The Elms Christchurch

... such. Discard low value, high weight food stuff, drink up a 1 litre can of fruit juice etc. Not at all a good experience. My advise do not travel Pacific blue unless absolutely necessary and then only if you are carrying minimum luggage. Moreover the on flight snacks were hardly appetising and later after a month of our arriveal in delhi we received mailer advising us that some of the foodstuff served in the flight we took was probably contaminated!!! however not sure and stuff.....

... but its gotta be done. We also got snow chains! The car was an automatic so Sophie just drove around for a bit to get used to it, didnt take long and then we headed into Christchurch after picking up a few essentials from a supermarket - bread, cheese, pasta, carrots and gloves and a hot water bottle for me!! We parked near the botanical gardens and went to Cantebury Museum. Quite interesting but then ...

... voiced his thanks loudly. Apparently he didn't really want it moved and was happy with it in it's original position. He had a marvellous grasp of simple, short words to impart this information to us. Rain was beginning to fall and rather than stay in town, we pushed on to find a suitable DOC site out of town. We decided that this would make our assault on Milford Sound easier the next day. The area between Te Arnu and Milford Sound has a very good selection of DOC sites and we chose ...

... and Dave in particular kept me sane during a lot of my days of fruitless job hunting. Then I thought I had struck gold! I got a job in a factory where I could work 50hours a week, and was told I would probably be able to have it until the end of July (I landed this at the end of April). The work was boring, but it gave me some cash and something to do whilst Bex was plodding along swimmingly at school! However I was a victim of random selection 3 weeks in and got laid off, so I ...

... vuorokausirytmi on todellista myrkkyä hiuksille! Viime maailmanympärireissulla menetin varmaan 10% hiuksista ja nyt on lähdössä vähintään saman verran. Seuraavan reissun jälkeen olen takuulla kalju! Hyvänä puolena tässä on, että ei tarvitse mihinkään parturiin mennä, vaan senkun menee tuuliseen paikkaan, niin siellä lentää, hei, hei! :-) Joku puhuu miesten hiustyyleistä, ensi kevään muodeista ja muista brassailuista, mutta min ...

... coming down to the coast. It took us about five hours because of all our many stops. We checked out some vineyards/gardens and stopped off to walk over NZ longest suspension bridge. After a nice swim in the river we continued to the coast and the next 100 or so km down to Greymouth was the best I've ever driven. Beautiful green cliffs dropping into crashing clear blue water was hard to ...

... if you run out of beer you are stuffed if you want to sit on the varander and quaff. So day one and Mac is happy, no sandflies and good local beer, it all bodes well. Mac xx The morning after the night before is always worse than yesterday...5am start from Sydney after a late night which seemed like a good idea at the time!! Got to the air port courtesy of Ray and Karen, who also bunged us $20....just as well ...

... thought I was well clear of an obstacle, only to be thrown off balance as V12 (pedal) chewed rock. I have a few V12 bites on my shins / calves as a reminder! Something that would become more of a problem was the wind. Nuturally, as I climbed higher the breeze became stronger and increased as I moved towards the tip of the headland. More of that in a second. What I wasn't expecting to find up here were raised timber sections of trail, but there were lots of them which added to the mix. As I ...