AUSTRALIA
Sydney
The western world, it was quite a shock entering back into ‘normal’ life and knowing we weren’t going back to Asia, but we settled back in after a couple of days!! The only reason for us going to Australia was to see family and Rachel (Jon’s sis) and Mark’s wedding but we also got to see some good friends we’ve made along the way too!

Most days were spent either with Nico and Charlie, wandering around taking photos, or with family. We had great days at the beach, the botanical gardens, playing with our little nephew Jack and catching up with things that we had missed. I won’t go into daily detail because that would take forever, we had a wonderful time, it’s just a shame we couldn’t stay a little longer…

The day of the wedding came around very quickly and after much worry about the weather it turned out to be a beautiful blue sky all day. The wedding was perfect and everyone had a great time, we even managed to look after Jack during the ceremony without incident which was a relief! Again, I won’t go into mass detail, I took a few photos which we have uploaded for you to have a look at: http://www.cooleimages.com/pri.php?gid=112&gal=35f7pab8

Unfortunately we had to leave the day after the wedding and so we said goodbye to our family and friends and set off for our next destination, New Zealand!

NEW ZEALAND
Christchurch
Our first stop in New Zealand, the town of Christchurch. We knew before we landed we were coming in the wrong season but as we have gone to most countries in the wrong season we just figured it would be OK! We got one perfect day of blue skies and then another of just grey cloud, but that’s not too bad, at least we could go out on one of the days! Our first job was to find jumpers, not being used to the cold anymore and only having clothes suitable for hot Asian countries we did freeze for a couple of hours, but all was sorted when we found a charity shop packed full of warm clothes!

On our one day of exploring we went to the Christchurch Art Gallery and that was about it, we wandered around the town for a few hours but the only attraction we saw was the gallery! We did have a nice day though but it was very cold, too cold really, how we survived in the UK is beyond us, but I suppose we’ll have to get used to it sooner or later!

Twizel
On the way here the bus that we were on stopped off at a beautiful lake, Lake Tekapo, for lunch, not a bad place for a sandwich!

The tiny town of Twizel originally started as a bus connection town for us but after getting into our room we found out that there was wifi in the area, it then became something else – a place to finally get my site up and running, and that’s what we did for a couple of days, no sightseeing or walking, just work!

Mount Cook
We managed to get one clear day at Mt Cook out of the four days we were there so we only managed one walk, but it was the biggest one!! We set off mid morning on a track which would eventually lead us to the bottom of Mt Cook itself and the glacier that had formed there.

The scenery along the walk was beautiful and we had a really nice time, stopping every now and again to take it all in, and generally just having a laugh. We got there after about 4 hours of walking (it’s only meant to take two but we did stop quite a lot!), and it was worth the walk, but then it hit home, we had to walk back!! It’s not too bad when you can walk a different way back but on this particular walk it was the same, so after some sitting by the glacial lake and relaxing we set off back home!

After deciding to take a few shortcuts we got back to the hostel about 4 hours later, absolutely knackered and freezing cold, secretly hoping the weather was bad the next day so we didn’t have to walk anymore!

Queenstown
We only came to Queenstown as a stopover as we couldn’t really afford the multitude of extreme sports offered here! It rained for most of the day that we were there so after a quick walk around we settled in our room and caught up on Lost – he he!

Fox Glacier
This was the location we had chosen for Jon’s birthday, and Jon’s present – a helicopter ride up onto a glacier! We spent a few days here relaxing and getting used to the cold, but by far the best day we had was on the glacier. We arrived at the office in charge of organising the helihikes and were driven to the nearby helipad, and before we knew it, we were all sat in the helicopter waiting for it to take off. The ride was fantastic and the pilot did a few manoeuvres that made everyone’s stomach jump and after 8 minutes we landed on the top part of the glacier. We had a guided walk for a couple of hours and passed some beautiful ice caves and walked past lots of crevasses, we even got to climb down into one which was great fun! For once the weather was on our side and we had the most fantastic day, it was absolutely perfect!

Kaikoura
On our first day in Kaikoura we decided to walk to the nearby seal colony, and after a longer than expected stroll we arrived and caught our first glimpse of a fur seal. There weren’t as many as we thought there would be but we did get quite close to a couple! After a quick sit down we decided to head back into town along the beach which was really nice and ended the day with a big cup of moccachino!

Wellington
As far as capitals go, this one is quite nice to wander around, but the weather wasn’t on our side and both days we were there it was grey and cloudy – so we did a lot of work and stayed up extremely late every night trying to get even more done – how’s that for commitment!!

Napier
The Art Deco capital of New Zealand, or so it proclaims itself, had one extremely good thing going for it – cheap, high speed, wireless internet!!! We did go and have a wander and found ourselves at the aquarium but it was more like a pet shop! At least we left the room though so we can’t really complain. We did get a lot more work done here and a lot of films downloaded so it wasn’t such a bad place!

Rotorua
As we had to book all of our buses 6 weeks in advance to get them at a reasonable price we kind of had to guess what each place would be like… We guessed wrong for Rotorua! If you have a lot of money you could go to all of the thermal areas but we only had enough in our budget to go to one, so perhaps five days here was a little too long!!! As it turned out it rained every day and the skies never changed to anything other than grey so we did absolutely nothing…

Auckland
This was our last stop before Argentina and we spent all of our time researching what we could do in South America as we had no idea, which isn’t great when you are due to arrive there the following day!!

All in all we had some great days in New Zealand, but we would say to anyone thinking of coming here that you need a lot of money to see the sights (most of which we missed due to our ever decreasing budget) and you definitely need to hire a car/campervan as you miss too much going on the buses!