Get ready for a mammoth story covering the last three and a half weeks. A story of what became known as the Brits on Tour, in New Zealand.

Dave and I landed in Auckland at around 5am, having lost a day over the date line. Flying west is not supposed to have such an effect on jet lag, but it still took us a day or two to recover. We woke up James and Ben, then Ben and I went for a stroll around Victoria Park and went for a beer at 8am! Prior to arrival, the debate over our form of transport had been raging over the emails. I had been pretty keen on buying then selling a car, until we visited the backpackers car lot, featuring wrecks mostly with over 200,000 kilometres on the clock! So we ended up hiring a car to tour New Zealand, which worked out very cheap between the four of us, cheaper than the bus in fact. James had two and a half weeks off work which meant we had to race around, in order for him to see most of the country. That unfortunately meant missing Rotorua and the famous water spurting geysers.

So off we went in our new Corrolla, to Waitomo Caves and the glow worms. Although I'd obviously heard about it before, the museum presentation featured heavily on bioluminescene, a natural process which the worms use to glow, which I thought was fascinating. The boys decided to jump into wet suits and went down some cavern streams in rubber rings. Still on a money saving misson, I opted for the cheaper conventional tour. The glow worms were brilliant when the babies stopped crying! They have a large cavern called the catherdral which, amongst others, Sting and the Police have played in. We arrived at Lake Taupo (biggest lake in NZ) well after dark. You'd have thought we would've learnt by now but we hadn't booked a hostel, so after a bit of driving around, we found a motel to stay in. The next morning I had my third fried breakfast in a row, having missed out for so long in south america(!) in front of the lake.

Close by, we stopped off at natural hot springs and mud bathes. We wandered around the natural pools, which are extremely hot and some nearly at boiling point. We hired a private hot pool for a while then swam in the public pool. Then back on the road again huge trip down to Wellington, for which I drove almost all the way. That probably wasn't the best idea as we were supposed to be going out on the town for the first 'big night'. The boys stayed out and I went to bed early. Ben and Dave arrived back in the morning!

The following day we did the Lonely Planet walking tour, up to the town square and the harbour. Some kids were jumping off the harbour into the sea so James, rather impressively, decided to join them. The tour carried on through town, leading us to the funicular and up to the botanical gardens. We walked down through these quite beautiful gardens and then onto government buildings and the beehive. That evening we decided to splash out on a gigantic steak at Lonestar restaurant and then hit the town in a big way. The boys thought it was quite hilarious that I chose not to drink my pints quite as quickly as their shots, as we toured the many bars and clubs of Wellington. The following day I visited Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand which was of an extremely high standard - modern interactive displays mixed with classic maori artefacts, as well as a collasal squid. I think Ben's account of what happened the next morning is better than anything I could write:

"Dave was frantically knocking on our door shouting we need to get the a ferry. So as usual me and Roger just ignored him as we wanted to sleep in a bit longer. But this time it was actually serious and we did only have 20 minutes to get up, get changed, check out of the hostel, drop off the hire car at the car park at the port. Then eventually get on the ferry, as we were running up all the stairs and all the ramps we were getting the dirtiest looks from people on the top deck of the ferry, i felt like Jack off the Titanic being looked down at like that by the upper class!! We made it luckily, but it was literally like a film in the way we all made it on the boat and the ramp started to close as the last one of the four us made it onto the Ferry."

After a few hours of crossing to the south island, we picked up our suped-up Mitsubishi Lancer from Picton and drove off through the Malborough wine region, towards Kaikoura where we had booked to swim with dolphins. On the way we spotted some sea lions sunbathing on the rocky shoreline. Unfortunately the morning brought rain and winds, which meant our dolphins trip was called off. So rather disappointed, we drove off to Hamner springs where James and Ben, yearning for some activity, went quad biking for three hours whilst Dave and I visited another set of hot springs. We carried on in the car and arrived in Christchurch later that afternoon.

Base hostel at Christchurch are fairly crafty by giving new residents some money-off vouchers for their bar. The favourite drink of New Zealand so far was Monteith's Radlers, a lager with a hint of citrus that tasted like lager and lime - only it was 5% ABV. So we proceeded to use them all and more that evening and met a load more travellers! The following morning we were about to leave the hostel, when we were beckoned by the manager of the hostel to do some modelling. He needed some new photos for the hostel website so, along with some other girls, we were arranged in various positions in different rooms whilst the photographer took snaps of us. Not bad considering we were given a free nights stay for our efforts!

Now I hadn't analysed how much money I'd be spending since new year. After a while it soon became clear that I'd been spending far more than anticipated! I had budgeted 16pounds per day in south america, without travel. Everything included, it came to around 40 pounds per day - over double! That meant I'd either have to find some work to earn more money, or come home after Australia, sacrificing the rest of the flights we had already booked. So, after talking with my relatives who we are going to stay with in Perth, it was a fairly easy decision to make. I would be looking to find a job in Perth and staying for a few months instead of a few weeks! I began the long drawn-out process of registering on job websites and recruitment agencies. This is why my blog temporarily features my mother's maiden name.

Second time lucky it would seem, as the next day brought decent weather so we headed off to Akaroa to swim with dolphins. We arrived just in the knick of time, as usual and were quickly kitted out with skin tight wet suits and snorkels. Then we were led onto the boat and sped off, out of the bay and out to sea. This is one of the only places in the world where Hector's dolphins can be found, the smallest dolphin with a deeper coloured skin. The further we went out to sea, the rougher it became and very bumpy. Climbing out of the boat for the first time, the sea was pretty cold and rough. And no dolphins. I seemed to have mastered the art of swallowing as much sea water as possible which, combined with the boat bumping up and down, meant we all began to feel rather queasy. It was only after about about an hour and the third climbing out of the boat that the dolphins descended upon us. The trick we learnt was to bang two stones together under water, which I guess it the nearest sound to a dolphin 'click'. This attracts the dolphins and they circle around you. And it was brilliant. Dave had decided not to get in the water this time, so he was busy being sick while all this was happening. As I was climbing back into the boat, my stomach also decided to let go aswell. So the experience was an unusual mixture of great excitement combined with feeling sick! Obviously the former far outweighed the latter and we were all really chuffed.

Next day it was another big drive over to the west coast of south island. We travelled through Arthurs Pass and onto Greymouth. I wouldn't recommend Greymouth to anybody and after one night, we left to make Franz Joseph in time for James and Ben's pre-booked trek across the glacier. Dave and I thought it was quite hilarious that it was raining pretty hard. We went for the no cost version of walking up to the glacier face and back, in the rain of course!

The next day we continued in the car to Wanaka. By this time, I had become pretty tired of travelling long distances in the car virtually everyday. But we wouldn't have had the benefit of James' company if we hadn't have kept moving. James booked a sky dive and was all set to jump before, yet again, it became too windy. The rest of us chose to explore Puzzleworld, a unique sort of theme park with various interactive illusions and a maze. There's a great video of Ben and I in the small and big room. Ben had been talking about bleaching his hair for our entire trip and after visiting many pharmacies across the country, he plucked up the courage to buy some dye. Unfortunately that only took him to the orange stage, until much later in our trip at least.

A short drive to Queenstown the next day and we were all eager to venture out into a place with decent nightlife. Although it was a sunday evening, we managed to find a lively bar and caught up with a few of the girls we had met in Christchurch. They were setting the bar top alight with some sort of spirit, something I hadn't seen before in such a big way. Then we joined the girls and the rest of their bus tour group and went onto the World Bar, where we proceeded to drink cocktails from tea pots and dance until the early hours.

Queenstown is the place to be for activities. Everything from skydiving, to bungey jumping, to speed boating and paragliding. Given my rapidly depleting funds, I decided to take the exact opposite option and do very little at all. Over the course of the next few days, Ben and James did a bungey jump and white water rafting. And on James' final day he completed his skydive. Then after two and a half weeks, it was time for James to head back to England, so we waved him goodbye on the bus. Dave, Ben and I went off to play some indoor mini golf, which was one of the best courses I've played on - hitting balls through brilliantly crafted airports, fun fairs and castles. Another two coatings of bleach on Pud's hair had taken little effect. The next day we went to collect our next hire cars and Dave's dad at the airport. We said goodbye to Dave and the trip turned into the Moore's on tour, as Ben and I were left alone to tackle the rest of the south island.

Ben was eager to get behind the steering wheel as being under 21, he hadn't been allowed to drive our previous hire cars. So off we went to Te Anau, which is the closest settlement to Milford Sound, where many trekkers take the Milford Track for 5 days walking. Having nowhere near that amount of time, we followed the guide book at stopped off at various points along the road to Milford Sound. We visited the mirror lakes, walked up the gertrude saddle, went down the chasm and up to the milford look out. Most people go on a boat tour when they reach Milford Sound, but we decided against this as it was pretty expensive. On the way back we visited humboldt falls and lake marian falls, which rounded off a very scenic day.

The next day we drove to Invercargill and visited Queen's Park and the excellent Southland Museum which featured more interesting Maori displays and history. We fell asleep early in order to wake up for the big excursion through the Catlins. We travelled east to west and stopped off at Waipapa point to see seals, Slope Point, which is the most southerly tip of mainland New Zealand, Porpoise Bay and Purakaunui Falls. Then we went onto Jack's Blowhole, which was impressive as (joking aside) its the first proper one Ben and I had seen. The last and most thrilling stop was at Nugget Point which offers views down to colonies of sea lions and seals. But sadly no whales.

We reached Dunedin in the evening where we planned to stay for the last few days. That evening, I introduced Ben to his first Japanese meal. Ahh... bless! The next day we visited the Otago Museum for more Maori stuff and then onto the rather disappointing Cadbury World. Ben's hair still being rather orange, he decided to take my advice and bought some powder bleach. But even after yet another session of this, his hair still wasn't quite blond enough!

The Otago peninsular is extremely close to Dunedin and this was another day of full on nature. We started with the aquarium which was quite small. Then we had a sandwiches on Allans Beach. This was easily one of my most interesting lunches ever as we sat on a log while four seals cavorted in the sun, about 5 metres in front of us. Next stop was the Royal Albatross Centre, where these are the only nesting birds of their kind on the mainland of any country whatsoever. Whilst you can see albatrosses gliding over the car park every so often, we chose to wait for two and a half hours for the guided tour. So we had a kip in the car and were then escorted up the hill to the nesting sites. This area was cleared and parts flattened to house cannons during the second world war. It was only in recent decades that the albatrosses decided to nest there. It was now early evening so we wandered down to the next door Pilots Beach, where we saw more seals. But we decided to wait around, as blue eyed penguins would be waddling ashore at dusk. They duly obliged and were tiny, about the height of a seagull and very cute, despite it virtually being pitch black by the time the main group decided to come in.

On our final day in Dunedin we visited Speights Brewery which was led by a very knowledgeable guide and ended up in the bar, where we were allowed to consume as much beer as we wanted for 40 minutes. If only we didn't have to drive for four hours back to Christchurch immediately afterwards! Base hostel had mucked up my booking, so we were escorted to stay in the staff bedroom with lots more money-off drinks vouchers. So, being our last night together, it seemed foolish not to take advantage of them. The final session of hair bleaching finally turned Ben's hair a decent shade of blonde - after only five attempts during the past few weeks! We then proceeded to drink our way through many pints of Radlers, with a few Jagerbombs thrown in for good measure, or got messy, as Pud would put it. I had to drag him away at 3am from the club we ended up in, as I had to wake at 7am to catch my plane back to Auckland. Ben's flight to Melbourne was later that afternoon, upon which he was apparently sick. Haha! A good send off I think.

I dropped the hire car off and caught the plane back to Auckland, which was understandably unpleasant. I made it to the hostel and slept for a few hours before Dave turned up. We awoke the next day at 5am in order to fly to Perth, with an 8 hour stopover in Melbourne. The end of a brilliant time in New Zealand.