Christmas was a whirlwind of awesome amazingness. We arrived back at Dave's house to such a warm welcome. Everyone was so happy to see us again and we were happy to be there. The house is just full of such amazing people. James and I went to see The Hobbit on the first night which was so cool as we had the build up for it in Wellington. We read the book whilst we were travelling round the south island and as most of it was filmed there it was amazing to se...

Next stop nelson lakes! We drove to the less touristy Lake Rotoroa. This time there were more sandflies!!! James went for a lovely run to a waterfall on the west side of the lake that he says looks a lot like lydford gorges' whie lady waterfall! He said it was really satisfying and hilly! I made dinner and we had a nice chilled evening in the van. The next morning James ran the other side of the lake whilst I made pancakes for breakfast. I was getting very woun...

After our awesome encounter with the albatross we then started to drive inland we had a long drive through some pretty murky weather and ended up stopping at a riverside DOC freesite called Ahuriri Bridge. We weren't too sure how it looked at it was dark and misty. We were welcomed by a beautiful sunny clear skied morning. We hopped straight into the front seats and drove on as we wanted to see if we could get a good view of Mt Cook just in case any more cloud...

Then to the southern bluff of the South Island, looking over at Stewart island. It was a beautiful day and took advantage of the lack of sandflies here and ate lunch on the sea front, then on to find somewhere to camp. The Catlins are home to New Zealand's rare and boisterous Hooker's Sea Lion and many other fascinating sea creatures, including The yellow-eyed Penguin. We first found a camp spot at the Waipapa point lighthouse( the same designed lighthouse as Po...

We left Manopouri and decided to drive a little up the road towards the doubtful sounds. The road was beautiful and we stopped at the bottom of Mt Burns (1645m ... We were 900m up already!) and climbed to the top. We had a beautiful view over the lakes and the mountains. We didn't drive any further up the road as it was pretty gravelly and we had been warned that it got worse! We also stopped off at Clifden Suspension Bridge built in 1899 which was quite impress...