We had a few hiccups to overcome before boarding the plane to New Zealand. We hadn't printed off our visas, this shouldn't have been a problem but when the staff at the airport kept giving us conflicting answers as to where we could print them off (as ever I got quite panicky and Steve told me to pack it in) after a while we overcame the hic and managed to check in. Next stop was changing some money and Travelex wanted $10 commission and then gave us a $10 off voucher for duty free, Steve quite rightly said that they can keep the voucher if they'll forgo the commission, no they had none of it, well, you've got to try.

Next up Steve was randomly picked for an explosives check, he passed. And we finally were stamped out of OZ and quite excited to be going to New Zealand.

We had a slightly turbulent flight and a flatulence problem sitting next to me and surprise it wasn't Steve this time! Anyone who has watched Lee Evans live at Wembley will understand the absorbed fart in seats gag, well it's all true, every time the guy next to me moved the fumes expelled from the seat brought tears to my eyes, I think he must have been quite poorly!

Customs in New Zealand is far less stress than entering Oz, all very smooth and easy going, less than an hour after landing we were through customs with our backpacks and on our way to our hotel.

Christchurch was alive and kicking at 12.30am, the all Blacks had just been beaten by France but despite this all was quite jovial and not a fight in sight!

We checked into our hotel which was right in the centre of the city and I have to give it my all time favourite hotel, this may be because we haven't had the privilege of a proper bed and our own toilet in quite some time but this room was far superior to anything we'd stayed in over the 9 months, there was 6 different mood lighting settings, free wireless, flat screen tv with loads of channels, funky alarm system that wakes you slowly by increasing the light in the room then the tv comes on with calm music showing landscape scenes from throughout New Zealand, there was also the hairdryer, iron, kettle and fridge, everything we could ever need!!

During our first day we wandered around getting quite cold as we had no winter clothes so headed off in the direction of clothes shops to partially kit ourselves out with coats and jeans. It actually feels quite nice to be wrapped up for a change. New Zealand is cheaper than Oz which is blessing because the pocket couldn't take much more of a beating.

We looked at the options for travelling around New Zealand and it's far too cold for campervans, buses aren't the best especially if we're to settle down for a while to earn some money but we do still want to travel when we can, so we decided to look at what cars we could afford.

Someone seems to be smiling on us as cars here are really quite cheap to buy and run, we had the money from the campervan which has now got us a 4WD Nissan Terrano, which I really love now. All cars here seem to be automatics it's hard to come by manuals so Steve and I are coming to terms with redundant left feet and becoming lazy drivers (it's quite nice actually). Diesel is mega cheap here at $1.10 (40p) a litre, insurance is cheap and cars seem to be much better looked after and maintained than in OZ, another thumbs up for New Zealand.

We want to meet up with our mate Rene it's his birthday soon so he may like a surprise visit from us, we just need to figure out what mountain resort he's working on????