We embarked on another long journey, this one including the most scary and treacherous tunnel we have ever driven though. It was how we imagine the Vietcong tunnels only less structurally safe. Having successfully made it through without ending up in a scene from the film 'Daylight', we made it to Milford Sound. Greg hopped out and did a quick change into long trousers and sleeves to protect from the sand flies, managing to acquire approximately 20 sand fly bites...

We continued our journey South to Wanaka, a beautiful lake side alpine resort, where the sun was shining. We stayed in a very bizarre hostel which had a very alfresco feeling, with the dining room being outside and all the corridors pretty much outside too. We were glad we splashed out for a private room in this one. We relaxed on the beach, enjoyed a good coffee or two and spent over 30 minutes in an outdoor maze at Puzzling World. This is actually a fairly lon...

Our next stop was the Franz Josef Glacier, a full day's drive away. Lucky for us the route was one of the top coastal drives in the world. Stunning scenery with plenty of things to do on the way, including Pancake Rocks (exactly what it says on the tin - rocks that look like stacks of pancakes). We arrived early evening, checked into the hostel quickly and then headed straight to the glacial hot pools for a sunset soak followed by some Thai food in preparation fo...

We left Kaikoura in the middle of a storm, hoping we would emerge into blistering sunshine once we reached Nelson, and amazingly we did. We spent the evening preparing for our two day trip into Abel Tasman. We decided against taking a camping stove and so prepared enough food for the two days and went to bed having completely re packed Greg's big bag with everything we'd need for two days camping. The next morning we woke to the sound of rain...the storm had foun...

The day after starting our new exercise routine we both woke unable to walk and slowly dragged ourselves to the car for a short two hour drive to Kaikoura. The sun was shining as we made our way down the coast and hobbled straight onto our own private fishing boat for an afternoon on the ocean. We started in relatively shallow waters to catch our bait. Our target were barracuda. Claire brought in the first one and then Greg another two. Because of the size of the...