We have now been in New Zealand for just over 6 months and our time here is coming to an end.Hannah has 2 weeks of work left as a Project Manager in Financial Reporting with Assure New Zealand and I only have 1 week left at BNP Paribas as a temporary fund accountant.On the 10th of July we are scheduled to fly from Auckland to Melbourne and commence the second half of our travels. Both Hannah and I have enjoyed our time here in Wellington immensely, helped to a...

After 6 full weeks of work we were pleased to reach the well deserved Easter break.Picking up our hire car on Thursday night the plan was a four day road trip finishing with an open air Jack Johnson gig in New Plymouth on the Sunday evening. Late on Thursday we arrived in Wanganui but only stopped for the night and set of early Friday to climb Mt Ngauruhoe that we had walked past during the Tongariro crossing (Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings per the earlier blog). ...

Round the Bays We signed up with the Les Mills team from the gym to do the 7k fun run rounds the bays in Wellington.We joined the gym team because it meant Brian got a free gym membership until the day of the run, free t-shirts and most importantly a sausage sizzle at the end of the run (more on this later!). The run started in Wellington city centre and went out along the coast for 7k.It was pretty scenic but I don't remember taking much of it in during the ra...

In the capital city of a country obsessed with rugby there was one hot ticket in town this summer.The event?The IRB Rugby 7's Wellington leg.It was soon apparent this event was more about the Kiwi's passion for drinking and dressing-up than rugby (they take all three equally seriously).The two day tournament turns the Westpac Stadium in Wellington harbor into a huge fancy dress party that spills out into the city centre and continues into the small hours after th...

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...