Aotearoa, 'Land of the long white cloud', Narnia, and Lord of the Rings tours.

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After a frantic run, avec luggage, from one end of Auckland airport to the other, as some clever spark decided to give us 30mins from landing to departure of our flight to Christchurch, we appeared to have arrived home! Christchurch seems to be quintessentially English with the River Avon running through the centre of it punting trips and a large English population.

That said we both really liked Christchurch and spent our time there busy with setting up bank accounts, shopping and buying our beast of a car for a bargain at auction. This baby has a 2.7 litre engine, leather seats, AC (with remote control), electric windows etc, which we paid $500 below the reserve price and cheaper than any of the cars on the backpacker market! If you ever go to Christchurch the art gallery is a must and the building itself is pretty cool!

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Once sorted we decided to set out on a mission to counquer the south island, first stop Mount Cook!! However we learnt pretty quick that this wasn't to be, as we wanted to spend some time outside of the car preferably, and also do some wwoofing, so after seeing some spectacular glacier lakes and doing a courier job for the highest salmon farm in New Zealand, in return for free very tasty salmon, we headed back to New Brighton on the outskirts of Christchurch. In time for the Chinese Lantern festival which was basically a big squeeze to get to the food stalls. Lizzi was fortunate in her early morning run along the beach to see all the kids gearing up for a young lifeguards competition which kindof put her little run to shame! Also being freebie junkies we managed to see Kiwis for free at the wildlife reserve, as we'd walked straight in without paying!

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Moving up north we had a brilliant day out in Hamner Springs, spending the morning mountain biking through the forest, and afternoon walking the hills so that we were tired enough to appreciate relaxing in the hot springs and sulphur pools. Next stop Kaikoura, famous for its tasty crayfish, but much to Nick's disapointment much above our price range. As we didn't manage to see any whales in Hawaii when we went whale watching, we tried again, this time from a tiny 8 seater airvan plane. From the air the sperm whales looked like huge sausages in the water. To complete the nature tour we went on a walk via the seal colony where we were able to get up close and pretty personnal with the fur seals basking on the rocks.

A pretty boring trip onwards to Picton was made more interesting by a random loo stop where we stumbled on a wine tasting place and spent a long time chatting and tasting various wines. Being in the Marlbourgh region the sauvignon blancs were definitely the best, and we were pretty chuffed to come away with a bottle of Koura Bay Sauvignon Blanc in our box for 7 pounds when Gordon Ramsay sells it in his restaurant in England for 35 pounds! To add on the calories we also found a boutique chocolate factory which we managed to drive past a few times to stop and indulge on their generous free samples!

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Picton gave a good insight into the cyclist/tramper species, down to the gear they wear and the cameras they use whilst walking the Queen Charlotte track. A famous track so well maintained that its very wide and holds no need for the fancy gear and walking sticks, and supplies very good homemade muffins at the end of the only very steep climb! We carried on from here to Nelson to organise the next stage of our trip and try and find some work. Nelson itself is the birth home of 'The one ring' and has loads of cool jewellry and art shops. From there we went to Abel Tasman National Park, one of our favourite places, where golden beaches disappear into clear waters, lined by lush forests. We were lucky to have playful bottlenose dolphins follow our boat and watched a gannet giving us a dive bomb fishing display! If time had allowed it would have been great to spend longer here to also explore by kayak, however, we had wwoofing placements to go to in Wellington and a ferry booked to take us across the Cook Straight, so it was back to Picton.... Our ferry was heavily delayed by over 7 hours due to bad storms the previous day, so to compensate we had the yummiest Sunday lunch and got tipsy in the heat of the day, Lizzi had fresh green lipped mussels and local wine and Nick had Asian Squid and local beer, one of our best meals since we got to New Zealand. We had to walk it all off over the hills to sober up! Making our dinner in the car though was a different matter as the wind kept blowing grit all over our salad as we tried to cut it. Goodbye beautiful south, hello north island....