A Holiday from Holidaying?

So Aussie boyfriend and my parents (who he's never met before) in a camper van for 2 weeks... Sounds like a recipe for disaster? Apparently not. Although I wonder whether I should be concerned that my father and my boyfriend were ganging up on me within a few days....

It's amazing how fast a bit of travelling goes compared to 2 weeks in a call centre... We cruised down to Queenstown (where we tried the famous Fergburger, and Matt tried to eat a burger bigger than his head), and spectacularly managed to escape without having been dangled head-first over a river from a great height. Twice. I feel that this is somewhat of an achievement. From Queenstown we headed south to Milford Sound to experience what New Zealand has to offer at its' grandest scale: sandflies and rain. Of course there were also spectacular waterfalls (it didn't stop raining the whole time there), seals and penguins and a hair-raising drive there - made even more terrifying by the fact that the guy driving us through the hair-pin bends hadn't seen a mountain until two days previously.

We dragged our rather sodden selves back towards Queenstown and headed towards the West Coast (renowned for being the "wet" side of the South Island) with a feeling of dread. It was somewhere in the Haast Pass that me and Matt discovered that our tent wasn't sandfly-proof. Actually I did most of the discovering. Apparently I am rather tastier than Matt to the locals of Haast...

Along the West Coast we discovered... warm weather and glorious sunshine! As well as hair-raising drives, and a days glacier hike on the Fox glacier (enjoyed by at least three of our party). We eventually headed up to the Abel Tasman National Park where we found serene beaches, warm sunny days, golden beaches, calm, clear and deceptively cold sea, as well as seals and abundant wildlife (sandflies being particularly abundant, but fortunately for me deciding that Matt was dish-of-the-day). I also discovered the advantages of going in a dual kayak with your over-energetic boyfriend. And then we discovered that our tent wasn't waterproof...

So now back in Christchurch, back at work, but at least now in a house instead of a hostel. back to real life, just on the other side of the world...