New Zealand: The Journey Begins.

This epic journey began a long time ago. We started to discuss ideas for travel towards the end of last year. The wedding of Rachel and Simon in August gave us our starting place and we gradually came to our itinerary from there. We had each drawn up a list of countries that we wanted to visit, then put our lists together and ended up with our penultimate draft itinerary. The final version was down to the genius of Cameron at STA Travel in Cashel Street, Christchurch.

The preparations began in earnest early this year with our application for a year of unpaid leave being successful (thank you Maureen). From there a steady stream of jobs began; getting vaccinations, packing, renewing passports, arranging storage, redirecting post, selling vehicles, medical and dental checks and paying bills various. If a journey begins at the point you decide to travel then this has already been a fairly long trip and we haven't yet left Christchurch at the time of writing.

The penultimate weekend in Franz Josef was very special. For my birthday Jackie arranged for me to fly up to the Almer Mountain hut at the top of the Franz Josef Glacier. My guide for the overnight stop was Rangi Tinirau, highly respected local alpine guide for many years.

Rangi pointed out the routes that he had used to guide groups across the mountains to Mount Cook/Aoraki village as well as explaining some of the Maori history and legends of the area.

My own gear wasn't up to the alpine conditions so thanks to Mike and Julie Charles and Gabe Wilkinson for warm and waterproof kit. A truly amazing 24 hours in the company of Rangi and in the middle of these magnificent mountains. Our conversation long into the night was guided by a certain Dr Johnnie Walker (RL); essential really as the hut has no heating at all!

A steady week of getting the clinic ready to hand over to the excellent Megan and getting the remainder of the packing and cleaning done culminated in a great get together at Beeches Restaurant (thank you Greer, Raima and Jason and everybody in Franz Josef for your generosity and good wishes) which gave us the opportunity to say 'bye for now' to the excellent people of the Franz Josef community. Thanks also to Rosie and the crew from St John Ambulance (award winning) volunteers for a lovely meal and gift. However beautiful the scenery in South Westland is (and we're talking World Heritage Centre here) I am reminded of the (translated) quote from Maori oratory "What is the greatest thing? 'tis people, 'tis people, 'tis people." A last pint (or was it two) at The Landing with Phil and Jamie and then off to bed in Franz Josef for the last time for a while. We will be closely linked to Franz Josef by the lovely gift of pounamu pendants carved by Steve Henery. This is South Westland pounamu and it knows its home.

On Tuesday early morning we headed across to Christchurch pausing only to borrow some snow chains for the very icy trip across Arthur's Pass and Porter's Pass (thanks Chris and Cushla).

This drive across the mountains and the weekend in Almer Hut with Rangi raised a few questions about why travel when this is all here? Sometimes questions like that aren't easily answered. Our last contact with Franz Josef was on Tuesday afternoon when Marcel, Wendy, Ben and Jade Fekkes kindly delivered the last load of our belongings for storage in Christchurch.

Not too many dilemas on the journey across to Christchurch. We made the usual stop at the excellent Sheffield Pie Shop for some health food - the venison pies are sensational - and then over to Gemma and Matt's place in New Brighton for the final preparations before flying out to the UK on the next leg of this epic voyage.