South Island here I come. We boarded the ferry at 8.00 am from Wellington and 3 hours later, via the very beautiful Queen Charlotte Sound, we were in the town of Picton on the South Island. I haven't got that much to say about Picton, nice enough place but I can sum the stay there up in my two highlights; Highlight one - a barmaid only charged ...

It's been hailing. HAILING. Cold wet stuff, you know, HAIL. It's the equivalent of the end of June in a country with a latitude similar to south europe and it was HAILING today. It should be summer and it's been hailing. Madness. It's also been raining for about 24 hours solid, I got soaked through yesterday. Today I'm failing miserably to buy m...

OK, so I picked up my passenger and I've had a pretty good travelling day. We stopped at vineyards in the Marlborough region and then headed for Kaikoura. We picked the first hostel, which was actually shut until September. They recommended the 'Lazy Shag' so we headed there. We paid for a night, but after seeing the facilities asked for our mon...

We arrive to Christchurch in inclimate weather. It was raining and the wind was fierce. All flights to Queenstown had been cancelled so made the right choice to drive. We picked our new home...the Buzza campervan. It has refridgerator, stove, sink, and electric heater. Brillant.

I woke up with the first hangover I'd had for a while and made my way to the bus station. I admit that I'm a bit hazy about the journey as I spent a lot of it asleep. I was on the Intercity express bus as there were only a couple of Stray passengers and the stray bus needed to go further south. I did however see some fantastic views and New Zeal...

Back to Christchurch for the second time, having found Edoras on the way. Was very excited all day, with the Super 12 rugby (Crusaders hammering the Chiefs) to look forward to, as well as a curry at the 2 Fat Indians. Off to Melbourne next... gonna be awesome meeting up with everyone...

For me and the other guys, Christmas has been and gone and my folks arrived safely on Boxing Day - yesterday. Sinead and the girls joined us on the 22nd, Igno and the others on the 23rd, so by the time Christmas Eve came the excitable re-unions had taken place and everyone was in high spirits. For many of us, Christmas this year was away from fa...

In the past three days, both me and Juliette have been stressed out about selling our car. Every morning we would check at the reception of our hostel hoping for any messages from potential buyers inquired about our car. The answer always came back the same, "sorry, no messages" In the evening we check it once more, again the same dull, heart br...