Okay amigos, this is a long overdue blog entry for New Zealand. It's taken us a while to get somewhere with good enough internet to be able to sort out the blog, but we've set aside today to do so. We're currently in Hanoi, having been to Australia and Thailand (more of them later) since leaving New Zealand just over a week ago.

Arriving in Santiago airport after a long journey by bus and plane out of Patagonia, we immediately boarded our night flight to Auckland. The flight to New Zealand left on 20 October but arrived on 22 October. This was because we crossed the international date line, thereby losing a day. Feeling like low-budget time travellers, we arrived in Auckland. We then caught one further flight to Christchurch in the South Island before picking up our campervan, driving to a campervan park and crashing out.

Our travels round New Zealand were without doubt one of the best things we've experienced on this trip. The campervan was fitted out for 'free camping' meaning that we could stop anywhere we wanted (more or less). This allowed us to camp at beautiful places by ourselves.

Our time in New Zealand was relatively short (just under three weeks) so we more or less had to drive to a new place each day. Our route took us round the South and North Island and along the way we saw so much (yet realised there is a lot left to explore).

Some of the highlights of the trip include dolphin and penguin watching in Akaroa harbour; sunrise at the Moeraki Boulders; walking in Mount Cook Aoraki National Park; Zip-lining in Queenstown; getting a speeding ticket in a whole different country; waterfall watching in the beautiful Haast Pass; visiting the Fox and Franz-Josef Glaciers; penguin-spotting on Monro Beach on the west coast; seal and whale-watching in Kaikoura on the east coast; wine-tasting around Marlborough; pretending to be a hobbit for a day (Steph); swimming in Queen Charlotte Sound; getting wet and windy in Wellington; visiting the art deco town of Napier; more wine-tasting; floating through an underground cave amidst tens of thousands of glow-worms; enjoying the thermal pools, boiling mud and other geothermal wonders around Rotorua; visiting Cathedral Cove (as featured in that pants Narnia film) and relaxing on some of the most beautiful beaches on the Coromandel peninsula...

All in all, it was quite good.

~Chris

No Chris - it was amazing! And you're really cool and have a lovely beard.

Steph (also Chris)