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Published: April 11th 2008
So the time has come to bid a sad farewell to the Kiwi's and thier wonderful country ... Holly and I (after changing our minds and flights twice in the past week) are flying out tomorrow into Sydney.
We spent the past week road tripping with an Aussie chef and his campervan. We first met Ryan on the Luge track (remember the plastic carts racing down a hill) then again in the hostel bar but it was not till Holly and I went out in ridiculous outfits for no reason (see photo somewhere) that Ryan actually thought we were cool enough to talk to! haha. We heard the words van, free space, going further south and chef and Holly adn I were sold! A drunken plan was made in teh wee hours of the morning to meet at 10am and discuss the plans - much to my surprise both parties remembered!
So begins our South of the south Island exploration. The first day we set off the Steward Island, probably the most southern point any of us will ever go, ( any one planning on visiting the South pole soon?) This was a fairly comical experience. There was one
bar and one hostel, one token drunk, one tasty restaurant and a lot of brids! There are these birds called Kia's which look like a cross between a parrot, an eagle and a fat chicken - quite scary!! We decided to go out for dinner, first sit down meal out we have had in NZ, very tasty wine poached blue cod! scrummy!! Anyway, sorry I'm deviating to food - as usual!!! The next day we decided to hire scooters, a very good place to learn to ride a scooter because there were pretty much no cars on the island and teh max speed our bikes got to was about 30km/hr! HOlly and I struggled to control the 50cc beasts in the first min or two but after that had a whale of a time!! we had matching jumpers (custom made) matching jeans (2-4-1 offer) matching scooters, matching helmets and matching perma-grins!! we looked cool!! hahah!!
The next day we headed back north, not much south of there, into teh Catlins, an visited a petrified forest. This forest, some of which was 180million years old, had been covered in volcanic ash then sunk below the sea now it's visible again
Lunch anyone?
We stopped for brie, stilton, french stick, sundried tomatoes, olives and ice cream... tough life eh?and the tree trunks are fossilised! quite cool really. We went for our daily walk generally up or down a hill to a waterfall or the like, then saw a sea Lion! yeay. Unfortunately we were not there at teh right time to see pingus 😞 We stayed the night in Omarua when Ryan the Chef insisted I cooked- I managed to burn the rice! go me!
The next day we set off north again and stopped off via a salmon farm, we bought a whole salmon (about 2 kgs) and Ryan expertly filleted it in the back of his campervan whilst we enjoyed the view of Mount Cook in the sunset...so pretty! After the night there we drove to Christchurch and he headed north, Holly and I are now really looking forward to hiring our own campervan in Oz, very excited about that!!
HOlly went whale watching yesterday and I had a chilled out day sorting stuff out, we're taking ourselves out to dinner for our last night in New Zealand tonight... Salsa bar watch out!!
hope you are all well
xxx
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Lauren
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I want to go!
HAHA! I was falling asleep to David Att a couple of days ago and he was talking about Stewart Island - made me want to go... and you've been... how cool!! Your travels seem to just get better and better... YEAY! Campervanning is Oz sounds awesome. Make sure you have good music for the long drives... hehe. MISS YOU. Take care, stay safe, xxx.