For sale - one Toyota Super Custom Space Wagon (real name), mileage unknown (odometer no longer working), one fully electric window, central unlocking, aircon (no longer working), one watertight sunroof, one slightly leaky sunroof, brown vinyl interior, NSH.....



The New Zealand leg of our trip is drawing to a close, the van is up for sale here in Auckland, and we're shopping for winter woolies for South America. Since our last update we driven round the rest of the South Island and most of the North. These are some of the places we have been (none of which, for the benefit of email hackers, are in Africa, although we have found a
suitcase containing $10 million and need your bank account to stash it...we'll give you $2 million, honest.....)

Tunnel Beach, where we met Ralph and Margaret and David and Doreen for tea. Ralph and Margaret very kindly spoiled us rotten much later on when we met them in Nelson and Margaret's date loaf takes first prize in pretty much anything....that is Sarah on the top of the rock....



Slope Point, the windy bottom of the South Island..



and the view behind..



Nugget Point lighthouse...



Choir practice..



Handbags at dawn..



Slightly more serious handbags..



Photographer trying to avoid going the extra yard...



Monkey Island near Invercargill...









Laundry day..



Lake Gunn



and the glorious Milford Sound..



The Fox Glacier Mint..



Lake Wanaka



and the hills above it..





One of our favourite camping spots at Moke Lake near Queenstown





Knife-making...really







And Sarah's new hobby....



Onwards to Golden Bay and our new holiday home by the sea...



Then Nelson (NZ Date Loaf capital) and a roundabout route to Picton to the ferry to Wellington and a great wine cellar belonging to CS-host Peter. Sarah in the Pinnacles right in the south of the North Island...



Hot water stream at Kerosene Creek near Rotorua. Like a hot bath. Very strange.





We joined up with Joe and Laura (first of Laos fame and then Xmas in Cambodia) to do some round-the-campfire wilderness parking...



Not a bad view for a camp site...



Marshmallows on a stick



The four of us also did seven-hour Tongariro Alpine Crossing. One of New Zealand's best walks, reputedly, although restricted views on the day we did it....













The weather did improve towards the end of the day although the temperatures didn't..



We left Joe and Laura to head east and follow the coast round the East Cape..



on to the Coromandel Peninsula and then to Auckland. We fly to South America in a few days, assuming the volcanic ash has not spread this far....will be in touch from deepest darkest Peru, or somewhere....