Queenstown + Wanaka April 30th to 3rd May 2006 Driving around the south island you get a real sense of being in the wilderness and more often than not it's a question of "where have all the people gone?" The scenery for the drive back to Queenstown is really impressive with the snow capped 'Remarkables' truly remarkable. Queenstown is not how we had envisaged it as we'd heard that it was pretty touristy. It still retains a small ski town feel to it an...

The Routeburn Track 27th April to 29th April 2006 We get up very early for the 7am bus ride to the Divide to start the Routeburn Track, all 37km (ish) of it. Our packs are weighing in at around 15kg each and the weather for the first day is overcast but not raining so we have to be thankful for that. We covered about 12km the first day with the highlight being the Erskine falls. The falls are 60m high and we get to walk right beneath them, absolutely...

Fiordland 24th April to 27th April 2006 It's a relatively long drive up to Te Anau, the heart of Doubtful Sound, the next day. We organize trips to Milford and Doubtful Sounds and have lunch overlooking lake Te-Anau. The following day we are off down to Manapouri to catch a boat across lake Te-Anau towards Doubtful Sound (together with about 200 others) The weather is not great, in fact it's positively lashing it down. The scenery is totally amazing ...

The Catlins & Invercargil Saturday 22nd - Sunday 23rd April 2006 We arise early once again to go see some 'hookers'. No, Amy hasn't finally found out about where all those STD's have come from 'hookers' are actually Nz sea lions and boy are they big scary mothers. We take a bit of a walk and see 10 or so that we think are just foolin around. At this time in the morning it's just us and them on a huge beach. We have been really impressed by the abunda...

Otago Peninsula April 21 2006 Probably the most beautiful place we have seen in Nz thus far which is quite a statement. Possible to do with the light in the sky which for the whole day bordered on the bizzarre. It was kind of like day-break for the entire day until dusk. Overhead the sky threatened rain but on the horizon where the cloud stopped and didn't quite meet the landscape the sky was red and it formed almost an entire giant circle of f...