There is only one Lord of the Forest, and he does not share Paihia

Luckily we didn´t miss our ferry, and we rose and shone bright and early to climb aboard at 5.30am. Ych. It was pretty though:

After stocking up on books in Wellington´s Arty Bees bookshop we jumped back into Bill-the-Pony and headed north. We stopped at Waitomo glow worm caves, but we couldnt take any pictures of it. Check out it out here though.

Next on the agenda was seeing some enormous trees, so we stopped at the Kauri museum to find out about the brutes before we encountered them in the flesh/wood.

Matt´s second trip to the Kauri museum

Jen was terrorised by a plastic man asking if she wanted tea. HONESTLY!!!!

I think we are ready for the real thing now.

Tane Mahuta - Lord of the Forest

Phew that was a big tree! We found a pretty campsite next to Kai Iwi lake to rest up and reflect on it. 

We had just about time for a swift visit to the Bay of Islands before we had to head back to Auckland. We stopped for fish and chips along the way. Yum.

Chip stop! Gerrof my chips seagull

Paihia

After a lovely day at the beach we headed back to Auckland for what we thought was to be our final night in New Zealand. It was the last night of the Chinese new year celebrations, so we went to see the lantern display and fireworks in Albert Park.

We got up the next day ready to jump on a plane to Santiago, only to find out that the airport had been closed because of a huge earthquake! How inconsiderate. We found ourselves re-routed to Buenos Aires a week later. It was disappointing, but it meant we could catch up with our old pal Mark. You remember him, right? Here he is with Jenny being a statue:

The week sped by fairly swiftly with lots of visits to the park and swimming pool. We went to see a certain long-awaited movie at the Imax cinema, but we won´t say anything about that (betrayed sob). Then we had our 20 hour flight to Buenos Aires at 4.30am to look forward to...

Fox Glacier? Mint!

Straight off the ferry we drove to Kaikoura ready for some early morning Whale watching:

After such an early start, we decided to take it easy with a drive to Christchurch and a little bit of a sit in the park. The next day we took another scenic drive across the country via Arthur's Pass to Greymouth.

We're in glacier country now!

We viewed the Franz Joseph glacier from afar and it was spectacular, but we decided to get up close and personal with the Fox Glacier...

Brr shiver me timbers, lets move to warmer climes.

We continues down to Queenstown via Haast Pass (where we nearly got eaten alive) and Wanaka. Behold:

On  to Milford Sound:

Rohan?

Behind all this mist is Milford Sound. Apparently.

In Dunedin we found the Holy Land:

And we suddenly felt strangely at home, but something was different and we couldn't quite put our fingers on it...

We carried on our scenic route through Lord of the Rings country to Mount Cook.

Curiously round boulders...

We attempted to locate Mount Cook, but we think it had gone off somewhere with Milford Sound :(

There she might be!

We found ourselves back in Christchurch once more, but decided to take a quick daytrip. To Antarctica :)

Where we survived an Arctic storm

Saw penguins:

and rode in an all-terrain Hagglund

We had to leave then or we'd miss our ferry back to the North Island.