The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is an 18.5km walk across the TongariroNational Park in the centre of the NorthIsland.Rated as the best one day tramp (NZ speak for walk) in New Zealand and listed by many in the top 10 day treks in the world (according to the rough guide) the path passes two active volcanoes (Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Tongariro) and other land rich in geo thermal activity. Those faithful blog readers will know that we originally attempted to do the cros...

Abel Tasman We embarked on the 10 hour drive from Fox to Abel Tasman.It was a gorgeous day too.Still it was probably best for the health of our skin that we were cooped up in the van.We had a couple of stop offs en route.The first was at the pancake rocks, where the limestone has weathered in to what looks like stacks of pancakes.The next was at Buller Gorge.We walked across the 110m swing bridge which was only wide enough for 1 person -but didn't stop people cr...

After having the van fixed we were free to get back on the road.We headed north for a stopover in Wanaka before making our way to Fox Glacier.There wasn't much going on in Wanaka.We stayed in the worst campsite by far but met a very cheery minister from Christchurch.He had married his brother in the church of the good shepherd (the picture on the side of our van) so came to say hello to us.He thought our accents were "very sexy" and that we should split...

The weather started to heat up as we moved north to Queenstown, unfortunately however so did the van.I should mention that Hannah had started to share the driving by this point.With the temperature gauge off the scale and strange bubbling noises coming from the engine under our seats I thought it best to pull over.We read the manual and diagnosed the problem as no water in the engine.Identifying the clear reservoir under the passenger seat, as described in detail...

Milford Sound was a long drive from Dunedin on the east coast to Fiordland on the west. Fiordland is an unpopulated area of national park where several dramatic Fiords have been created when huge glaciers have met the sea. Not a huge area of forest as I first though.We did learn that a fiord is a glacial valley that meets the sea and a sound is where a river valley meets the sea.Unfortunately when early explorers made it to Fiordland they did not know the differe...