So our travel around the south island begins with Auntie Julie and uncle mark.(I know we are behind in our blogs but we haven't been able to access internet in the last 2 weeks). They decided that after spending two weeks with us at their house at the top of the south island in new Zealand they couldn't bear to be away from us and so said they would join us travelling down through south island for a bit. We left their house laden with coffee for Dean and Tim-tams for Marko and me and headed towards the resident fur seal colony at cape foul wind. I can only assume this place gets its name to due the smell in the air made by the seals - think old fish mixed with just a hint of body odour and you're somewhere close! The area we were actually in was not far from kahurangi national park where we had spent a fair bit of time during our time in golden bay. This was the other side of the park though and due to the unique New Zealand road system you have to drive in a massive loop and then up a dead end road to get there. It was well worth the drive though and mark and Julie kept us both entertained with lots of stories and wildlife factoids as well as the beautiful scenery. At cape foul wind there were about 25 or so fur seals ranging from big males who were kind of angry and fat, to tiny little pups crying for their mums. We spent a good while watching them. It's amazing to watch how they interact and behave with one another. From there we went to the place we would be spending the night, it was a motel that mark and Julie had stayed at before called the last resort and although they said it had changed a bit it was really nice, ANYWAY THE RIBS -we went for a meal that night in the restaurant at the motel. Mark, myself and I got the half rack of ribs and Dean being a greedy bum got the full rack. This consisted of a whole pig!! It was amazing; we all embraced the inner cave man and didn't leave much! Mine and Marks ribs were normal sized about 20 of them, plenty enough. Dean had the same amount but they must have fed this pig steroids as I have never seen ribs so humongous. After the meal Dean and mark decided to play pool and discovered one very important thing - they both suck at pool! Meanwhile being the ladies that we are me and Aunty Julie went to bed as poor aunty Julie wasn't too well and was drugged up on lemmsips.

The next day we headed out in the pouring rain towards Karamea and saw the opera rocks. The weather was pretty rubbish but we all got dressed up in our gear and Julie and mark lent me and Dean Umbrellas as our waterproofs have an uncanny knack of getting us wet!! Aunty Julie and mark were splashing in every puddle they came across as they were prepared with wellies and they got much enjoyment from this haha. The actual arches are about a fifteen minute walk through the forest along the tea coloured river. On the way we spotted a New Zealand robin. Well to be fair Mark did the spotting and we did the looking! The arches are unreal; they lean right over the river and form a massive cavern that you can walk up inside of. We spent a while in there taking pictures and watching the rain fall from the arch and enjoying the fact that we were dry. We walked back along the path and it would have took half the time if dean hadn't constantly been faffing with his bloody camera, needless to say this has become a common phase of mine during our trip! Back at the car we stopped for a picnic, just for a change ha. They always consisted of buttys, crisps and then me and mark have Tim tam time! My favourite part of the day where we eat the kiwi version of a penguin but nicer. I do look forward to munching a couple of Tim tams. While we were sat there we saw a wekka prowling the picnic tables looking for food, proper cheeky birds. We visited the blowholes which are rocks that make noises as the wave's crash through them and pancake rocks which look like pancakes staked up high. Lewis pass was our next stop and has fantastic view. We ended up staying at the Lewis pass motel which we arrived to in the dark and nearly drove past completely. The room was very nice and we ate cheese and biscuits, drank beer, scratched our sand fly bites with a pot scrubbing brush and then went to bed. Such a hard life! (you may be re-reading the scrubbing brush part, but needs must when the feeling of scratching a sand fly bite is just so amazing) In the morning we woke to a beautiful view of the mountains through the windows of the motel, got dressed, had breakfast and headed off to a waterfall walk. We got to the waterfall to realise we had all left our coats at the motel so back we drove. On the way out of the motel this time we noticed a baby foal in the owners' field only a day old or so and the owner took us to go see it, as well as a miniature donkey, it's like a normal donkey, but smaller! We drove throughout the day along the gorgeous Lewis pass and came to stop for another walk. We took a good five minutes getting our sun cream on, putting jumpers and waterproofs in the bags, getting cameras ready, getting water and getting ready for the big walk ahead of us, only to realise that the walk only took 3 minutes to the view point! So we burnt of half a calorie or so. There was another path further up so we took this route which was just a ten minute walk looking at all the surrounding mountains covered in snow which was quite cool, as we were sweating and burning at the same time in the heat of the sun, but looking at snowy mountains. After the picnic and Tim tam time which was cut short due to bloody sand flies we hit the road again to Kaikora. Here was fantastic for seals, they were everywhere and I mean everywhere!!On the roadside, all across the coastline, on the decks of the walk ways so you couldn't get passed and they were huge beasts. I tried to get a picture sat next to one but he kept burping in my face - and I thought my morning breath was bad….. We had a lovely little cottage where we stayed for the next 2 nights with horses in the field, cow's right opposite and free movies from the office so we had movie night before bed.
Next morning we tried to get on the whale watch trip but unfortunately it was cancelled due to the wales being too selfish to come near enough for us to see them. Not cool. But we made a day of it and went to see more seals but this time we went to a little stream just up the way from the sea and playing in the water fall of the stream were 10 or so seal pups which come every year at this time of year to play and keep safe until they're old enough to stay out in the sea. This meant we could get close enough to them to pretty much touch them and we spent two hours just sat there watching and of course having the background music of dean and mark constantly clicking away with their cameras, music to my ears!!
Next day we went on the whale watch trip at half 7 in the morning, dear lord never again. We weren't allowed outside the boat and all had to sit inside, everyone was being sick and using the sick bags, so the smell was worse than the fur seals breath and the noise of everyone throwing up made me want to pass out, not cool at all. I felt so ill and didn't even get to see any whales. We got 80 per cent refund but still meant we had to sit for 3 hours listening to the sound of people hurling and smelling of au 'de sick. So overall I wouldn't recommend it. But it was an experience to say the least. We drove all the way down to Queenstown to get our hire car which was a spaceship. (A bright orange people carrier with the back seats converted into a bed so you could camp, with many gadgets to amuse dean for a good few hours). In our aluminous orange van following my aunty me and dean drove down Arthur's pass with spectacular scenery, the very reason we came to see New Zealand. With it raining the waterfalls were full and falling heavy down the mountain side, hundreds of them. Fantastic mountains and also amazing cloud….urg! Yep it rained, a lot. We saw some wild keas which are a native mountain parrot to New Zealand and steal anything they can, cookies from the car, sandwiches from people's hands, they're very cheeky, and are one reason many avalanches are set of in New Zealand as they play around in the snow and cause the avalanche - Now there is an interesting fact for you all.
The next morning after staying in Hokitika and having a marvellous Sunday roast cooked by aunty and good old faithful pam and her roast potatoes (pam is the new Zealand version of aunty Bessie's) we went to the jade jewellery shop and Mark and aunty Julie treated me to the most gorgeous jade necklace for my birthday which I was very thankful for. We went to Hokitika gorge which has icy blue waters due to the high content of stone flour in the water and a huge swing bridge and dean got bitten right between the toes from a sand-fly.
We woke up early the next day and headed to Franz joseph glacier which is a huge ice glacier which is slowly decreasing in size as the years go by.We walked up to it in the rain and talked about avoided the subject of us having to say goodbye the next day.That night we stayed in a lovely motel in Fox and had went for a really nice meal with Uncle Mark and Aunty Julie for our last night together.They all made me drive the spaceship to the restaurant as well which I wasn't too impressed about.The next day we got up early and headed out to fox glacier, this part of the day we tried to drag out as much as possible as Aunty Julie and mark were leaving us for bigger and better things, it was like saying goodbye to the family at the train station all over again. Sad times.
Left to our own defences and feeling abandoned we carried on down the coast, did the Monro beach walk and saw a yellow eyed penguin (in the water) which are very rare to see and carried on traveling to Wanaka, stopping off here and there. We drove through Arrow town and I couldn't pass by the oldest sweet shop without purchasing some of their products only to find another "the oldest sweetshop" in the next town. Queenstown was our next stop which was a cool city to see, we bought a few gifts and presents and feeling hungry we found a burger place for dean to get a burger. But this was no ordinary burger place, no this, was Fergburger!! This is where dean bought the 'big al' a huge 1 pound in weight burger with 2 eggs, bacon and a lot more artery clogging items included. For like 6 quid he had bought a mini cow. The weight of this burger was insane and it took him at least half an hour to eat it, I have never seen such a big burger. I on the other hand had a jam butty! I will stick to my budget!!!!....... We stopped off in a campsite and got cosy in the back of our new house, the novelty soon wore off. There was nowhere to stand so we had to get changed lay down on our bed, dean got stuck climbing over the seats and got wedged between the head rests and running back and forth from the toilet and 3 o clock in the morning avoiding sand flies wasn't all it was cracked up to be! But it was still a great laugh.

After staying in what was the worst campsite I have ever stayed in, in my life we headed to Milford sound. The reason behind the awful campsite was not due to the cleanliness or the people staying in it, but the bloody awful, annoying, little obnoxious sand flies. As soon as we opened the door to run to the toilet at least 700 sand flies swarmed in the spaceship!! I got bit on my backside as well as my forehead in a very vulnerable position whilst having a wee. Wasn't impressed. And then when we dived back into the spaceship another 50 b*****s flew in. This occupied dean for 1 hour and 45 minutes swatting the little swine's with our camping leaflet. Now I'm all for saving the animals and not killing live insects but bloody hell they were annoying. Dean had a polka dot body the next day full of side fly bites, amusing.
Waking up to dead sand flies squished above my head was exciting, made me think how many I had probably eaten during the night. Anyway enough of sand flies, Milford sound….. Incredible. We sailed through the sound and again with the amount of rain we had gave us a fantastic view of all the hundreds of water falls falling next to us and we even sailed right into one, we got a little wet…. We stopped off half way to visit an underwater 360 degree view point, which took us 10 meters underwater looking at different types of fish and the huge starfish stuck to the windows, quite incredible. The marine life in the sound is tricked into thinking it's deeper than it is because of the way the sound is formed and due to the layer of fresh water on the surface blocking the light.This means you get all sorts of interesting things going on that you wouldn't normally be able to see.
On the way to the Caitlin's right down south we got stopped by a couple of keas who took a chuck out of our hire car, luckily we were fully insured. We then got lost and this was nothing to do with my perfectly good map reading skills, more to do with the stupid road signs, or lack of them! We ended up at an honesty campsite right on top of the cliffs overlooking the sea. Here was a popular spot for dolphin watching, so what a perfect place to sit in our little campervan with the wind howling, cosy and eating noodle soup looking out to the sea. This was until we decided to go to sleep. The wind was that bad, howling through the night that I thought we were going to blow over the cliffs and i made dean drive our house down the path to a more sheltered spot at 2 in the morning.
Next day we thought seeing as though we have been to the very tip of North Island we should go to the very tip of the south island, slope point. By gosh the wind was strong; I made dean run all the way there as I was cold, this made him grumpy but his does now enjoy saying to people that he ran allll the way to the tip of New Zealand. I nearly blew off the cliff the wind was so strong, but we made it and it was an achievement. The rain came down and wind picked up so we headed east and got a blowout tyre argh! It's a good job we didn't die; dean was driving like "the steering feels all weird on this" and then starts erratically moving the steering wheel. A few minutes later we see smoke coming out of the wheel with absolutely no air left in the tyre and it shredding on the rim!! Within the hour of being there only one person drove past and thankfully he stopped to help. My hands just do not function in the cold so I was useless, we couldn't find the jack anywhere in the car and we had no signal on our phones and hadn't all the way down the coast. Luckily the man had an ingenious idea of looking in the manual for the jack. The man who rented the car to us made it clear the P was for park and D was for drive and that was all the instructions he gave us, telling us how to get the spare tyre would have been more useful. We managed to get the tyre off the rack anyway way, well dean and the man who came to our rescue did, I just watched, and after a good 45 minutes in the rain we got the skinniest smallest baldest runner tyre I have ever seen on and headed off to the nearest garage. 1 hour later we found a garage and they didn't have any tyres. Another hour drive, dreading at any moment the skinny tyre which was probably made for a bicycle would give way and we got sorted with a new tyre. Buy an extremely hot mechanic. He was definitely worth all the stress of the flat tyre :D. We stayed in Brighton that night, had a stroll on the beach and camped there for a night. Now I'm used to the camping by now and I was all relaxed and settled in the new spaceship bar the serious smell of dean's mouldy blue cheese! My aunty had given him half a block of stilton blue cheese to take with us and he still hadn't eaten it 3 days later and with no fridge and hot weather the smell was unbelievable! Everything in the car smelt so we were going around smelling of mouldy cheese for the next few days however Dean said it tasted nicer because it was sweaty……Freak!
Next morning we carried on down the coast and decided with us meeting back up with Aunty Julie and mark the next day and it was his birthday we would buy him a few presents and do a birthday picnic, because we are cool like that. We stopped in Dunedin and did some shopping and then drove to the world's steepest street. Believe it or not, it was steep. Dean drove to the bottom and took pictures then got back in the car, but I wanted more, I wanted to walk it, so we did. I was nakerd and I think dean had died half way up. It was so steep you could lean back towards it and not fall over. Dean winged for days after that his legs were aching it was that steep.A bit further up the coast we made a stop to visit the Moraki Boulders which are huge, completely round boulders that sit on the beach.Incredible things they were too.On the way back down the beach Dean spotted a present for Mark. Mark owns a boat and has a habit of collecting buoys. On the sand next to us was a bright pink buoy the size of a beach ball and Dean looked at me and said "I'm avin that".I walked a few paces behind him back down the beach on the way to stow his newly acquired pink handbag in the spaceship. We stayed in a fantastic hostel in omea (it's spelt something like that, on the east coast) with an open lit fire, surrounded by nothing but the coast and fields and only 10 minutes out of town. Once we unpacked we drove down the road to the penguin beach and watched for hours the penguins returning out the water to feed their chicks, the yellow eyed penguins are quite rare to see and will stay in the water if they detect any one is on the beach so we had to hide in a viewing area. Back at the hostel we were up till midnight making a birthday cake and sausage rolls. One thing we hadn't accommodated for was scales so we had to convert all my cake baking knowledge of ounces to cupful's and I failed, I think even my mother would have struggled it was so confusing. So second time round and at half 11 we made another and it was perfect, we were very proud ha-ha.
Up super early and out later than planned we had a big drive ahead to Christchurch where we were planning to meet up with my aunty and mark again, whoop! Not before visiting the most famous chocolate shop in New Zealand. It sold every meal on the menu with chocolate in the ingredients such as spaghetti with grated cheese and chocolate relish!! It all looked so good. Once we met up again with the family we had Marko's birthday picnic and gave him his presents wrapped up in a free paper we found and duct tape from dean's gadget bag. We had a drive round Queenstown looking at the awful damage done due to the earthquake, shops still left untouched from when the destruction happened, many owners still haven't stepped foot in the shops since it happened so everything is left how it was, clothes on racks, food left in the windows of the takeaways, cups all over the floors, windows smashed, hotels deserted, it's just awful the amount of damage which has been caused. We sat by the river and lit marks cake and fed some to the ducks, memo to self, do not by pound shop candles!!!!
We're stayed at my aunty and uncle's friend's house in Christchurch and the house itself was beautiful. A lovely little location on a private road unfortunately with not many houses left on it. This is due to many of them being pulled down due to the earthquake damage. Betty the lady who owns the house and kindly let us stay the night was telling us they can still get up to 200 small quakes a day, most of which you don't feel, but still some big ones too. Their house managed to stay standing because it was made of wood and was more flexible than the surrounding brick built ones. It was only after looking in more depth did we see the damage the house had incurred, all the carpets had shrivelled up, the chimney breast had come completely away from the house and there were small cracks all around. They had to give us an earthquake evacuation talk when we arrived in case another happened as they happen so often. We had a lovely time there with a couple of other guests staying and enjoyed a lovely meal and had a fantastic night's sleep in a comfy bed!
Next morning we nearly missed the flight, we tried to get there 2 hours early but with it being a small airport we were told there was no need, luckily we got there an hour and 15 minutes early, only to realise our flight was an hour early and leaving in 15minutes, boy did we run through security!! Me and dean traipsing behind Aunty Julie with mark catching up having no clue what was going on as he was parking the car. Luckily we managed to get the flight with 3 minutes to spare and apparently a lot of passengers had the same problem all with the same company we booked with. I was not amused, I was sweating even before we had entered the tropical islands of Fiji………..