We flew into Auckland and spent a fulfilled night with Kevin, Heddie, and Elio before flying to Christchurch to explore the south island.
In Christchurch we picked up our camper van. On the recommendation of friends we made in Australia (while stuck in the outback with the floods), we went with Escape Rentals. They're a budget friendly rental and the van ended up not costing much more than our originally booked rental car. We had our pick of 3 vans and we went with the sheep, it seemed the most charming. We then explored a bit of Christchurch where the devastation from last year's earthquake is still very prevalent. Our first night camping was spent in the driveway of Oli's friend John and his partner Rachel. Thankfully they let us in their house as well and we got to take what would be our last luxurious showers for a few days.
It seems camper van travel is the way to go in New Zealand, they are EVERYWHERE! There must be dozens of different companies catering to all sorts of budgets. There is also a "holiday park" (a souped up campground) in just about every town. We tried to do a good mix of holiday parks and free sites, which are scattered around the country and usually just have an outhouse on site. However, they proved to be much more difficult to find than the holiday parks so we've spent most nights having the luxury of electricity and showers.
I'll skim the highlights we hit on the south island so this doesn't get too long winded. We first went inland towards Mt.Cook and had what proved to be one of our very few partly sunny days. The views on the way were spectacular. We then headed back towards the east coast through some charming small towns (St.Bethens on Kevin's recommendation was very cute!) and stopped to see the Moeraki Boulders. Then on to Dunedin where we had coffee and a chat with Kevin's lovely sister, and could've spent much more time, but had to move on. We drove the southern scenic route and on to Queenstown and Wanaka. Somewhere along the way I was minutes from a bungy jump but chickened out, we'll see if I get the nerve on the north island. From there we went up the west coast to Milford Sound and did a cruise. The weather was a bit dodgy, quite chilly and rainy, but it made the waterfalls even more spectacular. We then went up to The Fox and Franz Joseph Glaciers. The day we went to Franz Joseph we had what was I think our third and final partly sunny day, making the glacier look even more magnificent. We spent a night in Hamner Springs, a very cute little town famous for their hot springs, and went to a hot springs spa which was quite nice. Up in the Abel Tasman Park we did a full day kayak/hike. The kayak was a couple hours long and was just gorgeous! When we got to Adele Island we saw a group of about 5 six month old seal pups playing in the water. Our guide said they're just learning to swim and hold their breath at this stage. Our guide was so geeked, he even got his camera out. We also saw heaps of sea birds and lots of beautiful scenery. The hike back took about 4 hours and while it was misty out, we were lucky not to have the downpours that the previous day had.
I'm probably leaving some stuff out, but we covered so much ground and saw so many things in our 2 weeks that it's hard to keep it all in my head (good thing I journal better than I blog).
The south island is full of beautiful ever-changing landscape, great people, heaps of sheep, yummy fish n'chips, and so much to do I will go on a limb and say we will be back...hopefully when there isn't so much rain.
These are a few of my favorite pictures:
