New Zealand

The final stage of our journey before settling to work for a year in Australia. New Zealand was immediatally a country of epic scenary, friendly locals and a lot of sheep.
Christchurch was closed down to tourists so we got out of there and drove all the way to mount cook stopping at beautiful lake tekapo on route.  At the foot of NZ's tallest peak we camped out for the night in our little campervan 'charlie'.
Next stop was Queenstown the adventure capital. We didnt have a lot of money for adventure activities but  still loved it here and took full advantage of the beautiful weather and surroundings. A travellers right of passage here is Fergburger, (the best burgers in the world).
From Queenstown we took the milford track to do a short cruise on the amazing milford sound (actually a fiord). The drive through Fiordland national park was probably the most scenic part of new zealand that we were able to see, it was simply stunning.
After Fiordland we made our way past lake wanaka and up the west coast of the south island.
The west coast highlights had to be the rugged and wind swept coast line and pancake rocks at punakaikai. The sandflies were not so fun, those things are vicious and sometimes we couldnt leave the van for long without getting covered in bites.
Last stop on the south island was Nelson and the Abel Tasman national park. We had a stroke of luck and managed to get a days tramping (trekking) in at Abel tasman before the rain started. The next few days were spent catching up with our good friend danny we met in china. This was a relief as we realised we hadnt actually had a real conversation with anyone but each other for nearly two weeks. Theres only so much gin drinking and card games you can take before going a bit crazy.

The south island was over and we made our way across to wellington on the ferry.
Windy Welly is a nice city with a reputation for bad weather, the museum here (te papa) was amazing.
The final week of NZ was a literal wash out. We travelled from wellington to lake taupo managing to get  a morning of nice (ish) weather to see what all the fuss is about. Unfortunately we didnt manage to fit in a skydive due to all the rain, and oh how it came down.
Our next stop Rotorua rained solidly for two days but we did manage to go to a geothermal wonderland (not as good as it sounds) and see a Maori cultural performance (very cheesy but fun).
Soo with dampened spirits and dampened belongings we arrived in Auckland, a nicer city than we were told it was. We spent a few days catching up with friends and exploring here before our return to Sydney with a nearly empty bank account but glad of the times we had exploring beautiful new zealand.

New Zealand Photos