Welcome to New Zealand!

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Hellloooo!

Thanks for all your messages!! And sorry for the long delay in writing, we've been busy! We've put up loads of pictures of our caravan so that you can see the 4 walls and wheels we'll be looking at for the next 31 days!

The caravan was a bit daunting (for me, Eric's done it before!) at first, just the thought of everything being within 2 square metres, but it is pretty cool, and I've decorated it with pictures and cards from home. Had loads of lovely cooked meals - we christened the van with chicken fajitas (what else?) and bought some eggs for Sunday breakfast! The caravan is brilliant - we have no restrictions on what bus we have to catch or where we have to be each night for reservations. Only downside is that if it's pouring with rain (as it was the first 2 nights) then we're woken up a couple of times in the night.

We spent a few days in Queenstown (see seperate entry), but also visited Glenorchy and Arrowtown.

Glenorchy "doesn't have much to do on a weekday" (guy behind the tourist information desk!) so we just drove up to a forest that was used as the walking trees in Lord of the Rings. There's loads of tours that can be done following the film set of LOTR, but unless you know the films off by heart it's easier just to admire the scenery and know that random places were used in the films. We also found out that the campsite we'd stayed at the night before (well we stayed in a clearing on the road down to the campsite), called 12 Mile Delta was also used.

The scenery is absolutely amazing here, nothing like England or anywhere in Europe. It's full of awesome mountains and valleys (some that we have to drive over/through), and because it's the beginning of autumn the trees are turning bright red and yellow. It's gorgeous!

Arrowtown is a Western-style town that made its money from all the gold that was found by the river. There was an old Chinese settlement that we visited (they came here for the gold). We decided to do a bit of goldpanning ourselves - you never know we might've found the golden carrot right here in Arrowtown! But we didn't. But we're still looking!

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