Safely boarded a new coach in Picton. The north island was wonderful, the south island, we had been promised, would be better. Sort of sadly we had left four passengers behind for a longer stay in Wellington, John and his rig keeper had stayed and so had Simon/George and Kirke/Alex. Said sadness referencing the former, obviously.

First stop, Kaiteriteri (ky – tiri – tiri). This is the gateway to the Abel Tasman National Park. A remarkably beautiful territory that we unfortunately didn’t have time to explore properly on this trip, but is certainly regarded as a must do – something for next time in NZ then. Obviously the Wellington adventure was still raging its aftermath on everyone’s bodies and the passengers we had gained at the ferry dock no doubt despised us for the unmistakable stench of alcohol effervescing from our bodies, into the AC system and blowing back into everyone’s faces in a horrid endless cycle on the journey to this lovely spot on the upper east coast. I.e, the coach stank like a brewery the entire way. Kaiteriteri is a tiny, quaint beach side town, memories of which merely include a peaceful stroll along the shore, gathering (and later sneaking through customs, undeclared) some pretty shells. Necessary fried food was consumed, mixed quality live music tolerated and finally SLEEP. Sleep being something KE steals a great deal of from its passengers. (We (I) also thought we found a lost baby albatross here, but it was actually a huge baby seagull)

The journey from Kaiteriteri to Westport was broken up by an intended picnic at Nelson Lakes. However, this was just about when the weather turned absolutely filthy, so we just stopped for the mandatory photo opp on the edge of the mountain back dropped jetty, deciding against jumping into the water, as is usually KE tradition. This was partly on account of the winter and also because swimming around the jetty’s stilts were some GIANT, ugly as sin, eels. Sorry, but no thank you. Lame picnic on the bus instead and onward until… a large cloud of cows, literally a cloud, steaming in the cold air, got in our way. Mac pulled into the verge as much as possible but they had NO desire to walk past us and just stood confused, staring at the bright green coach, full of passengers taking absolutely-necessary cow selfies to remember the occasion. Eventually the farmer turned up on his quad-bike, pissed off that they had stopped and not hugely impressed by our enjoyment of this – he ushered them unwillingly past us.
The activities we should have enjoyed over the next few stops were due to be halted entirely by enormous storms. Westport is a surf town, I don’t think anyone signed up for the 6am surf opportunity. Instead, on route to Westport, we stopped at a supermarket to gather COPIUS amounts of sausage, burgers, chicken nibbles, salad, bread (13 loaves?!?!) sauce and because the budget allowed, an almighty block of edam, for a group BBQ at Basils, our hostel for the night. Basils was an awesome hostel. Neg, Teacher, Rich (forgiven now), Adam, Caz, Kayleigh and myself were put in The Lounge… How many hostels put you in a dorm room with a ROARING fire, TV and VHS player and adjoining kitchen so Mother Hen could make us tea ;)… Needless to say, we loved Basils – and the owner, who I don’t think was actually called Basil but was beautiful.
Naturally, the boys handled cooking the meat, only lending me the honor of handling the chicken nibbles because they needed to be baked in an oven and their primitive male ways only gave them the necessary skills to operate the flame grill… Caz and Kayleigh whipped up a couscous delight, Neg and Teacher drank some wine, we all ate, ventured to an also Basil owned pub for homemade sambucca? Went to the wrong pub, came back, thought about watching a disney VIDEO, fell asleep. Thank you Westport.

The highly anticipated Franz Josef was to be our next stop. Another two night-er. The small town of Franz Josef lye’s alongside the great Franz Josef Glacier, quickly retreating and due to disappear entirely in the next 35years. As I said, geography heaven, Teacher filled us in on the need to know details… And also taught us about glaciers.
On route to FJ we stopped for a coastal walk around Cape Foulwind, so called because Captain James Cook thought it was a bit nippy and there was a fair breeze when he sailed past mapping the south island. This was beautiful, as well as boggy, lots of inaccessible beaches at the bottom of the foresty cliffs and some weird birds that looked a bit like a cockerel shaped kiwi and strutted like pheasants, think they were called Whikkas? There was also a New Zealand Fur Seal colony at the end of the walk – Cuuuuuute squealing bubuhs.
We stopped further down the coast to see the Pancake Rocks, name self explanatory, they are rocks that look like stacks of pancakes… And some blowholes – these were interesting, the violent tide basically shoots white water up through channels in the cliffs producing a protruding spray out of the top of them. Teacher loved the blowing best of all, pure geography, of course.
The Franz accommodation was sweet – Rainforest Retreat, rain being an apt word. It was raining… Sort of anyway, the cloud was so low we may just have been inside it. The retreat had lodge style rooms and the biggest hot tub in Australasia. Its bar, appropriately enough, wore a slogan carved into its sign reading, “it rains, we pour”…

Having shrunk back so far in recent years, the glacier is now only accessible by helicopter. We were supposed to be doing an ice explorer trek the following day, which would land us on the glacier, fully kitted out in arctic gear and crampons, to be shown the delights of glacier life. OBVIOUSLY the weather remained utterly miserable.
Plan B…
A walk that takes you up to the edge of the glacier, over looking its dangerous mouth, as close as is safe. Okay, so absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever, this was 100% the WORST weather I have ever had the pleasure of walking through. Mercifully we had been lent enormous golf umbrellas to shield ourselves from the worst of it, or at least a small fraction of it and we sensibly dressed Gollum in leggings to keep him toasty. The walk was through the huge valley left behind by the retreating glacier and when we started the ground was mostly its left over gravel deposits. By the end of it, it was mostly fast flowing water. A few good things came from the weather; hundreds of waterfalls started to appear cascading through the tree veiled mountains either side of the valley, smashing/splashing into the glacial rivers we shared the ground with. Also no one else had braved it so we had the beautiful rain soaked valley to our selves and the downpours meant that by time we reached the view point, the cloud had lifted just slightly enough to reveal 100 metres or so of the glacier, the rest hidden by, SHOCK, clouds.
The view point was clearly marked by a yellow rope, with many, many signs indicating not to go any further. A few billboards had info about how quickly the glacier is retreating, pictures from four years ago, when it would have been on top of where we stood and horror stories about people who had ignored the signs and ventured closer to the glaciers dangerous mouth. The path still continued some way beyond where we currently stood at the yellow barrier, before dropping down into that MOST dangerous area. Our driver out to the start of the walk had told us to go beyond the rope and to the real end of the pathway, but not beyond that, for a much better view. Myself and Adam decided to give it a go, running most of the way to get it over with quicker. Around the first corner was an incredible chunk of ice, the size of a cruise ship, towering above the walkway and it had the most amazing blue colours of glacial ice. At the very end of the pathway the view was staggeringly better, you could see way further up the glaciers face and in between passing clouds make out the depth it had sunk to, huge cliffs raising up on either side of it. At some point the ice would have been up to the top edges of these, craaaay, see Instagram roseharvey25 for a pretty epic photo. Teacher, Caz and Neg headed up after, leaving Adam and I with the important job of guarding the umbrellas… What happened next WAS terrifying but is now just hilarious. Rocks started to tumble down the cruise ship ice chunk just ahead of us!! We both panicked and sprinted toward where the girls were to bring them back. I stopped dead in my tracks because the path looked like it was completely covered by the slip and I had visions of seeing all my friends under a pile of rocks… Adam continued and luckily it was just the angle we were stood to, duuuuh, he got to the girls and yelled, waving, something along the lines of “the rocks are falling” but in slow motion, arms swaying like one of those giant inflatable morph things. They didn’t actually hear him but the sight of a flailing Gollum was enough to get the message, I stayed on the path, keeping an eye on the rate of the slipping mud and what had now, thankfully, subsided to just gravel falling, hero that I am, until they reached the cruise ship ice and looked thoroughly unimpressed by the “landslide” we had saved their lives from… That was too much excitement and also the rate of the swelling rivers was actually more alarming than any of that so we got out as quickly as possible and all made it home, safe and sound, if not FREEZING cold to jump straight in that huge hot tub. And that, is why when it rains in NZ, you should stay in and watch Lord of The Rings. (Sorry all family and friends, won’t do anything else dangerous, promise) Also I guess we should mention some kind of disclaimer here, DO NOT DO WHAT WE DID JUST BECAUSE WE DID IT AND YOU ALSO WANT A COOL GLACIER/LANDSLIDE STORY. Okay?

A much less dramatic paragraph for you here… Wanaka. A gorgeous lakeside, mountain town. On route we stopped at few unbelievably beautiful lakes, took some standard “jumping off the ground, look where we are” photos, thank you iPhone continuous shot mode, didn’t stop teacher clubbing me in the face though, see Facebook for pictures. I think I put a photo on Instagram of the road winding through snow capped peaks, greenery below them stretching down to the water, what we came to call “road porn” and we were certainly in the road-porn heart of New Zealand now. Wanaka itself looks like it was built yesterday, its oddly modern by NZ standards and is the base for people wanting to ski at the Cadrona resort. KE stops there for one thing and one thing only – Puzzling world… /Also its a good distance between FJ and Oueenstown for an over night stop 😉 If you really want to know, we also went to a cinema here where they bring you barista coffee to your seats, which are sofas or old cars!! Amaze. But anyway, puzzling world, please visit their website for a more in depth description but essentially a wacky local decided to build a massive maze and a bunch of mind boggling optical illusion rooms and its the most hilariously odd thing… I believe Jade has added some photos to FB. Our bus broke down in the car park, Mac said it got struck by lightening in FJ so we were stuck here for hours in the cafe doing all these annoying puzzles. One in particular drove me mad for well over an hour before Caz came along and did it for me… 😦 She has added a photo to FB of her pride/my bitter disappointment.
Two other Kiwi drivers had to drive us up a replacement bus from Queenstown. Mangy, who we will discuss later on, and I think Josh, but not the Josh we will also discuss later on. They bought us what Mac described as “a beast” which would apparently get us to Queenstown on schedule despite the delay, just in time for a Ferg Burger.

Before we even get to Queenstown I’m going to discuss the religion that is Ferg Burger. Basically, its the best burger shop in the world. You WILL queue for a minimum of twenty minutes to order AND a further minimum of half an hour to receive your precious food, but thou shalt not complain, thou shalt happily wait whilst they serve their thousands of customers and when you finally bite into your Southern Swine, or your Chief Piggum, you will feel the power of the Ferg, who died on the grill to absolve you of your sins, committed either on the previous night out, or perhaps at various local bungy sites or on the luge, then turn to your fellow burger muncher and offer them the Ferg, or your Aioli, and say “may the Ferg be with you” they should dip their chip in the creamy garlicky deliciousness and return the Ferg by replying “and also with you”.

So, Queenstown. We were sort of here for just over a week so this may get LONG. We stayed in “Knock, Knock, Nomads” so called because in order to remain a dry hostel in this town, the party capital of NZ, they have to come knocking on peoples dorm room doors at various stages throughout the evening, with a big bin liner, apparently just checking up on the bin fullness situation, but really hoping to snatch your alcoholic beverages from you with the clever ruse of only just announcing themselves in time for entry, knocking twice whilst simultaneously calling out Nomads and busting open the door. We out foxed them by pouring our drinks into plastic bottles and hurriedly hiding them away on each occasion.
Anyway, before we got around to drinking we took a wander round the town. Queenstown sits in a basin below several mountain ranges, peaks including The Remarkables and Coronet ski resort, surrounding an enormous serpent shaped lake. It is THE most beautiful place, even with the weather hanging low. Caz and Adam only had this one afternoon and night before jetting off to L.A. so we obviously had to fit in an obligatory visit to Ferg Burger with them. Mmmmmm, the memories are making me so hungry!! Not forgetting The Remarkable Fudge shop, move over Rolys, you’ve been out fudged.
Most buses dissipate in Queenstown, some people finish the KE here or just never leave because its so fantastic, so obbbbviously we had to make our final night altogether Yin-worthy. Post pre-drinks, thoroughly on the way to Yindom, we all met at Locos, that “famous” bar in Queenstown where the pinnacle of honesty that is Mike Tindel cheated on Zara Phillips, witnessed by our future KE driver Flea and several KE passengers – some of whom were lucky enough to snag their own England rugby player that night, poor luck for us though, just backpackers this evening.
For some reason we thought tequila would be the perfect addition to the festivities, meanwhile Laura tracked down the token welsh barman and didn’t pay for any of her drinks. Overall an awesome night, well done Queenstown, said farewell to Mac and somehow made it back through the icy cold night to knock-knock-nomads…. About three hours later Adam and Caz had to wake and leave us 😦 at which point Caz’s final nugget of wisdom was, “guys, Paul Yin’s surname is actually Lin” ….. That’s our entire trip shattered into tiny shards then, cheers mother hen!! In better news the sun was finally shining, so the whole town was even more splendiferous and the pair got to fly out with spectacular views of the mountains while we scoffed a roast dinner down by the lake 🙂 and hung out with, no jokes or nicknames here, Marius and Darius. Marius’s actual nickname was Bear Grylls, on account of his risking life and limb over the edges of various waterfalls or scaling some form of craggy surface for a photo opp. Darius, had no particular nickname but was recognizable from a great distance by his post-box red trousers and golfing vest… I’m honestly not making up any of these people.

The Deep South

Lord, this turning into an actual novel.
The deep south, like Bay of Islands, is an add on to the general KE routes, which we had included in our big ticket. Its another small bus, from Queenstown, down and across to Dunedin, then south and doubling back to Invercargill, this part of the route is known as the Catlins (amazing), then back to Queenstown via famous Milford Sound. Our 3 day, 2 night trip had six passengers, Neg, Teacher, Sara, Carla, Caroline and myself. Probably three of the most scenic days of our lives and a huge highlight of the entire NZ trip!!
The drive to Dunedin, with Roger at the wheel, an older chap whose music collection boasted some abso classics from before any of our times, followed the path of the southern alps. Thanks to some fresh snow this was, as always in NZ, beautiful… Running out of adjectives, might start throwing in some rogue alternatives… The drive was ‘andsome? This was also the first time I really noticed NZs sheep. Obviously the place is famous for them and their sheep population trumps humans five fold, so yeh, tonnes of sheep – Teacher and Sara possibly thought they were back in Wales. However, they also have big grass bushels that look like sheep and sometimes I’d be like wohhh why so many sheep crammed together in that fie- oh no wait its grass. We also stopped in a tiny, one street, mining town that looked a little too wild, wild west to really exist in NZ and had the grimiest public loos, rivalling that of S.E.Asian standards. All six of us girls ventured into the mens to see if they had it any better, they did not… Also Carla had never seen a urinal wall or urinal cakes before, she hadn’t actually believed in them until now and felt the need, obviously, to stand and aim an invisible member at it to understand the logistics…
Roger obviously thought we had had one too many Ferg Burgers because our first stop on arrival into Dunedin was Baldwin Street. The worlds STEEPEST street. It boasts a height climb ratio of 1:2.86 – that means for every 2.86 metres you travel (more like traverse) your elevation is an entire metre!! Luckily our exercise regime in NZ; climbing on and off buses, climbing hostel stairs and of course the actual hikes, had earned us piston calf status and we made it to the very top, where they had cleverly placed a bench and water fountain. Irritatingly this six year old kid made it to the top just after us and wasn’t puffed at all, then set about eating his afternoon tea; carrot sticks and apple slices… Nutter.
On recommendation by Roger we went along to the Speights brewery tour in the evening. Speights being NZ biggest distributor of beer, not to be confused with bears, which Kiwi’s pronounce as beers and certainly aren’t produced by Speights. Tour was great, the half an hour free reign of the bar was better 😉 They frequently host the All Blacks, who our super happy guide Rodd said tend to get a shorter tour and longer bar time, shock, but unfortunately our luck was out this evening.

New driver for day two, enter Josh. Basically he was an over grown toddler, baby face, short attention span, needed cuddles before sleepytime #teacher. With six female passengers he pretty much had no choice but to listen to Teachers girly music collection, cue every pop princess known to mankind for the entire day. Poor boy. He knew the Catlins like the back of his hand and took us to an incredible beach, huge crashing tide, golden sands and grassy dunes, very north Cornish looking. It’s called Cannibal Bay, brilliant, on account of the scattered human bone remains found from back when Moari’s ate one another. I almost left my kneecaps behind to the bone collection after jumping over a washout and stacking it upon landing, much to everyone’s amusement and my intense pain, I believe there is photographic evidence of this somewhere… The beach is home to a Sea Lion colony, we saw an enormous male bounding into the surf, terrified of us despite probably weighing more than all of us combined, Ferg pounds included, and a female who just chilled and let us photograph her as she sun bathed.
Next on the Catlins rota was a lighthouse walk, nice symmetry with our far north trip there! Nugget Point, this was also pulchritudinous (yes I have thesaurus-ed “beautiful”). We contoured a huge sticky out (all my own work) cliff, scaled a steep headland and admired the view, one of Otago’s finest icons. The cliffs drop away into the ocean where rocky islets, the “nuggets” left behind, rise out of the water, their own unique strata appearing sharp and jagged despite the bashing they get from the ocean (Teacher please be proud of my incredible and hopefully accurate use of geographical terms there). We had lunch near here, again big claims on the fish and chip front, as per shit chips, sorry Jade, I’m just providing the people with the info they want to know, albeit the censored version, for your dignity’s sake. Just a little further down the Chaslands Highway we pulled over for a quick photo stop at the idyllic Tautuku Bay. Pretty breathtaking really, such a perfect curve shaped inlet with rolling surf and cow dotted grassy headlands either side. Nom.
Josh also introduced us to probably my favorite of NZs armada of waterfalls, Mclean Falls. A little forest walk in a valley gets you there, oddly cold except for sudden bursts of hot air, apparently coming from Australia, pushed down into the valley in small gusts of wind, bizarre… The waterfall gushes down several levels of rock and has a coppery colour to it. There are many photos of us standing near its enormity, selfie style, obvo.
Final stop, Curio Bay. Home to a petrified forest, fossilized by lava and washed up onto the beach to live forever. Highly interesting but totally out shone by the beaches other residents – a small colony of Yellow Eyed Penguins :). We waited patiently for them to begin to return from sea to their nests. This poses quite the challenge for the agile penguins – the sea crashes into an outer barrier of jagged rock, over flows into rock pools then onto the beach, all in the blink of an eye. They have to jump out of the crazy surf, hop and swim between the pools and then waddle up to their nesting grounds. Their appearance isn’t guaranteed and we feared a Neil and Noris situation occurring. BUT for one of the first times in NZ, luck actually took our side and a gorgeous penguin sprang out of the ocean, deftly weaved his way through the obstical course ahead and stopped to pose for us along the way. Fave penguin everrrr. Penguin obsessive Teacher was loving life.
Eventually tearing ourselves away from Curios cutest inhabitant we made the remainder of the journey to Invercargill, where, after the most perfect weather all day, torrential rain once again poured down on us. Joshua’s final offering, to most of us, was a visit to a local Indian restaurant. Possibly my favorite curry ever, happy then. Early night for tomorrows super early start.

Oh yeh, so other than being Mac’s home town, there is nothing to say about Invercargill…

Milford Sound. Beautiful (god almighty, the word is losing all meaning) drive through rolling farm land to meet the big Milford bus and depart from Josh, who handed us over to Mangy. What a bloke, unfortunately I don’t dare to include the stories we later learned about Mangy, but I seriously wish we had known about them and their Franz Josef hot tub glory before we spent the day with him. Mangy does the Milford drive most days and has perfected a playlist to match with each key moment of the drive, of which there are many, many, many, many, many. I would confidently bet that most humans would rate the journey to Milford Sound as THE most outrageously, awe inspiringly stunning, absolutely mesmerizing drive, on the entire planet, hands down, 100%, #YES.
Highlights along the way include but are not limited to; the mirror lakes which reflect snow capped peaks and bright ocher fauna, untouched flat lands that stretch out toward distant lilac mountains, an immensely powerful roadside waterfall that looks like it wants to swallow the coach whole and plunge it deep into the smooth crevices below, a steep sided, evergreen smothered valley, a snowy, neck craning mountainous gully in the chaotic avalanche zone, the long, strong Homer tunnel, detonated through a granite peak, out into the highlight of the highlights; an enormous glacial basin, better known as the valley of a thousand waterfalls, streaked by just that many narrow cascades, penetrated only by the solitary Milford road, winding down into its depths and onward toward the Sound. Yeh, New Zealand seriously deserves all the praise it gets, as does Mangy’s playlist, chiming in perfectly with the Jurassic Park theme song as you exit the tunnel out to that final staggering sight, not to mention James Bond as we cruise through the tunnel itself.
By the way we haven’t even reached Milford Sound itself yet… A two hour boat ride is the only way to see this not-technically-a-Sound-because-it-was-actually-created-by-a-glacier-not-the-ocean-but-we-are-going-to-call-it-one-anyway Sound. Apparently the scenery helped to inspire the land of “Pandora” in Avatar, easy to believe when you’re floating through the inlet of water separating rolling mini mountains on either side, dark teal in colour thanks to thick forest. There are waterfalls all along the way which the boat cruises straight into, soaking you in the spray. Unfortunately the brilliant morning weather had subsided and deteriorated into low cloud and rain, hiding the peaks and spoiling much of the views from the water, taking away slightly from Milford’s “world wonder” status, but still a beaut of a day out. Long drive back to Queenstown, rich with Mangy banter and Instagram hell choosing the perfect non-excessive number of photos to filter, edit and upload. You’re welcome.

Queenstown take two – cue a steep temperature drop, fresh SNOW and mulled wine, the discovery of the best Italian restaurant, possibly bar those in actual Italy, a brilliant bar called Cowboys, bucking bronco, taxidermy bear and litre glasses of cider inclusive, the local Ice Bar/igloo, an incredible breakfast feast in a cutesy lakeside cafe, not one single early night, a reunion or two, a gondola ride to some spectacular views of Queenstown, awesome luging championed by yours truely AND Neg and Teachers epic bungy swing.

We’ll just pick on a few of those, Jade can divulge all the Nevis Bungy Swing banter, I’ll briefly explain how much more murrrr QT looks from above, and probably not talk too much about mine and teachers average efforts on the rodeo bull.

Neg, Teach, Sara and myself took a Gondola ride up to the top of a mountain to get a better look over QT – no I didn’t enjoy this one bit, swinging off an iron cord in a tiny cube rising steeply above the ground not really on my list of favorite experiences… However, walking to the top would also have been bad times, soooo I guess laziness is a cure for fear?
Up at the top the view makes up for the terrifying ride. You can see just how enormous the lake is, all the surrounding peaks, which were covered in snow and back out into a valley behind the town. Just look at the photos. We also went luging, with this view, arguably a dangerous combo! Then simply haaad to have mulled wine to warm up 😉 still staring out at our surroundings. Not a bad way for Sara to spend her birthday!!

Lucky us, Kirke and George’s bus arrived in town, I think they were dressed as women when we saw them. Eye roll – They had found a few interesting characters on their new bus who we spent a bit of time with before regrettably leaving Queenstown.

The final part of our Kiwi journey took us to Lake Tekapo, Christchurch and Kaikoura. Flea was our driver and she was a real KE veteran. She knew incredible stories about all our previous drivers and kept us entertained on the long drives. The coach back up the country had far fewer passengers as lot’s of people choose to fly back up north. This is a mistake for sure as Lake Tekapo was just so divine. The accomodation is right on the Lake and has hot pools and an observatory right next door. In true KE style the cloud cover meant use of the Observatory was limited. We visited a famous chapel on the lake’s edge and relaxed in the beautiful hostel living area (definitely watched Bridget Jones – 1 and 2) Detoxing somewhat after Queenstown. I think its safe to mention 2 final characters who we actually met waaay back at the begining of our New Zealand adventure in Paihea – I think their real names were Lucy and Anna – but we knew them collectively as “SOS” because their catch phrase anytime there was the slightest drama (or non-drama) they would exclaim “SOS guys”. It entertained us greatly.

Christchurch – so everybody knows about the catastrophic earthquake here. The town has been unable to fully recover structurally for various reasons so the city centre is a strange mixture of big closed businesses that you can actually see through because the offices are empty and construction fences which have been decorated by artsy locals to brighten the atmosphere. We visited a memorial which consisted of a unique white chair for each person who died – this seems morbid but actually showed the strength of all the families who lost people during the earthquake – given the country’s comparatively small population the loss of these individuals affected NZ families everywhere. We only stopped here for one night and we quite relieved to leave.

Kaikoura should have topped off our NZ adventure with a terrific whale watching trip – choosing to visit NZ in the winter has its perks, beautiful snow, bigger waterfalls etc. But also much like the UK you don’t get many great weather days and our short but sweet stop here was lovely until a huge storm rolled in and cancelled our whale trip – we got over it and tracked down a seal colony instead.

The final few days drive back up north revisited Taupo and Rotorua where we sadly dropped off Teacher and had to say an emotional goodbye to our fave travel buddy 😦

When we finally reached Auckland again we were disappointed and downhearted to wave goodbye to the Big Green Friendly Bus. It was 100% necessary to shed some our winter layers and stock back up on cheap summer clothes before Fiji and the USA – this is how we ended up running into, drum roll please, Thailand Josh!! One of the first people we met on our big trip and there he was in a shop in Auckland buying a jumper. He dragged us off to the bar he was working in and in true Josh style talked non-stop about all the shocking situations he had gotten himself into – he looked like he had aged a few decades during his bike trip through Vietnam. Following this cutesy reunion we had chance to actually explore Auckland. The museum is probably the BEST I’ve ever been to – turns out there is more to the city than first meets the eye in the backpacker district.

So that seems to be it – 6 weeks, 24 stops and by far our favorite destination of all time.

New Zealand – WELL DONE