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Phew-wheee! Where do I start!? We've been touring through what Adam calls a chocolate box picure factory and have run out of synonyms for pretty! After the thermal wonderland we drove south through North Island's extremely pretty green grasslands, dotted with sheep and wonky fences, before sailing on a misty morning through the uniquely beautiful Malborough Sounds to South Island. We paused to taste some pretty good Kiwi wine on the East Coast (which made us appreciate our good fortune in having our excellent yet affordable Cape wines), before heading across to the west coast where forests of tree ferns add texture to the steep tree-lined slopes running down to the sea, which in turn is filled with wildly erroded sea stacks. The adjectives we used along the way ranged from awe inspiring to jaw dropping, exquisite and sublime, but soon degenerated to oohs, aahs and grunts of appreciation punctuated by drool and flappy hand movements. And that was before our first view of the southern alps - rain forest-covered slopes lining glacial valleys, some with the glaciers still occupying the higher regions, leading up to high craggy snow covered peaks. Now we are well ensconsed in one of the country's oldest hotels, spending our days going up and down snow covered slopes and using words that sound suspicioulsly like whaahoo!, whoopee, yippee and the like...


Early morning sun lights the summits of Mt Tasmin and Aoraki Mt Cook