Well it's been a while everyone lol! Anyway I thought it was about time that I finished this blog off with the last few entries it deserves! In my last entry it was my birthday eve and we'd just got to Queenstown for the second time to celebrate my birthday in that amazing place. It was at that point that Lilly, our Finnish friend we met on our ...

This is our last day in New Zealand, and I have to update you all on a few things, while additionally getting a few things off my chest. First of all, I own roundabouts, ie traffic circles. I own them. I've gone through about 100 of them during our time here, and I have to say, they got nothing on me. I will admit that when I first got here I wa...

When in Queenstown we knew that the whole place was a lot busier than other parts of the south island because it was high season here due to the skiing and snow boarding. We finally stayed (after a good bit of looking around!) in a very nice hostel called the Butterfli Lodge. Here was a great base for organising the next few days' activities. Th...

Contrary to our first impressions, last night was freezing. Nice and warm under the duvet but every movement brought the cold. The alarm goes off at 8am but it's half past before we can tear ourselves out of bed and over to the shower blocks. Even though we've got a shower in the van, it's much cheaper to just use the amenities block. At 10am we...

Arrived in Queenstown yesterday morning after a 1 hour 45 minute flight from Wellington. It has to be said, the most entertaining flight I've probably ever had too! The pilot took great delight in banking and weaving around the mountains and lakes in the South Island to give us all the best photographic opportunities. Mount Cook and it's surroun...

Die letzten paar Tage galten allein dem Planen meiner weiteren Reise. In ca. ner Stunde hitchhiken wir nach Glenorchy, bleiben da ne Nacht und nehmen dann den Caples/Greenstone-Track in Angriff (da der Routeburn auf Wochen hinaus ausgebucht ist :-( Danach fahr ICH zurueck nach Q-Town, von da aus weiter nach Dunedin (mal mitm Bus zur Abwechslung)...

Had a beautiful drive down to Queenstown - the West Coast is just stunning! We stopped at Lake Mattheson (aka The Mirror Lake) and got some great views/reflections of Mt Cook. Arrived in the evening - got a fab little 3 bed mini-apartment in our hostel which is great as we are here for 5 nights. Its great to finally be able to settle in somewher...

What a busy day! We took a tour bus to Milford Sound today- very glad we did, as the scenery on the way there's really amazing, but the road is quite simply frightening. We were told by our bus driver that apparently it's one of the top ten most dangerous roads in the world (glad he only told us that after we were on it!?!). His statement was pr...

Slept great last night. Jim had decided to work all day today as he is so behind in Aloha Condos work. He is very happy since he gets a fast internet connection here on his cell phone. I chose to get out of his hair and do some hiking by myself. We need some time alone and I could really use the exercise. I went on a hike that lasted about 3 hou...

Yo.... (can you tell we have chilled out now) Arrived in NZ last Monday, how confusing, we crossed the international date line and so Sunday completely disappeared. We collected our Mitsubishi Lancer hire car - nice wheels !!!!!! Headed down to Mt Cook, our first stop of a 2 wk whistle-stop tour of the South Island. On our way we passed Lakes Te...