We left Queenstown on Monday afternoon and made our way to Te Anau, our camp for the night. From here, we headed up to Milford Sound the following day (a long and twisty 2 hour drive but very beautiful) stopping at Reflection Lakes and a few other locations for a some scenic photography and to feed the sandflies on the way! We also had to tackle the Homer tunnel, which is a long single lane tunnel under a mountain range where we had to wait 15 minutes for traffic coming the other way before our green light signal!

The cruise itself was great, on quite a small boat with two guides to tell you all about the various spots along the sound. We had great weather for it and got to see a seal pup with its Mum and some pretty awesome waterfalls. The boat drove right under one of these at one point! Chelle was chatting up one of the guides as we did this so missed the Captain's warning about getting wet - I've got some great footage (I was sensibly inside) of her getting drenched! After the cruise, we tackled the drive back to Te Anau again, then decided to continue south for a couple more hours, ending up in Invercargill for the night.

On Wednesday, we drove the short distance to Bluff, the most southern point on the South Island. From here, you can see over to Stewart Island, but there's not a lot else to do, so after a quick photo stop, we made our way back to Invercargill to grab some lunch and visit the Queens Gardens and their amazing rose garden (which smelt really good until we took our fish and chips there to eat!) We also managed to blag ourselves a free ice-cream at the factory for "Deep South" because Chelle got talking to a Kiwi girl working there. She had lived in the UK for a bit and worked at the Bedruthan Steps Hotel in Mawgan Porth!

After lunch, we drove across to Dunedin and headed for the Otago Peninsula. Here, we joined an evening tour of the yellow-eyed penguin colony. These are the rarest type of penguin and after discovering them living on his land, the sheep farmer decided to do something about protecting them and has set up a private conservation project. As part of this, they dug trenches into the land so that visitors can go along with a guide and watch the penguins in their natural environment without disturbing them. They are very private animals usually, so the fact that you're hidden is perfect! The chicks are born in November each year, so they are currently around 3 months old. We learnt that they do all their growing in the first 3 months, and then they shed their fluffy brown feathers and gain the adult feathers ready to go out to sea. As a result, the chicks that we saw were as big as their parents, and were at various stages in terms of whether they had any fluffy brown feathers left or not. The parents go out to sea to fish all day, then return in the evening to feed their chicks (by regurgitating the days catch - nice!) Whilst there, we were lucky enough to see one of the parents, Danny, return from sea, then feed his chick! We also saw a blue penguin chick in a nesting box and some seals whilst on the tour. It was a great evening and made even better by the fact that you know the money that you pay to do the tour is going back into helping the penguins.

On Thursday we headed up the east coast and stopped off at Moeraki to see the Moeraki Boulders (and the deer that was at the side of the car park - see pics!) These are huge spherical boulders that were hidden in the cliffs at the side of the beach, but as this has gradually eroded, the boulders have appeared on the beach. Apparently there used to be hundreds of these, of various sizes, but now the only ones that are left (still 20 or so) are those that are too heavy to be stolen by visitors! After this, we got back on the road to head for Aoraki Mount Cook. On route, we stopped at the elephant rocks. These are massive limestone formations in the middle of a field, which supposedly resemble a herd of elephants. We couldn't make out any elephants, but spotted a whale and a face (see pics!) We got to Aoraki Mount Cook early in the evening, passing Lake Pukaki on route, and set up camp (i.e. parked the Jucy!) in the most amazing DOC camp with a view of the Huddleston Glacier right in front of us. Not bad for under 3 pounds a night! The weather was still lovely so we did a short walk to "Kea Point" to get a better view of the glacier and also Mount Cook itself.

On Friday morning, we did another walk along Hooker Valley to get closer to Mount Cook and also see the Hooker Lake. The lake has another glacier (the Hooker Glacier) that feeds into it and, as a result, it was full of huge pieces of ice that have broken off from the glacier. We left Aoraki later that day and stopped at Lake Tekapo for a short while to cool off. The water in this lake and Pukaki is fed from the glaciers in the area and they are the most amazing turquoise blue colour as a result - as you can see from the pic of Chelle dipping her feet in.

After doing the rafting in Queenstown, both of us were really keen to do it again, so consulted the Rough Guide and read about Rangitata Rafts, which is based a couple of hours away from Christchurch. The Rangitata River had grade 5 rapids all year round, so we definitely wanted to give it a go! We read that the place had a lodge that you can stay at for a few pounds, so we based ourselves there on Friday night, ready to do the rafting on Saturday. The bus ride to our drop-in point wasn't as scary as the Shotover, but the river was absolutely brilliant! In our raft were three English farmers and our guide, Muzz, was a scary Fijian girl, so we realised pretty early on our raft was powerful (as you can see from some of the photos, Chelle and I rarely had to do any paddling!). We started off with a few grade 3 and 4 rapids then hit a massive 450m section of awesome grade 5's (about 6 separate rapids one after the other)! After that they got us out of the rafts to try some rock jumping. We started out with a five metre jump which a few people jibbed out of... but not Chelle! Amazingly despite her real fear of heights she threw herself off the rock into the river with style! A few of the lads (including me - how could I pull out after doing a 43 metre bungee!) then did a 10 metre jump! After that it was back into the rafts for a few more rapids and some raft surfing! The guide let us flip the raft a couple of times which was ace fun. She also fell in at one point whilst we remained in the raft (when we were raft surfing) much to the enjoyment of the other guides as any guide who falls in has to buy the beers that night! The whole day was great fun and included a bbq at the end - we would defintely recommend this place to anyone wanting to raft on the South Island.

In the evening we made our way up to Rangiora (Paul and Caroline's) via the scenic route and came the closest we've come to running out of fuel! Luckily we found a small shop whose owner sold us a jerry can and saved us!