Well Christchurch was great, the Sheaf familly are just great and have given me names of people that i can contact round the country if i'm in need of somewhere to crash. Whilst in CHCH i went to the Antartic Exhibition centre which was cool, they had penguins that stunk of fishy **** and a polar room where they let you experience and antartic s...

A relaxing couple of days in Te Anau, a pretty little town on the borders of the Fjordland national park. A big jumping off point for extended walks in the parks, specifically for the Milford and Kepler tracks. Being somewhat short on time and lacking essential camping gear, IŽd not attempted any of the longer tramps, but theyŽll certainly be wo...

IŽd been looking forward to my trip to Milford Sound not only to see one of the most visited national parks in NZ, but it also gave the opportunity to stay on in Fjordand to take advantage of some of the great walking tracks available in that region. We were lucky enough to have a fairly empty bus for the tour, which gave us a chance to stop in ...

Having already walked up the steepest street in the world in Dunedin just before we left, we made our way up to Lake Tekapo through more glacial rivers and lakes with Mount Cook in the background. Stunning scenery everywhere we looked, made the bus journey seem extremely short and after a couple of stops to take the obligatory photos we arrived ...

We arrived in Tekapo to an amazing (again!) view of the lake. It's a glacier lake so it's a brilliant blue. With the mountains in the background (including Mt. Cook), it was a brilliant setting. We had already decided that the 2 days we would spend here would be relaxing. We walked into the village centre to look in the shops and for me to compa...

What a lot to catch up on! I have recovered from the disappointment of a lost post, and am geared up to produce another long-ass one. I'm even typing this on Word so that auto-recovery will get my back if there is another "incident". Nah actually it's because Internet in Te Anau costs $1 every 10 minutes and I can't afford to blog online. Dunedi...

Entry 43 of a trip titled: Australia-NZ Oct' 07-Jan '08

This is a trip many years in the planning and anticipating. Feel free to send me an email with a response or comment.

Like many other cities in New Zealand, I'd never heard of Te Anau, let alone know how to properly pronounce it. It was the second day of our New Zealand road trip and we had covered some of the most spectacularly scenic kilometers this earth has to offer. I even busted out my portable stereo and played the Lord of the Rings soundtrack for a coup...

I'm excited to be off on my own for a while. The constant planes, buses, trains and boats kept me propelled on someone else's schedule, so it's a relief to have the freedom of my own car for a while. The rental company blessed me with an incredibly sexy '98 Mitsubishi station wagon. At least I have room to spread out. Lake Tekapo is my first sto...

Going back towards Christchurch we did an overnight stop at Lake Takepo. Have a look at the stunning photo's of Lake Takepo - I woke up to this the following morning! Along with Lake Takeop is Australasia's highest peak known as "Mount Cook" standing at 3754 metres, surrounded by 200sq. km of alpine beauty featuring 12 glaciers!!. On a clear day...