OH MY GOD - I just had to let you know about my night last night. Bed at a reasonable time and then one of the other people in the room came in and promptly kept me awake nearly all night. I have heard bad snoring, but this was something else. At least with regular snoring there is something kind of rhythmic to it. I'm not sure if this bloke suffered from sleep apnia (right term?) where you actually stop breathing whilst you sleep. Basically he would be ...

Having had my bran flakes and sat by the water's edge for a coffee, I headed out of Wanaka, south along the scenic no 89 road. This road is extremely windy and passes up over Crown Peak at 1729m, before heading back down towards Queenstown. En route I passed through Cardrona, not renowned for much, except it's bra fence. Yes, I have typed that correctly - bra fence. Not sure how or why it started, but there is a stretch of metal fence about 500m long which ha...

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...