It was a reasonable departure time of 9am from Bazil's where we stayed in Westport! I was up in good time as I usually am on departure days but the same can't be said for one of the Geordie lads in my dorm, he didn't get up until about 10 minutes before the bus left, to be fair his mates could have woken him up earlier, but let him sleep in which he weren't too pleased about when they did wake him up and he had to rush around like a mad man to make sure he made i...

The bus from Nelson to Westport departed at 8.30am from outside Fern Lodge; this meant I had to give myself plenty of time to walk there from Shortbread Cottage, so I left from there at around 8am so that I wasn't late! I was just glad to be on the bus after being kept on the waiting list for days on end! So as you can expect the bus was full to capacity! From Nelson we headed towards the Nelson Lakes National Park, stopping off at Richmond for people that hadn't...

After an eventful last night in Wellington I was up at 5.30am after very little sleep, to get showered and have breakfast by 6.45am in order to take the short 10 minute walk from the Wellywood Backpackers where I was staying to the YHA hostel which is where the Kiwi Experience bus was picking us up from at 7am! We were picked up from outside the YHA by Bex who was to be my bus driver for the day, but we weren't picked up in a typical Kiwi bus, we were picked up i...

We didn't depart River Valley until midday, however we had to check out at 10am still which meant we were waiting around in the lounge area for two hours twiddling our thumbs (well I went on my net book) while two people from the bus were out horse trekking with Poncey, who was to be my driver for the second day running! One American chap decided he wanted to play the nine hole golf course, which was more like pitch and putt as all the holes were all par 3 and it...

We were treated to a bit of a lie in for the second departure in a row as we left Taupo at 9.30am! It was my first day on the bus with Poncey the bus driver, and in actual fact he was really good, a lot better than Ma my previous driver! Poncey seemed to have everything under control and he was up for a laugh yet was knowledgeable and always let us know what we were going to be doing for the day! I also got on the bus only knowing one person who had also stayed i...