Sounds great Ann, I see you have missed out Kaikoura and the whale watching.

I see you have missed out Kaikoura and the whale watching>>

i know, but something had to go. once we'd decided to catch the pm ferry from Wellington to Picton, it made getting to Kaikoura that night too difficult; I suppose that we could stay near Blenheim and drive down to Kaikoura in the morning, then back to Nelson at night, but that's a lot of driving. I suppose it remains a possibility but in the you have to accept you can't do everything.

I know how hard you've worked on this itinerary, so no comments from me other than to point out that QT to Mt Cook is closer to 3:45.

I hope you enjoy your trip. Do let me know how the kiwi tour goes - we had to cancel ours, but we did see a live kiwi in the National Wildlife Center in Hokitika. It was win-win, because the weather was nasty in Hoki, so it was the perfect indoor activity and it freed us up to spend several relaxing hours in the hot pools at Franz Josef instead.

I've just started my trip report for my 30 day visit - will post as I go.

Melnq have you read about the young Canadian couple who went missing in the flooding last week? The police think their rental car was caught in a landslide when they were driving through the Haast Pass on their way to Queenstown.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9177...ssing-tourists

No, I hadn't heard about that nelsonian - how horrible. It hits very, very close to home as we drove Haast Pass two days before and the weather was pretty miserable then.

nelsonian, that's so sad. I saw some of the pictures of the landslips on the road to Milford Sound where they were trying to ascertain if anyone was underneath it all, but didn't realise it had happened at Haast too.

one of the problems of touring NZ especially in the west of south Island appears to be that due to geography, there is really only one road - so no bad weather alternative except to stay put. Melnq8 - I have taken on board everything you've said about driving times and am fully prepared for some of our "driving days" to take all day, which is partly why we have booked accommodation in advance so that we don't spend/waste time having to find somewhere at the end of the day. of course I will report back and fully intend to inflict a trip report on you all in due course.

my main problem at the moment - due to a most counter-intuituve car hire website, we ended up with firstly 2 cars to drive home from LHR at the end of the trip, now I appear somehow to have cancelled both of them. exceedingly irritating. just think - due to the wonder that is the internet, we can book tickets for test matches on the other side of the world, find hotels in deepest Coromandel, find a wildlife expert in Queensland, but we can't book a car to get us home at the end of the trip.

but I suppose that compared to the heart-ache of the family of that Canadian couple, i haven't got much to grumble about, really.

melnq8 - please start your TR soon - preferably in enough time for me to read it before we set off on our trip!

annhig -

I've started it, but have a very long way to go yet. Will post the first installment soon.

just found it, Melnq - going to start reading NOW!

It is often foggy or rainy in Greymouth and on the Franz Joseph Glacier. Don't lock yourself in in case you decide to eliminate this. I took the Tranzalpine back and forth from Greymouth. It was overcast, but I was there in September. I did not plan on Franz Joseph but simply returned on the train. It would not have been a good day for the glacier anyway.

I did a 2 week home exchange in Christchurch just before the first earthquake in September 2011. Christchurch itself is not very interesting (less so since the earthquake). I flew back to Queenstown from Milford Sound and that was the highlight of my trip. I also got some great photos of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tongarino (both normally cloud covered, but I got lucky).

Roads are very slow. Every time you get up the least bit of speed, there is a one lane bridge.

lauren - thanks for dropping into my thread but as you might have gathered had you read it all, we've already been and come back - the trip was last Nov/Dec.

we were lucky in that we hit no fog at all, and the day we were in Fox on the glacier was hot and sunny. It got a bit rainy after that, but being british, we were used to it.