Hello for the final time from New Zealand. Cant believe we've been here for a month already! We're in Christchurch now and the weather is boiling hot, its a great little city. Theres loads of fairly untalented street performers everywhere that have kept us amused. After visiting every single hair salon in Christchurch Gem finally picked one to get her hair done so thats where she is now, I had the choice between sitting in the salon reading womens magazin...

We survived!!!! We have just had the most unbelievable few days of our lives. Lets start with the ice climbing...The weather thankfully cleared up which meant we could actually see where we were going and the glacier was breathtaking. No one likes a geek but its been estimated that the glacier is made up of around 14 million tonnes of ice which is constantly moving forwards, wow!!!! The day started with a pretty steep climb through the rainforest (Fox glacier is ...

Hello again, just thought i'd post a quick message to let you know what we're up to. After our death defying caving trip we drove up to a place called Pancake Rocks which we were told was amazing and we couldnt travel the West Coast without seeing it. They even looked good in the leaflet, loads of big weird rocks and blow holes shooting water into the air. However when we got there the tide was out and it just looked like a big pile of rocks, rubbish. We hung aro...

Hello from the South Island. We are now the proud owners of an absolutely brilliant little campervan and we'd now like to be known as Max and Paddy. After an unbelievably slow but scenic ferry crossing from the north island we picked up our van and headed to Nelson which is a pretty little town on the coast, nothing very exciting happened there except for Phil being driven into by a FEMALE learner driver whilst walking on the PAVEMENT to the Post Office, fort...

Hello everybody. Have we had a fun packed week or what! We spent Sunday in a glider taking in all the sights that Auckland had to offer, well Gem did anyway. Phils glider didnt want to stay in the air for very long so he got the shortened sightseeing tour, still it was a great experience and Neville (my dads godfather and 'one of' New Zealands top gliding instructors) and Maureen (Nevilles wife) made us feel so welcome that we really enjoyed ourselves. On Monda...