The comfort of the large single bed proved to be too much for me. Bob had the patience of a saint before I finally elected that the floor was a more socially acceptable location for my restless limbs. A leisurely start was followed by a day trip to Arthur's Pass, passing the quake induced wiggle in the Telegraph road. We climbed into the foothills of the Southern Alps and another landscape appeared around us, a mountainous arid moonscape, punctuated by huge bou...

We woke to the tannoy of 2 cruise ships having arrived far below us in the bay. Over breakfast we exchanged stories with James, Jess and Rocket (they had chocolate chip banana pancakes...) and we were soon weaving our way back out of Onuku only to start climbing again, up towards the ridge surrounding Akaroa. We parked up when we could drive no further and took the 'misty summits' track along the ridge, taking in the glittering bay filled with the cruise liners ...

Despite the unwanted overnight cloud cover it was a chilly night, with the sun bring granted a small morning window on the horizon, blinding me on my tea making excursion before disappearing into the clouds. We breakfasted, filled up with fuel and were away on the road north. The surroundings got less and less extreme but the quaint villages we passed through were pretty in their own backward way. We crossed some bright blue meltwater rivers, huge dams and thous...

The sun was still behind the ridge when we woke, swiftly scoffing bowls of porridge washed down with glasses of orange juice whilst attempting to multi-task making sandwiches and dodging the school group who were also up early. We set off as sunlight started to flood the valley and illuminate mount Cook, arriving at White Horse car park ready to start our route up to the Sealy Tarns. Dubbed the 'stairway to heaven' the 2200 steps made the 900mof ascent easy on ...

We woke late and scrambled out of the campsite and onto the road north towards Timaru. Bob offered to drive, again choosing a day of dead straight plain roads with the only excitement being dodging huge trucks and Japanese motor homes. We stopped at Speights Ale House in Timaru for coffee and read up on the local area which didn't take long! In a fit of enthusiasm we pushed on along the monotonously straight coast road for another hour, passing many tractor deal...