Today the drive took me from Haast to Wanaka, where I had no intention of stopping, but once I arrived and the sun was shining on the picture perfect town and lake it really was inevitable that I would be staying! The drive down passed between Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka and I stopped at Thunder Creek Waterfalls as well as Makarora for a coffee and fuel. Driving over here is fairly easy, all the roads are single lane and the speed limit is 100km per hour out...

Last night I stayed at the local YHA and hadn't been in the room more than 5 minutes when a girl came in and asked if I had made any plans for seeing the glacier and luckily the answer was negative. She then proceeded to tell me that she had just got back from the full day hike and had been absolutely petrified - one girl in the group had sat down in tears and said she couldn't go any further. When she then showed me how there was hardly any skin left on her fe...

Having had my bran flakes and checked out of the hostel, I headed for the nearby peninsula. As I pulled into the car park I very nearly ran over a seal, just lying there sunning himself, oblivious to the mayhem he was causing. The tide was out so I decided to wander down onto the rocks and out to the sea. Being the very sensible person that I am , I had flip flops (or jandals as they are known here) on and was having to watch my footing all the time - very wet...

Hello from me, on my own again, as Nic left on her trek on Tuesday morning. On Monday evening I discovered that Keren (friend from Perth who went back to Asia when the tsunami hit) was in Nelson with a friend of her's from the UK and so the two of them met us for a drink. It was lovely to see her and the 4 of us compared notes as they had just finished the South Island and us the North, before they headed off to the cinema. Nic and I then went in search of foo...

Well, we have finally arrived in the South Island, having flown from Auckland to Nelson this morning on the smallest plane ever - it only had 30 seats. Yesterday we had to get the van back to Auckland and so got up early and headed out of Napier. When we got to Taupo we picked up a hitch-hiker by the name of Tamir from Israel. He was a really nice guy who helped us clean out the van before returning it in Auckland, however I did keep an eye on him in the r...