NZ - sweet as bro'!

It's been a cold and wet 4 weeks since our last blog.. but that hasn't stopped us having a great time in New Zealand! We were originally going to be flying down to Queenstown to meet up with Claire and Ed from Thailand, but they were taking their sweet time coming down from the north, so we hired out a tiny wee camper van called Lucy the Jucy and set off on our grand tour of the South Island. The was a fair amount of driving through stunning forests and past lakes, but the highlight was the drive from Te Anu to Milford Sound. It was really beautiful and if seeing it once wasn't enough then you could see it twice because all the mountains reflected in the black lakes! After that we went down south, saw penguins, seals and sealions, albatross in Otago and then up to try to see mount cook but it was soooo grey and cloudy we could bearly see 20ft in front of us!

After that was the unbelievably blue waters of lake Tekapo and thenon to Christchurch and the french town of Akaroa which was picture perfect! We also got some free drinks from the bar manager there 'cus he were a northen lad from Doncaster! Small world..! We were going to go further north but we had enough of driving so we went over the Southern Alps to the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers which were amazing to see as they came right down into the forests, and we camped out on an amazing desolate beach which was like a graveyard for washed up trees! Then after that we wanted to go skiing and happed to bump into Claire and Ed in Wanaka and after a bit of boozing and a catch up we headed for the slopes of Treble Cone the next day! It was great to be back on the slopes and considering it's been about 2 years since i last skied i didn't fall over all that much! And after a couple of hours lesson for Roz she could snowplough down the slopes with the best of them!

We then headed back to Queenstown to drop the van off and had the best nights sleep in a real bed for the first time in 2 weeks!! We spent another couple of days in Queenstown (Which is the adrenalin capitol of the world) and i did a Canyon swing which was imense fun and you can see the video on facebook, and we had a loooong game of frisbee golf, which sounded easy but was far from it as we got passed by several people who really should have been 6 feet under but were just showing us up!!

Then the grand relocation plan began where we picked up a car from Queenstown and had to deliver it to Christchurch, all for the tiny sum of $10 plus petrol. Then we did another one to Wellington where we met with Jamie-Lee and Matt who we had also met in Thailand and had a beautiful meal of tapas in one of the restaurants around Welly. For a capitol city it really is... pointless!! It's smaller than both Auckland and Christchurch and once you have done the museum, there is only drinking and eating left!!! We were very close to getting stuck in Welly after we couldnt find a relocate up to Auckland, but deciding to gample and ask at the office where we dropped the campervan off, Roz turned on the charm with the woman behind the desk and we got properly sorted with an amazing 2 person camper for the rest of our time in NZ! And all for less than the price of 3 nights accomodation!

Anyway, now we are on the road up to Auckland and we shall update the blog again soon!! Byee! x