Hello from New Zealand for the last time!

We're back in the hostel in Auckland now, sorting ourselves out for the flight to Singapore tomorrow. Thought we'd fill you in on the last part of oour travels round the south island. We really didn't want to leave Queenstown, its an awesome place, but it was time to see somewhere else. We drove out through a snow storm which made driving a bit tricky but we pressed on south towards Te Anau. Its as close to Milford Sound as you can drive this time of year unless you have snow chains and are willing to run the serious risk of getting stuck for a day or two. We weren't really up for that so decided against going any further. Its a bit of a shame because Milford looks amazing in the photos. We'll just have to come back in the summer some time.

After Te Anau the plan was to spin down to Invercargill, go to Bluff (the very bottom of NZ) then head up to Dunedin. The drive was quite pretty but besides that there really isn't much to say! It is so remote and the towns are so backwards that there wasn't really anything to do! We're still glad we went to the far south though, we've now been to the very top and the very bottom of NZ. Dunedin was the next stop and like the majority of places here it lacks a little soul. It was a nice enough place, but considering the huge student population there there wasn't really much going on.

We decided to treat ourselves before handing the van back in Christchurch and went about an hour north of the city to a place called Hanmer Springs. Its a really pretty little town which is best known for its thermal sulphur pool resort. We had an awesome arvo chilling out in the pools. They're about 30 degrees so nice and warm, the only problem is that the sulphur stinks! We carried on treating ourselves with a trip to the pub for a steak that evening, the first we've had since we left home! It was amazing! We washed that down with a few beers then had a very lazy drive back to Chrsitchurch the next day.

We were sad to see the van go when we handed her back, but were both looking forward to sleeping in a real bed again after two months! We'd done over 4,500kms (about 2800 miles) without any accidents and had an amazing time. Its easy to get complacent about where you are while you're here, we kept having to remind ourselves how lucky we are to be doing what we were.

A short flight up to Auckland and now we're leaving tomorrow. We've done and seen things that you cant anywhere else in the world. For me the highlight was the glacier climb, Kati's is the beaches in the Coromandel. there's plenty we didn't have time/money to do so we'll save that for our next trip!

Roll on Asia!

Mathew and Kati