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Published: July 13th 2008
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Campervan of Love
Our home for 8 weeks.......Nice paint job. When landing at Christchurch we thought the plane had made a wrong turn and dropped us off in England, the similarities were unbelievable, even down to the houses, cars and road markings. It was nice to have traditional food again......like spuds and pies to the spicy asian grog we had become accustomed too!!!! Having to go food shopping after so long was shock deciding what to decide what to buy and an even bigger shock when it came to paying with the prices being comparible to England. It was at that point we knew that our budget was going to be blown here. Having a proper meaningful conversation with locals, was also a novelty.
After 6 months of sunshine it was a bit of a shock to land in NZ in the middle of there winter, where it was dropping to around - 5 degrees at night, needless to say our bikinis and shorts were quickly replaced for fleeces and combats and warm woolley socks. This meant stocking up at the local shops which made Mr Wallet (and Dan) really un-happy!!!!
The camping facilities are fantastic with hot showers, kitchens, TV rooms and power for the vans so that
Smashing ehh?
Jens poor navigation........ we don't freeze at night, all though we have woken up with our heads frozen to the pillow a few times..............Its all part of the experience, we keep telling ourselves!!!
Our home whilst in New Zealand (thats 1/12 of a year so far!!!) has been a converted Toyota HiAce called Maus, with trendy tastfull artwork on the sides........as you can see from pictures.........Dan was not too impressed, but as time went on she grew on us.....like a hole in the head. Dan loved the thing so much that within 24 hours of having it he reversed it into a tree (accidently!!!) and put the rear window through, $330 later and a 3 hour drive back to Christchurch for a new one we once again set off on our journey with Dan obviously trying to blame the navigator (Jen!!) for the mishap (like thats ever going to work!!!!).
The country is fantastic, we can't help but love the place as you are constantly driving through amazing scenery and there are endless things to see and do, mostly for free. We have done alot of walks, but there are plenty more left. The landscape is stunning and so changable. One
minute were driving along a sunny coastal path surrounded by beautiful beaches and snow capped mountains, then were driving in snow chains through alpine roads surrounded by snow topped fern trees, and then through deserted barron bushland, where the only thing you'll see for hours are dead possums. Add in virgin rainforest, glaciers, live volcanoes, thermal springs and desert and you should get the idea of the diverse the landscape is.
There are 2 glaciers in New Zealand that are accessible to explore, the Franz Josef and the Fox.We opted to take a helicopter ride onto the Fox glacier, which is on the west coast of the island. The ride was an awesome experience in itself with our pilot showing off his flying skills by flying over the glacier and then diving into a waterfall which entered the glacier. Jen had the simple job of taking a few photos of the ride as she got to sit in the front seat next to the pilot, but as no photos have been published onto the blog you can guess the outcome (she said he was flying to fast!!). He then dropped us off halfway up on top of the glacier
Franz Josef Glacier
A little bit of Glacier.... face and armed with crampons on our feet and ice axe in hand we set off to explore. We found ices caves, deep crevasse's and underwater rivers, it was an amazing experience exploring it, but it was bloody cold.
We then headed south towards the ski fields of Wanaka and Queenstown, which has a reputation in its own right for skiing, partying and adrenaline rides. On reaching Wanaka we were dissapointed to find out that due to the warm weather the ski fields had no snow, but soon got over it as we decided to book tickets to watch the All Blacks against England rugby test back in Christchurch. As you probably saw, the game was a bit disappointing but the atmosphere was amazing and the English support was out in full force, singing, drinking and annoying the locals.
The game meant we had to miss out the south of the island but it leaves us something to do on our next trip as we will definately coming back here. We did manage to see Mt Cook, the highest mountain in NZ and do a few walks through the mountains to see some glacier lakes. The Tasman glacier
was especially worth the 20 minute uphill hike where we found a lake full of huge icebergs, which had broken off from the glacier face, something we only ever imagined to see in the Antarctic.
From Christchurch we headed north to Kaikoura where we took a trip into the pacific ocean whale watching. We encountered two Sperm whales, which inhabit the coast year round and two Humpback which migrate to the area during the winter months. It was amazing to see, they were massive, around 15 metres long. We also spoke to a few locals who told us about a local "secret" where loads of seal pups swim up a stream from the sea and play in a waterfall. We hunted this out and spent hours watching and playing with the baby seals, it was amazing. Dan was in his element teasing them, they didnt seem to mind though. They were really tame and curious, and came really close....a bit too close sometimes!! oh it was quite a nice waterfall aswell!!
A few other really lovely places were at the north of the island, we went to a great national reserve called Abel Tasman that has bay up
Fox Glacier
First Steps on bay of isolated beaches, where you can do a 6-8 day walk to explore them all, we did a few bays in a couple of hours, plenty long enough for us! Nearby was a salmon farm where Dan caught our dinner, a 1.5 pound beauty, then he lobbed it on its head with mallet and gave it to the owner to hot smoke for our dinner (he's fitting in quite well here). It was absolutely delicious and doesn't come much fresher than that!
We went all the way to the most northern point of the South Island to a place called Farewell Spit, which is where a lot of whales get beached in summer. There was a beautiful beach called Wharariki beach with big sand dunes, caves and seals playing in the stream, it was amazing.
And finally to finish off the South Island we visited Marlborough, the wine capital of New Zealand, about 50 vineyards in total. We decided to do a tour as we thought we best not drive with so many around!!! It was a good job we didn't as in a half day tour we visited 5 vineyards and tasted 36 different wines,
of course we didn't spit any out, so a good day was had by all.
We have just caught a ferry from Picton to Wellington in the North Island to start exploring that for a few weeks. Apparently its warmer up there and there is snow on the slopes (if that makes sense?). We will update you on that in a few weeks.............
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good
the south is good but the north is better by the way nice title