New Zealand.....I had high expectations for New Zealand and so far these appear to have been well-founded. We find we are saying "Wow" a lot: such a range of magnificent landscapes, always something to go "wow" about in just about any direction.
We're getting about in Mitsy Beastie the Mitshubishi campervan: a little older than your average campervan on the road, she splutters black fumes, crawls up the slightest gradients and consumes a rather alarming rate of fuel - this causes me occasional financial and environmental distress. However, it is great fun and very snug.

Some news from a few weeks ago is that Rob passed his nasty physics exams he wrote at the end of August, so that was cause for some celebration. Then night before last, at the foot of Aoraki Mount Cook (highest peak in Southern Alps) he had a job interview for a post in Pietermaritzburg. We weren't quite sure when to expect the call, so we were ready from 7pm (8 am South African time) and it came through at 11pm - in the last throws of a rather epic game of scrabble. He did really well, answering questions from a panel, sitting in our little capmervan under battery-operated lights.

Tonight we're in Milford Sound Fjord, and the rain is bucketing down. It rains most of the time here. Mitsy is parked next to a roaring river, across from which is some rainforest, with a sheer cliff backdrop hewn by glaciers, now with many waterfalls cascading down.... We will be watching the water level cautiously!

There are hardly any insects here, which is quite refreshing - not one in the long-drops, even! A great change from Aus, where we went camping and had to take it in turn to eat because the other was in charge of waving away the flies - we were blanketed by them! Anyway, the lack of insects means that most of New Zealands flowers are white: they have to rely on moths of pollenation, and moths come out at night, and they see white flowers better in the dark! Also not many animals in general (apart from sheep, of course). Camping in Aus, apart from the flies, we also had wallabies hopping around our tent. In NZ the only known native land-dwelling mammal is the bat!

Interesting facts, but my airtime is up.....