Day 5 - A Day of Contrasts - Alpine Village to Penguins to Beaches Early morning saw a slightly grumpy Nicola and a refreshed Adam awake to glorious mountains and a vast lake stretching out in front of them. Prior to us falling asleep Nicola was fretting - talking of youths pushing the van into the lake; possums attacking us on mass forcing us to hand over her chocolate bars. All this anxiety had led to two things Adam sleeping soundly and Nicola not. Miss Grumpy...

Days 3 - Journey to NZ's highest mountain- Mount Cook National Park! Awaking to the cold, we heard the unfamiliar sound of RAIN on the van; the weather unfortunately had turned just a day after we had arrived...b*****! We did awake though to gorgeous autumnal colours in our field accompanied by low cloud on the rolling hills around. Heading out we really did think our camper had been airlifted back to England in the night! Passing the usual sheep/cows staring at ...

Days 1 & 2 - Flight to Christchurch and drive via Highway 72 to Mount Hutt Ski area After a sad good bye with Pauline, Barry, Rich and Kath followed by a few brandy's for the road, the two idiots saw themselves awaking at 4am after our luxury stay at the Menzies (thanks P&B!). Bleary eyed we arrived at the airport and after an amazing sunrise followed by a two hour delay; we finally set off for Christchurch, myself VERY valiumed! Flying into New Zealand w...

NEW AUTHOR IN TOWN - 'Please welcome, all the way from Cornwall, for one week only......Mrs P!!' Barry & Pauline Go Down Under Sunday 11th May 2008 After a long long wait, and an even longer flight (or so it seemed), Barry and I eventually arrived in Sydney. Having safely negotiated Customs, Security and everything else at the Airport, (thankfully the TBags and Bovril made it!), we entered arrivals and immediately found Adam, Nikki and Fraser, together with a...

Day 7 - The stunning east coast - Bay of Fires down to Coles Bay Thankfully we hadn't been moved on in the night and woke up to not only hear a group of Tasmanian Devils, we think, making the most hilarious laughing noise (which made us laugh also!) round us but to find that we had parked overlooking on either side of the van the stunning St Georges Bay, it was just beautiful! Roughing it is definitely the way forward, even if our secluded area, or so we thought,...