New Zealand

• Floating in a South Sea bubble - Cook Islands
• A Fling with Fiji - Fiji
• On Location - New Zealand
• Wonder Walk - Roaring Burn
• 6 of the best - New Zealand
• Stein on wine, Kiwi style - New Zealand
• Singing the Praises - New Zealand
• No frills? Not us! No expense spared - New Zealand
• Geyserland! - Rotorua
• A perfect 10 for Polynesia - Tahiti

WE DECIDED TO SPEND A HOLIDAY ‘SKI-ing’. No, not sliding down a mountainside. This was Spending the Kids’ Inheritance.

Like the Alpine pursuit, it seemed fraught with danger. In these rocky financial times, was it really wise to blow such a huge chunk of hard-earned cash?

We decided: Why not? As so many of our friends told us, you can’t take it with you.

Short of cataclysmic financial meltdown, our 20-year-old son Nick is almost certain to be reasonably secure no matter how much we leave him – or how little. So we decided to think big - and go to New Zealand. In style.

Mrs S thought we should start as we intended to go on. So with a six-hour stopover in Hong Kong, she booked a chauffeur to show us the sights.

Mr Chen was straight out of central casting. He drove a big flash car and brought with him champagne and canapes. Ruinously expensive, but what the hell? We’ve earned it we assured ourselves as we reached the peak of Victoria Summit to view a misty Hong Kong Harbour and, across the water, Kowloon.

Then off to wander around Stanley Market, eye the beach at Discovery Bay and round it off with drinks at the Mandarin Hotel, gazing in awe at the neon-illuminated night sky.

A chance to reminisce

Next stop New Zealand and the ever-so-British town of Christchurch. Like the rest of South Island, Christchurch has a charm reminiscent of our generation’s childhood. Or those bits of it we choose to remember.

No graffiti, no vandalised shops, no lager louts. Not even much traffic. And, most important of all, nice, polite people.

Like Wynn, one of the city’s official hostesses employed to wander around Cathedral Square making sure you are enjoying yourselves.

It’s chock-a-block with Brits, especially people like us spending part of their kids’ inheritance.

Queenstown couldn’t be more different. Where Christchurch has gentle hills and genteel botanical gardens, Queenstown has dramatic mountains sweeping down to a 54-mile-long lake. This is Lord Of The Rings territory, where so much of it was shot.

Dramatic, visually arresting and full of young people. It’s a hitchhikers’ Mecca, where the adventurous can bungee-jump, go white-water rafting or ski by day and dance until dawn.

‘Aspen on Acid’ is how Pete Hitchman described it. Pete is a former Duran Duran bodyguard who gave up his rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle to take old wrecks like us on ten-mile walks through Mount Aspiring National Park.

There were moments, as we clambered up the slopes, that I thought Nick might be inheriting sooner than any of us thought.

Remarkable mountains

We survived to enjoy the biggest and most expensive treat of all: a helicopter ride out of Queenstown, over the gorgeous Lake Wakatipa – caressing the so aptly-named Remarkable Mountains – down stunning Milford Sound and up by deserted beaches of the island’s west coast.

Jason, our pilot, asked if we minded landing on a beach below to take supplies to his mate ‘Sprouty’ (he is long and thin like a beansprout), an artist who lives with his wife and two children in a seaside shack.

There are no roads and they are five days’ walk from the nearest civilisation. They have no TV, just an old radio on which they listen to the news. The teenagers are educated through correspondence courses and rarely see youngsters their own age.

What will their inheritance be, we ponder as we leave with a list of shopping essentials Jason can drop in next time he pops by.

Then we head north for the second section of our ultimate helicopter ride.

It takes us from Franz Joseph, a town with so many helicopters it looks like a scene from M*A*S*H, up 12,000ft round the snow-clad peak of Mount Cook and down the spectacular Fox Glacier where you can see the more adventurous souls heli-skiing.

Our helicopter ride is an unforgettable experience, rounded off with a picnic in a hanging valley surrounded by waterfalls cascading from glaciers on Mount Earnslaw.

There are so many sensational sights and sounds on South Island you almost run out of superlatives. And the sea provides even more.

The personal touch

Like the hundreds of tiny blue penguins that waddle out of the water after dark at Oamaru, an intriguing old port. Even the penguins were outshone by the whales and the dolphins off the delightful seaside town of Kaikoura.

In just over two hours on a whale-watching trip that cost us £45 each, we came within 100 yards of two giant sperm whales taking a rest between dives, and fur seals sunbathing on rocks.

But by far the best entertainers were the dolphins, at least 200 of them frolicking alongside our boat.

South Island has a vast array of hotels but we opted for the personal touch, staying at lodges such as the delightful Remarkables Lodge just outside Queenstown, run by Brits Brian and Colleen.

Another we chose, up amid the vineyards and olive groves of Marlborough country, was the Peppertree, a lovely Edwardian villa run by a Swiss couple, Heidi and Werner. And at Wanaka – another must-see for its lakes and mountains – we really did spoil ourselves at the Whare Kea Lodge, an exclusive six-bedroom bolthole once favoured, it’s rumoured, by Tom Cruise.

Food was generally very good and in one instance sensational. Fleur’s Place is a corrugated iron hut overlooking the ocean at the tiny fishing village of Moeraki between Oamaru and Dunedin. It’s run by the charming Fleur, who takes her fish right out of the water alongside. It is, quite simply, the best fish restaurant I have ever eaten in.

And at £20 a head, including wine, it was also great value.

On the way back, we had a brief glimpse of North Island staying with friends near Omaha Beach - a sweeping bay of golden sands two hours’ drive north of Auckland.

It too looked gorgeous. Maybe next year we will take another slice out of the son’s inheritance and explore there. Sorry, Nick. .