Invercargil to Bay of Islands Ok did I say Invercargil was the most southernly point on our trip around the south Island and therefore absolutley freezing! Well, the next stop was in Dunedin and again, absolutely freezing. The trip there was amazing though, as we got to see two yellow eyed penguins in the wild (there are only 3000 of these in the world!). We stopped in Dunedin for a few days, feeling it nessecary to visit both the chocolate factory and th...

We arrived in the south island on the interisland ferry and the views were fantastic, lush green hills surrounded with a backdrop of mountains in the distance. The first stop on the south island was a vineyard in Marlborough and the wines were fantastic. That night was spent in the Abel Tasman national park at Old MacDonands farm where we went on some lovely walks, had a BBQ and stayed up until at least 10pm(well we are getting old!) The next day we stopped in B...

After Rotorua we headed to Taupo via a secret location of a thermal stream (which we sat in until we couldn't stand the heat). Jason (our crazy American couch mate got out here to do a sky dive- the mad fool). Later in Taupo we had a bar- b- que settled to bed to get some beauty sleep for the next day where we drove to Whakapappa (in Tongariro national park). The national park had 3 live volcanoes within it and we even had evacuation plans written on the wall...

After Ben got his free jump off the sky tower, we decided that Stray was an exciting company to travel around New Zealand with. They haven't failed us. Yep that is us in the white water raft (we went down a 7 meter waterfall, half in the raft and ending up unside down in the water). We have also managed to make the front page on the local newspaper here, by dressing up in drag and posing infront of the Richard O'Brian statue (he wrote the Rocky Horror Show...

23 is my(ben's) new lucky number. We got to Auckland and decided to look around, buy warm clothes (it is really cold!) and just relax for a couple of days(tahiti, cook islands and fiji just wasn't enough!) However after a day or two we were ready to look around and one of the bus companies which we were thinking of traveling with were offering free city orientation trips. We got on the bright orange stray bus and before we even set off, we were told to think of a...