It was not nice to have to wake up at 6am on my departure day from Christchurch to Kaikoura, as we had to meet outside Base Backpackers which was a 5 minute walk away at 7am, upon my arrival outside the hostel I met Greg who I had seen at various stops all along my Kiwi Experience trip, he was sitting on a ledge next to this homeless guy who was talking loads of random crap to him and left shortly after I arrived, the bloke was creeping him out a little I think, ...

The journey from Queenstown to Christchurch is the longest drive that the Kiwi Experience operates so it was no surprise that we were leaving at 8.30am to make tracks! The weather was still horrific as it had been the previous two days which meant I got soaked as well as my backpack as I made my way to the pickup point! There were plenty of hangovers on the bus that day, so it was good that we weren't making any notable stops that day especially because the weath...

There were two buses that stayed the night at Wanaka instead of the usual one as the Kiwi Experience was so busy that they needed to put another bus on to deal with the demand, so this meant they had to stagger the departure times so that both buses didn't arrive at each spot that we stopped off at, at the same time so we didn't overload the destinations! This meant that I had to be ready to leave by 9am as I wasn't told which bus I was going to be on, as it happ...

Everyone on the bus wasn't too pleased to find out that we had a 7.30am start this morning, especially after the tiring walk we had done the previous day until the early evening at Franz Josef! There was a reason we had to leave early though the reason being that in order to catch the perfect mirror reflection of Mount Cook on Lake Matheson we had to be there early which we was as it was only drive from Rainforest Retreat, our hostel in Franz Josef! After getting...

With much of the bus feeling worse for wear, including the driver, because of the night priors poo party at Lake Mahinapua, we set off at around 10am, to what was to be my favourite place in the whole of New Zealand....Franz Josef :D The morning started with a short drive through the town of Ross to Pukekura, where there was the Bushman's Centre! The centre offered an insight into how people make a living on the coast through sphagnum moss, timber-milling, possum...