Our road trip of the North Island took us to the waitomo caves, which were flooded, so we moved on to Rotorua for some racing on the luge (5 times), a visit to a thermal wonderland with a big geiser and lots of bubbling mud; we went to a maori evening to see performances of the haka and to eat a big hangi meal cooked in the ground and we white water rafted over the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world at 7m - I fell out as we went over which wasn't great but I swam back to the boat and to make me feel better they dunked sean under some rapids!

From there we went to Taupo to see the big lake, some nice waterfalls and play some mini golf and then we drove down the desert road to Wellington where we had lots of good nights out, a wander round the botanical gardens and a visit to Te Papa, the massive museum. After that we said a sad goodbye to Alex as we got on the ferry to Picton.

In the South Island we headed to Nelson, the sunniest place in NZ where we walked along the Abel Tasman coastal path and quad biked for 3 hours up a huge hill for an amazing view of the bay. We also got to ride through rivers and around a fun track a few times with hills and massive puddles, it was so much fun.

From Nelson we drove down the West Coast, stopping to see rocks that look like pancakes and to see the famous jade at hokitika. We also visited the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers and spent a day hiking on FJ which was hard work but really amazing. We drove down to Te Anau and then to Milford Sound along the most scenic road we've ever seen with snow capped mountains and beautiful lakes and some really cool parrots called Keas.

After that we spent a few days in Queenstown swinging into Canyons from a 109m high platform, we raced along the shotover river past huge rocks and icicles on a jet boat and spent a couple of days skiing. Unfortunately Sean hurt his knee skiing so we cancelled the rest of our skiing time, got him some free physio and then headed up to lake Tekapo and onto Christchurch for some calmer activities like looking round the Sunday food market, playing amazing indoor mini golf and eating some tasty NZ fush and chups....

We really loved NZ, we had such a great time there...Love Vic xx