Sealy Tarns Trail

Up early and cooked breakie ready for the hike ahead.

Drove into the park and set off on the trail. Started pretty easy with Mt. Cook
in our sights then trail turned off to the left and then up, up, up for over an hour and a half. VERY steep. Missed the right path near the top and ended up climbing over rocks and skree and made it to the top where there was a little lake. We were greeted by a lady hiker who was surprised we arrived from the direction we did saying that everyone else came for over there as she pointed to an obvious trail to the right. Yeah whatever!

Fab views of the mountain and the blue blue lakes from the top :))

Sending bunnies to see Frith and a bobbly night

So our first night in Mt. Cook National Park. Drove into the village for dinner with a view of the mountain - nice :)

On the drive back hundreds of rabbits all over the road - well hundreds minus the one which went under our front right wheel!

Set up the bed in the camper only to find there was no bedding - argh! Spent the night wrapped in sarongs with fleeces for pillows. Slept anyway as we were pooped.

Journey to Mt. Cook

6 hour drive to Mt. Cook. The grassy plains all covered in purple, mauve, pink, red, cream and white lupins - quite a sight actually. Arrived in Mt. Cook and settled in to our new mobile home. Had dinner up in the national park overlooking the mountains - fabulous!

The realities of camping are slowly sinking in though as things are probably going to be pretty basic - ewwww :(

Can't believe we were waving flags in Tokyo yesterday.

Looking forward to some hiking tomorrow now as the scenery is stunning :)

Time for some camping about

Arrived in New Zealand 10am after not too bad a flight actually - quite impressed with Air NZ really. Also the 4 hour time difference actually worked in our favour and corrected our screwed up body clocks.

Just picked up the camper van which took ages and now heading off from Christchurch.

IT'S WARM HERE! Hurray :)

Bye bye Japan

Got to the airport and used our remaining change for one last exorbitant beer.

Weird to be flying somewhere else now rather than coming home. Here comes another holiday :)

Meeting the Emporer

January 2nd and amazingly it's one of only 2 days in the year when the Royal family greet the public. Couldn't possibly miss such an opportunity so up with the larks and to the Imperial Palace for more Japanese style herding and mass crowd control and we were in the grounds with every other Tokyo-ite waving our paper Japanese flags with the best of them!

Yet another experience to round off our stay.

Getting the hang of it

Well the city pretty much shut down for New Year making the search for dinner harder than it needed to be.

Found great place and managed to order all on our own. Sliced beef (rare) salad and a tofu and tomato salad was delicious and of course the obvious accompaniment being fish and chips with a curry mayonnaise! Don't laugh - all the Japanese were eating it so it wasn't a case of Brits abroad!

Left quite proud of ourselves for ordering a good meal not involving insects, raw fish, horse or entrails.