A bit Grey  After the beauty of Arthur’s Pass we found Greymouth to be a complete contrast and also very aptly named; grey, drizzly and void of people. I expect if the weather had been better it may have been a bit more appealing but I wouldn’t bet on it. We continued south to find somewhere to camp for the night and settled on Hokitika which appeared to be similar to Greymouth but slightly better. By 5pm it was pouring with rain and we were worr...

East Meets West We thought it would take a while to drive the 321km coast to coast journey from Christchurch to Greymouth, crossing Arthur's Pass, "the most dramatic of the Southern Alps crossings" as up to this point the roads had been pretty windy and difficult to drive. So we set off really early intending to arrive, camp for the night and then do a walk the next day, only to arrive in Arthur's Pass Village, the main settlement on the pass, ...

Crossing To The South Island Craig recovered from receiving a summons and we somehow navigated our way through Wellington to return our hire car and catch a ferry across the Cook Strait to Picton on the South Island. Because of the geography of Wellington and Picton it turned out that we were actually travelling northwards to get to the South Island which was quite strange. The crossing was pretty choppy but had gorgeous views of the narrow channels of the M...

Coromandel Peninsula After negotiating rush hour traffic in central Auckland we finally made it onto the open road and quickly arrived at the Coromandel Peninsula, passing a spectacular sunset at Whakatiwai. As we found with all of New Zealand, the sunsets are like none we’ve ever seen before. The sky turns a bright pink and stretches across the horizon for miles. We camped for the night in a tiny village called Opoutere which was very close to the beac...

AucklandAfter bidding a sad farewell to South America we boarded our 13 hour Saturday night flight to New Zealand and somehow arrived at 4AM on Monday morning! We had lost an entire day in translation and it was a very weird feeling. Arriving at our hostel we discovered we were due a free beer from a handy Auckland guide. Craig thought it was a great idea, so slightly jet-lagged was to be found sitting at the hostel bar drinking beer at 7AM (to be fair it was abo...