(Picture : Me at the steepest street in the world – nice new pants eh?)  Having got a bit bored of driving we went for a drive around Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula today.  I started off by walking up the steepest street in the world, the drove round the Otago Peninsula and failed to see any of [...]

…are beautiful.  Isn’t everything?  Can you tell I’m a bit travelled out? After some lovely hostel home cooked bread and honey, we headed off in a two car convoy to drive through the Catlins for a day or two.  But this drive I had music!  And fresh tunes from my recently increased collection.  I also [...]

I had a quick peek in the DOC office and wildlife park before taking the Southern Scenic Route to Invercargill.  It turned out the Swiss girl Claudia, whom I met in Kaikoura, was heading there too to check out the Catlins so we agreed to hook up there. I drove the Southern Scenic Route from [...]

(Picture : the view from Key Summit over the start of the Routeburn Track)  As I was feeling a bit travelled out before Milford I had to do something to perk me up.  One of the girls on the boat was tiny and from Chicago.  She had just done the Milford Track, joined the overnight [...]

The drive from Queenstown to Milford was one of my more ‘interesting’ ones with several sleet and snow storms to pass through – nothing major but enough to make it obvious it was getting closer to winter.  The hilltops were all covered in snow. (Picture : kids and a waterfall’s rainbow)   Driving along the valley [...]

Tom and I never managed to hook up today – mostly because the weather has turned to shit. Well, the season has started to change and it was raining quite hard last night in ‘Queenie’. I’ll be spending Friday night somewhere on Milford Sound as part of an overnight boat trip so I am going [...]

Expecting the hoards of Easter visitors to have started leaving I never bothered booking anything in Queenstown.  I took the Crown Estate road across from Wanaka – very quick indeedly doodle – which is one of the highest public roads in New Zealand.  I wandered what all the fuss was about until I started to [...]

A couple of enjoyable days were spent at Mount Cook National Park taking in a short walk, and a drive along my first gravel road.  While I could be speaking too soon I was lucky with the weather again.  It was fantastic to be walking alongside the iceberg littered lakes in strong sunshine during the [...]

If you are not mountain minded the following trip report may end up completely boring you – heck it may even if you are mountain minded but here’s my full report on our three day Mount Aspiring trip. There’s some cracking pictures if you want to miss out the reading. A few of the pictures [...]

Last night Tom, Caroline and I went to see Black Sheep in the amazing homely Cinema Paradiso in Wanaka.  One of the best cinemas ever – huge old sofas and a Morris Minor you can sit in while watching the film, which was a bizarre comedy/’thriller’ about a flock of mad genetically engineered sheep in [...]