The morning came and the weather was terrible, so it was time for plan B and miss out Abel and head straight to Nelson. We'd managed to catch the weather forcast the day before and it had given snow for the high ground. I thought we'd got over all the high, winding roads but no. There was yet another mountain to get over and this one had snow all over it! Fortunately New Zealanders cope a hell of a lot better than us English. They had a police car at ea...

Still raining in the morning we made pancakes to try and cheer ourselves up a bit, its a good job today was mainly going to be driving. Our plan was to make it up to the Abel Tasman National Park for the night. The drive between Greymouth and Westport was amazing. Twisting hair pin bends leading down to the sea then along the rugged west coast line with the waves crashing meters away from the road. Along the way we stopped off at Punakaiki to check out the Panc...

When I looked through the window in the morning I was met by the biggest blackest cloud ever! We hoped by the time we'd sorted ourselves out and got to Franz Josef it may of blown over but no such luck. If anything it was worse! We were running late thanks to a Chinese family taking forever to get out of the dump station, and by the time we checked in, the rest of our group had all their equipment and were ready to go. We got given boots, socks, fleeces, hats...

After a stormy night we woke up to beautiful sunshine and had a walk round the lake before heading to the Fox Glacier. It took us till late afternoon to get there so we spent the rest of the day chilling out, acting like kids on the adventure playground (or in Mel's case falling off it) and deciding on a glacier walk for the next day. We chose an Ice Explorer trip up the Franz Josef Glacier, as this incorporated a helicopter flight. You can do the same trip...

Wanaka was the next stop for us. On the way there we passed another A J Hacket bungee, so we decided to pull in and watch a few people jump off a bridge, 40 odd meters above a raging river! Just before we got into Wanaka we went to Puzzling World, and got puzzled by all the optical illusions they have set up, and got extremely lost in the outdoor 3D maze. When we finally got out of the place, we nipped into town and did a shop and stocked up on food for the tr...