NZ!

Well hello! I'm currently sitting in a weird internet cafe in Queenstown, I finally have the chance to use an actual keyboard (which is well used by gamer types and therefore, gross) so let the tedious blogging commence. You are WELCOME, Mum.
(I mau have some spelling errors with place names, my bad)


Tues, 29 April
In prep for a few weeks of driving around the South island of NZ, Barbara has organised all the stuff we need in to boxes. She loves a box, does Barbara.We have packed the car with an air mattress (which basically takes up all the room except for the front seats) some clothes, some pots, and a bag for food and utensils. Pretty basic, but we can hopefully cope for a few weeks.
So the first leg was Blenheim to Nelson, staying at the Maitai Valley Camp Site, where we discovered that its normal for camp sites in NZ to charge for showers. $2 for 5 mins. This means whenever we now stay at a place that doesn't do this, I spend like an hour in there just to make up for it. Our first night on the air mattress was fine, we can do this, it just takes a bit of organising.

Wednesday, 30 April
Drove out through Richmond and Motueka straight up to Takaka (massive hill) to Pupu Springs. (Click here to see why we drove so far out of the way for it.) Barbara displayed her usual flare at map reading and so we ended up in the middle of a cow field at one point, but we made it there eventually. In other news, 4WD in sometimes really quite handy. We stayed the night at Hangdog Camp, which was real basic, but had a toilet in a tree, so that makes up for it. And $10 each per night. Sweet as.

Thursday, 1 May
Went to Harwoods Hole, ended up driving through a Lord of the Rings filming location (Chetwood Forest) to get there, which was pretty cool. Harwoods Hole itself was bloody enormous, it has no kind of handrails anywhere around it and I wont lie, when my foot slipped down a wet rock and almost caused me to slide into the abyss I nearly wet my pants a little bit. If anyone ever plans on going there, good footwear is essential. Also maybe some rope. But definitely bring a camera cos it looks awesome, and the walk to get there is proper beautiful.
We stayed the night at Quinney's Bush camp, I chose it mostly due to the name, but turned out to be one of the best places we stayed the whole time. I learnt that eels eat dog food. Who knew?

Friday 2 May
Buller Gorge! We walked across NZ's longest swing bridge and looked around and nearly got lost, and tok some pictures etc. Continued the drive to Westport (which turned out to be much smaller than expected, much like all the other towns we have been through), then visited Cape Foulwind to see a seal colony, just chilling out on the rocks. Stayed the night at a camp site in Charleston.

Saturday 3 May
Down to Punakaki to look at the Pancake Rocks and blowholes, which were super cool and blowy. Had an overpriced lunch before heading down the coast to Greymouth where we spent a lovely afternoon drinking beer at Monteiths's Brewery before going back north to the Rapahoe Beach Motor Camp to drink more beer on the beach, watch the sun set and make friends with some weird middle aged ladies and a smelly dog. It was super nice. And that campsite was super weird, there was a huge lounge room full of old sofas and chairs and tables and in one corner of that room were the 2 shower cubicles. What.

Sunday 4 May
Bonecarving in Barrytown! We went a little way back up the road the way we came to a tiny shack where we spent the majority of the day carving up bones and having a nice time with the lovely Karen and Dana of off the Skeleton Crew Carving Studio. I made a thing.
After that we drove back down south to Hokitika and stayed the night at Lake Mahinapua. ($6 each, bargain).

Monday 5 May
Drove to Franz Josef Glacier.

Rain.

Tuesday 6 May
More rain.

Wednesday 7 May
Still bloody raining. Glacier trip cancelled. Went to Hot Pools instead. Made some friends.

Thursday 8 May
GOT ON THE GLACIER! BLOODY AMAZING! Helecopter ride was brief but cool, got some awesome pictures, managed not to fall over and generally had an ace morning. Our guide (Frodo) was super cute. The Franz Josef glacier is actually shrinking a whole load, it probably doesn't help that so many people are stomping all over it and hacking steps into it, but apparently its mostly rain that melts it. And heat I guess. I also licked it, I wont lie. Sorry.

So as soon as we got off the glacier we continued driving to Haast, where we stayed at a campsite that had a tv room which had actual deer heads on the wall. Brilliant.

Friday 9 May
Drove through the recently reopened Haast Pass. There had been some slips which caused a load of rocks to fall on the road and a waterfall to get redirected onto it but they mostly cleared that up so we had an awesome drive with lots of pretty veiws. The sun was out too so it was super nice. Got to Queenstown! Yay!