Our tour resumed with a three and a half hour ferry crossing to the South Island and at last we arrived at Picton, the gateway to New Zealand’s majestic South, where the landscape was already much more dramatic than in the North with braided rivers, orchards and snowy mountains.

Our bus was now full, with lots of new people hopping on having spent extra days in Wellington and unsurprisingly, quite a few of them seemed rather stunned by Brad’s strict regime and customary cheerful nature. As per he was on top form keeping us rolling with fun facts such as exactly how many men died in the mining disaster in the small town we happened to be passing through and Gordon Ramsey-esque tirades of ‘ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!’, ‘WERE YOU ASLEEP?!!!’ and ‘WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO STACK A BUS?!*’. I like to think he had a special love/loathing reserved for those of us who had been with him all the way from Hot Water Beach, but that still didn’t spare us from fun conversations that usually went something like:

Passenger: ‘Hi Brad, is there a cashpoint in town?’

Brad: ‘DO I NEED TO CALL YOUR MOTHER TO COME AND PICK YOU UP?! I THOUGHT YOU GUYS WERE MEANT TO BE ADULTS’

The first South Island stop was Kaiteriteri near Abel Tasman park, where we checked into a beachside lodge. While the views were nice, there was very little to do and for the boys it immediately went down as a Tripadvisor ‘Poor’ for shutting its bar and kitchen at 10pm, leaving them listlessly wandering the corridors in search of alcohol and amusement now that ‘chopping pints’ was no longer an option. Eventually they settled for more mature pastimes such as wrestling and ‘knock and run’, probably further damaging the hostel’s online reputation.

The next morning, I woke up early to catch the Aqua Taxi that would take myself and other keen Kiwi passengers across the bay via Split Apple Rock and into Abel Tasman Park for an hour and a half’s walk.



It was really sunny and beautifully deserted as the skipper dropped us off on the beach and we struck out into the woods, heading for a lookout point. It was a great start to the day as it felt like we were the only people for miles around (an illusion shattered as we got back to the pick up point by the arrival of a swarm of Australian school children) and it was a really quick way to see the best of the Abel Tasman area.

Not long after our return, we were bundled onto the bus ready to continue our Southward journey to our next stop of Westport. On the way we called in at the beautiful Lake Rotoiti, a tranquil Lord of The Rings-esque gem slightly undermined by the large tangle of huge black eels living under the jetty.

It was absolutely freezing, but that didn’t stop us doing what tourists do best, that is running off the bus, queueing to take one picture of the ‘deserted’ lake and quickly hopping back on again, while others amused themselves in a calm and ecologically responsible way by trying to throw stones at the eels and threatening to drop kick the resident ducks**. Defeated by the cold and with SD cards full of hundreds of photos of ourselves standing by the lake as if we were the first and not the fifteenth person in line, we clambered back on the bus.

Our overnight stay in Westport was another uneventful stopover, predominantly spent brainstorming costume ideas for tomorrow’s notorious Kiwi Experience fancy dress party at Lake Mahinapua.

Brad had decided on ‘Something Beginning With P’ as the theme, a big hit with the boys who were excited by anything that allowed them to dress up as paedophiles, penises or poo and he had primed us to get thinking about cheap and creative costume ideas, claiming the more tasteless the better, revealing that there would be a free Queenstown canyon swing for the best dressed.

With this in mind, our scheduled stop off at The Warehouse (a Kiwi hybrid of Homebase, Tesco and Matalan, prime hunting ground for cheap costume materials) turned into a high pressure mission, with the ‘Something Beginning with P’ rapidly becoming ‘panic’. Having considered various costume options including Posh Spice (which seemed to have become my label for this trip with my plummy home counties accent) Princess Anne and Pitbull, I finally decided that a generic princess costume would do, making the shrewd purchase of a child’s tiara.

As soon as we checked in at Lake Mahinapua, a cosy pub owned by the bus company that seemed to be exclusively dedicated to dressing up and getting hammered, we knew this would be a great evening. Our enthusiastic hostess pointed out the pictures of Kiwi Buses gone by that covered the walls, directing us to the bar, hot tubs and costume room littered with pieces bequeathed to us by previous Kiwi-bussers and we quickly got stuck in either hunting for extra accessories or leaping into the hot tubs.

After a delicious slap up roast, which probably came at the right time as many people seemed to be challenging themselves as to how quickly they could get rickets or scurvy, interpreting ‘Five A Day’ as five different flavours of Pot Noodle, we raced off to get ready for the evening’s festivities.

I feel we did ourselves proud with our wide variety of costumes, which ranged from Popes to paedophiles to pineapples to the more abstract ‘Poofvengers’, which consisted of handbags, lycra, limp wrists and Captain America/Hulk/Thor masks. Particular praise goes to Robbie, who won, by covering himself in wrapping paper and going as a present, his costume probably serving as a metaphor for the night as his previously neat wrapping became more and more dishevelled as the night went on, leaving him pretty much unwrapped by the end. Even good old Brad dressed up (I suggested he go as his favourite thing, punctuality and he glared at me) his costume involving a kilt, a santa beard and a racoon hat- if anyone can decipher what he was please get in touch.

The party definitely goes down as one of my Kiwi highlights, as it allowed us all to let loose and relive the glory days of school discos with its playlist of Bieber, Backstreet Boys and Shakira as well as forcing us to mingle with people we hadn’t yet got to know.

This is where I met Kate, who I befriended/ fell in love with helping her extricate herself from her pot plant costume in the toilets and Beth, who helped me execute a raid on my room to retrieve a late night cereal bar. Seeing that the light was on, odd given that everyone else was at the party and hearing the TV on loud I suspected there might be saucy shenanigans going on in there, with Beth kindly offering to join me for moral support in my quest for sustenance. Fortunately it was a false alarm- yes we did scream ‘ PUT SOME CLOTHES ON WE’RE COMING IN! 3-2-1’ at an empty room, but at least I came out with a snack and a new friend.

Having finally got to bed in the small hours of the morning, exhausted from dancing the night away, it was a shock to have to get up on time the next day and with bags in our hands and under our eyes, we stomped out to the bus and promptly fell asleep once onboard.

We reached Franz Josef, home to the famous glacier around midday and for once, stuck to our word of having ‘A Quiet Night In’. Here I went to a pizza party, where I had the pleasant surprise***of bumping into my lovely friend Tania who I met in Fiji, and also experienced the adventure of heading off on a hike to see the Franz Josef glacier, bravely fording a fast flowing river only for the heavens to open and park rangers to close the trail, turning us around and sending us back to wait for the bus in the driving rain.

Not so nice surprises in Franz Josef included coming back from said walk shivering and dripping only to find that the hostel tumble dryers were faulty and being woken up one night by the sweet melody of ‘INTERNATIONAL COCK OR BALL’ from outside my room and the scourge that is hostel shaggers inside my room.

Having knocked over my suitcase on their way in, the two lovers ploughed on (quite literally) despite the fact I been coughing like a bubonic plague victim to alert them of my presence and I stewed in bed, wondering if it would be better to hide, run away, or put on my shoes, shut my eyes, stand in the middle of the room, click my heels and scream ‘THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME’ in the hope that I would wake up in my bed to find this had all been a horrible dream.

In the end, I covered myself with a blanket, eyes closed and ears blocked, distracting myself with dilemmas such as given the chance who would I slaughter first, Romeo and Juliet on the top bunk or the noisy members of the International Cock or Ball Society.

By some miracle, sleep came and took me and it was quite a relief to move to beautiful Wanaka the next morning. After a bracing walk round the lake to spot the famous submerged Wanaka tree, which turned out to be a glorified twig, the trauma of last night had faded to a memory and it seemed that there was lots of fun to be had at that evening’s hostel karaoke competition. This included a skydive as a prize, an earsplitting but enthusiastic version of ‘Sweet Caroline’, a very intense heavy metal song in German and a beautiful rendition of ‘Let It Go’ by our very own Sarah and Britt, complete with interpretive dance (which still should have won).

We left the next day for Queenstown, via possibly the most questionable attraction in New Zealand, where you pay to do puzzles, look in some whacky rooms and go round a maze. Outraged, we camped out in the café, eyeballing the staff as we refused to pay the extortionate entry fee and took advantage of the free puzzles out on the tables.

Having bonded last night at the karaoke evening, Becki and I sat down to do a puzzle, quickly finding it to be far more addictive and stressful than we had anticipated. We called over one of the assistants, kicking off when she claimed we had reached ‘a maximum number of hints’ (it’s not the war, why are they rationed?!), chasing her around the room begging for further assistance and despairing as she wasted our precious puzzle-solving time by scurrying away to show us her ‘favourite puzzle’.

As Brad called for us to board the bus we were very het up and egged on by Becki (who always loves making me look socially inept) I yelled at the whole room to be quiet so we could solve it in peace, my apologies to the very startled Asian tourists who were minding their own business, I hope you had a wonderful day out at such a top attraction.

As we saw Brad closing in, we opted to take a picture of the puzzle to attempt to complete it later, needing a real fruit ice cream at the next stop to calm down.

Will we ever solve the puzzle? Will we ever reach Queenstown? Find out in the next instalment coming very soon…

*The correct answer is no one but Brad, why this essential life skill isn’t taught at school i’ll never know.

** I would like to clarify that I had no part in this and fully condemn this behaviour

***although not as surprising as Jonathan