Kulnine Homestead & Cottage Kekerengu

... was going to take us on. This we did, and the week flew by with their two children to keep us occupied. The following Wednesday we decided it was time to cash in our hours, and decided to hop on the river with the crew Ben was taking down. A four hour drive up to Hamner Springs set us up for a 4 day, 220 km rafting drip, down most of the Clarence River. The first day was mostly calm, with lots of sun, and Amanda and I were helping Ben's ...

... had a fire defeat him before despite it raining and everything being wet. As all you ladies well know, inside every man is a caveman desperate to get out!! How do I know all this?? Well, the above said person has been me the last few days. On friday afternoon Pat arrived, he is the owner of the farm, to sort out a few things and after showing him around the place so he could see how things were ticking over he said the words that sent a smile from ear to ear across my ...

... for, believe it or not, the Queens birthday!?! I was up at the crack of dawn (actually, quite a bit before dawn) to help feed the animals. The feed times are probably the best bit about this stay, the 8am and 4pm feeds are met with a concophany of noise from each and every animal on the farm. There is such amazing excitement its hard for it not to rub off on you. The 8am feed is followed by one of the less glamourous jobs I have to undertake and that is cleaning up the mess from ...

... between islands), the trip became more pleasant. After picking up our car in the port town of Picton we travelled for a couple of hours down the coast to the small town of Kaikoura. Kaikoura is the whale watching capital of New Zealand because the sea shelf drops upto 800m deep just of the coast, attracting lots of marine life. We did the early morning whale ...

Kaikora is famous for its whale watching as it has favorable climates for some species, especially the sperm whale. when we arrived in town we booked a tour for the next day. the next priority on the list was to find out where james could watch the champions league semi between man u and ac milan which was ...

We awoke to the sounds of waves breaking outside, and drove down the coast a kilometer to Kaikoura's famous seal colony. This sunny, green peninsula, surrounded by high, snow capped peaks and the waters of the Pacific, is as much a haven to the fur seals as it was to the ancient Maori. Maui, the demi-god shared by many Polynesian cultures, was said to have hauled up a very large fish one day. The ...

Kaikoura is a lovely little township on the seaside where you can get close to the mammals of the sea, dolphins, seals and whales. Again this was a flying visit, one night. We didn't get to whale watch as the weather was too rough in the sea which seemed really strange ...

Just a short drive down the valley from St. Arnaud / Lake Rotarua is the town of Blenheim. Blenheim is the center of the booze industry for New Zealand. The climate isn`t as hot as southern Australia and the soil doesn`t have the same goodies in it so the wine varieties that prosper here are different. Sauvignon Blanc and Shiraz seem to be the grapes of choice for these wineries - lighter and less complex boozes. Sauvignon Blanc, in particular, is more acidic ...

Because we got a late start from Christchurch we only ended up about an hour up the road at Amberly Beach where we found a nice place to camp on the beach. After dinner we sat on the rocky shore and played with the smooth stones. A few seagulls were interested to see if we had any food so we took to chucking rocks at them. Zachary nearly got one if it hadn't made an almost complete mid-air stop. While driving north the next morning we saw out of the corner of our eyes a ...

After a pretty boring journey down to Wellington staying one night in a pikey park in Plimmerton we got the ferry across to South Island. It's got to be one of the best ferries in the world - not in terms of the boat, which smells a bit because of the large amount of cattle transported on it, but the scenery. North Island disappears behind you and South Island rears up in front of you. We thought North Island ...