at half10 ish. We drove around 3hours up the windiest mountains again and eventually hit golden bay. it runs for miles so we decided to go to one of the beaches, just to say we had. There was no-one on the beach and there was no surf. like our little own private beach! We then headed back and called in at abel tasman on the way. again, it...

Monday 30th Jan 2012 After checking out of the beach front hostel we went on what we thought would be a long drive and walk to the pancake rocks. within an hour of leaving the hostel we were done! They were literally 3mins down the road and the walk around the rocks and the blowholes took 20mins. In summary, the pancake rocks are rocks that are layered and look like pancakes and the blow holes are gaps where, when the tide is high (which it wasnt when we were th...

Sunday 29th Jan We were up early and checked out of the hostel to enable us to check into our morning adventure... a hike up the franz josef glacier. There were different types of hikes we could have chosen but we decided on the half day walk. We got geared up (they provided socks, boots, crampons, waterproof trousers, water proof jacket, wooly hat and gloves. lucky they did as i turned up in shorts and flip flops! We got a 10min bus to the car park and set off ...

(the view is of glenorchy were we did the lord of the rings horse ride) Sat 28th Jan 2012 Today was mainly a travel day. we got up when our heads had cleared and set off on our way to franz josef. It was THE hilliest/mountain-est roads i have ever been on. they never ended. most of the corners were that steep we had to take them at 15km/h! some poor b***** got a flat mid way up...ooops! i would have stopped and offered my help but the car had that little power ...