Hello from New Zealand!

We are now in Auckland, the largest city here in NZ, after spending a month and a day exploring this incredible place. We still have a few days left but we thought it would be time to give you the next installment before we jet off to Fiji.

We hired an "El Cheapo" car (a clapped out old Toyota Corola with 300,000km on the clock). We have added just over 6,000km in the past month, but we will just give you the highlights. The rest we will bore you with when we get home!

We started in Christchurch, which is the most English city we have seen anywhere, including England. The streets are all named after places at home, e.g Oxford Terrace, Avon St, and the Avon river runs through it, which we even went for a punt on! There are even mallards swimming around! After a couple of days chilling here we hit the road.

New Zealand is the most dramatic place either of us have ever seen. So far that is. At every turn there is a different picture postcard view whether that is snow covered mountains, rolling green hills, turquoise lakes or idyllic beaches. And we have seen them all. Well most of them.

We have seen the idyliic Milford and Doubtful Sounds (see photos as the only way to describe), slept in a log cabin with views of massive snow capped Mt Cook out of our window, and had snowball fights while driving through the mountainous Arthur's Pass.

We are only a few thousand km from Antarctica here - and it has felt like it at times! We have swapped our sunnies for scarves, hats and gloves but it has been worth it! We have been lucky enough to see the shy yellow eyed penguins, little blue penguins coming home to their nests for the night, sperm whales diving, fur seals sunning themselves on rocks and the funny-looking national icon, the Kiwi.

And for the adrenaline junky in us, we have jet boated round the 144 idylic Bay of Islands at 100kmph, had a helecopter ride over the Fox and Frans Jospeh Glaciers and landed on the Fox Glacier, sinking kneee deep into the snow. And Tim decided to throw himself off the 40m high Auckland Harbour Bridge with a piece of elastic tied to his ankles. Twice!

So those are the highlights. If we'd had time we'd have told you more about getting drunk in Wellington, getting snozzled in THREE wine regions we managed to uncover, getting vocal at the New Zealand Warriors rugby league match, soaking in natural/stinky thermal baths, standing on top of a volcano, and standing among bubbling mud and steaming geysers in a place called the Craters of the Moon! And even then we'd still only scratch the surface!

It's a tough life. Not bad for a month's work. We dont want this to ever end!

Hope everyone is well at home. Take care of yourselves.

Tim and Amanda
xx