Again I decided to clock up the miles (or kilometres as it is here) and having left at 8am, I drove up to Nelson to have a glimpse at the Saturday morning artists market.  As I had already bought a load of stuff I resisted the unusual pottery and crafts, and headed up to Farewell [...]

(Picture : Franz Josef glacier and surrounding bush)  In the morning I went for a stroll up to the Sentinal Rock lookout for Franz Josef glacier.  I never did any of the glacier walks as Tom and I had already invested a lot of hard graft to walk 25km to get to the Mount Aspiring [...]

Being that it was so cold I awoke early at 0715, helped by the hiking group getting organised.  There was ice on the windscreen, and a magic dawn fog carpeting the valley which made a pretty atmospheric drive over to Haast on the coast. (Picture : Bruce Bay beach) I pushed on stopping at a Bruce [...]

I had my last night in Dunedin with Claudia, T and James (the latter two being the guys I met on the boat in Whitsundays).  ’Dunny’ was now a tad better as they managed to take us to a lovely little bar tucked round the back of a car park, with one of the best barman I’ve ever had serve [...]

In Franz Josef….after a mega drive (in distance and scenery) yesterday from Dunedin over Haast Pass. Camped at a DOC site just to have a Hiking New Zealand minibus pull up next to me, but all good as they shared their fire.Heading further up west coast tomorrow… more soon.

So, it’s a long shot, but I have as much in the heading as I can in the hope that someone will stumble on this blog entry. I met a girl from Chicago in Hamner Springs, South Island, New Zealand.  Her dad was planning a round the world sailing trip starting in September 2007.  Stupidly I [...]

I’ve updated a few blog entries as I’ve been on the move quite a lot over the last few days.  It may be the same over the next few as I drive over to the west coast.

I’m quite keen to start heading towards the North Island again so I can spend some time with Jono in Wellington before I explore further north.  Tomorrow (Wednesday?) I’ll head west via Wanaka towards Fox and Frans Joseph Glaciers. I may end up hooking up with a local I met in Malaysia for a couple [...]

Heed to road signs!  The other day I saw a tiny handmade sign saying : ‘Stock’ Yeh sure I thought.  I turned the corner and had a cow running towards me, and me driving towards it at 70km/h. I turned the next corner, albeit far slower and had the herding dog runnning around.