After early morning on board the Milford Mariner, we disembarked to retrieve Busby from his overnight car park. (Actually, it was a coach park so his personal space was accordingly larger.) We headed back along the road towards first, Te…

Our Milford Sound overnight cruise was one from Francine’s bucket list. She’d booked it back in February. At 16:00, our check-in time, the nice folks opened up the bus parking area (the buses now had departed) for overnighters car parking.…

And so we approach the main event. Francine booked our overnight cruise aboard the Milford Mariner on Milford Sound way back in February; some dates were full even then. The cruise was tonight. Today we made our way from Te…

Our Wanaka Top 10 campsite left a little to be desired – all soap dispensers in the washrooms empty, for example – but it was quite well situated as we left to visit the shores of Lake Wanaka itself. We…

Franz Josef Glacier Township must be one of the noisiest places on the planet. Living under the flight path of Heathrow is mere drone compared to Franz Josef. We awoke to a beautifully clear morning, the campsite being overlooked by…

Today we planned to drive down the west coast road from Carters Beach (nr. Westport) to Franz Josef Glacier Township. There was an initially threateningly black cloud bank above us but this cleared to sunny intervals as the morning progressed.…

‘T was time to move on. Three nights in one place on a touring holiday? Ridiculous. We had to make tracks towards a reservation for an overnight cruise in Milford Sound boarding the coming Monday afternoon. To do that, we’d…

My crossed fingers didn’t work; the morning dawned just as grey as yesterday’s evening. “Bother!”, said Pooh, crossly. We’re at this campsite for two nights to give us time to say hello to an old acquaintance from Australia 16 years…

Today we waved goodbye to North Island, taking the Interislander Ferry [which Kiwi Satnav insisted on pronouncing Inter-is-lander] from Wellington to Picton on South Island. Our latest check-in time was 08:00 and we’d be warned of heavy traffic on a…

Morning dawned calmer but mizzly. The mizzle soon turned to rain and we began our 300km journey to Wellington in the clouds, which were trying to drift along below our 800m altitude. Busby’s temperature read 7°C. Yuk! We’d made the…