New Zealand - Part 1

New Zealand was incredible! The sights, the people, the sights, the food, the sights! The natural beauty of this country was so underrated, I felt overwhelmed at every turn. Australia was pretty, very beachy and fun, but NZ had this small town feel with mountains, greenery and beaches galore.

After spending near an entire month exploring mostly South Island, Matt and I still have a long to-do list of things for our next trip back.

We arrived in Christchurch on April 2nd and immediately picked up our new home on wheels: Jucy Chaser Camper aka Vinny the Van.

It was from there with our new friend Vinny that we proceeded to a small town called Methven to meet up with Matt’s friend Bobby. Bobby moved to NZ from the States a little over a year ago and hasn’t looked back since. Now that our journey is complete, Matt is extremely envious of him.

We stayed with Bobby for a few nights and set up the camper. He is a geologist, Dr. Dirt, so he was happy to take us on a nice hike towards Mt. Sunday. This was the mountain where some of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was made. Aside from its nerdy interactions, this area was our first peek of NZ’s natural beauty.

We packed up our stuff, said “Cheers” to Bobby and began our second road trip of this world adventure.

Our first loop was to cross over towards the west coast using Arthurs’s Pass, up the coast exploring Hokitika - Westport, then back to the East Coast through Murcheson, then down to explore the Hanmer Hot Springs and head back towards Christchurch. This entire loop took about a week.

Arthur’s Pass is a skinny road that winds you through the mountains, all around the forest and drops you at the sandy coastline. In the beginning of the Pass you can stop at a look out and find a Kea hanging about. Bobby described these birds as “flying monkeys”, and we were warned multiple times not to wear shiny things around them.

We camped out a few nights and made it to the tiny fun town called Hokitika. This area was right on the sand and had much natural beauty, but little nightlife. Thanks to Matt’s handy dandy tour book, we discovered that this city had a privately owned movie theater with couches for seats. We entered into this one room building and enjoyed a nice comfy showing of a movie called Get Low with Bill Murray. The owner was very friendly, and the experience was a perfect ending to a long day of driving.

We woke up the next morning ready to go, looked at the map and saw the next stop was the Pancake Rocks. Hearing this I became extremely hungry and couldn’t wait to stop there… They didn’t taste as good as I’d hoped but were incredible to see up close.

Up next, we headed north and found (Matt’s words) THE BEST CAMPING SPOT EVER!! It was free, which was great, and right off the beach. And according to a sign, we might see a penguin (we didn’t, unfortunatey).

We parked in and decided to take a nice stroll on the beach before making some dinner, when all of a sudden…I locked the keys in the van. Now in the last van, Matt let the battery die so everyone makes mistakes. We calmly and rationally (and loudly) expressed our plan of finding a house – the next one was 2km away – and asked to use a phone. Well the one house that was semi-near was vacant. So we walked to the street and Matt eagerly flagged down a sweet woman in a tiny car and asked for her cell phone. Tina introduced herself and offered to take us to her house around the corner. She graciously allowed Matt to look up the AA number (just two As in NZ, not AAA) while she made us a nice cup of coffee. The pop-a-lock guy came and all was well. Matt made us Van-rittos for dinner that were YUM!

The next day we were heading straight to Hamner Springs where I could enjoy some warm hot springs before dark. On our way we found this:

You can’t just not go on there… So we explored this long bridge and the fun areas around it. It was at this time I saw that you didn’t have to just walk back on the bridge, you could fly! Matt was chicken happy to walk back and take my picture.

We finished up on the bridge and headed straight for the pools. Now I didn’t take any pictures of these pools, mostly bc I was submerged into sulfur water, but also because I wanted to relax. This was like an adult water park filled with five different pools, all at different temperatures. And did I mention there were three different water slides? It was a great birthday eve for me ☺

I woke up the next morning in our RV park, headed for the outhouse showers and noticed my birthday gift from the RV Park owners.

I knew it was going to be a good day. We headed to Christchurch to meet up with our friend Kelly who we met in Sydney. He and his son joined us for lunch, and told us about the best places to see in the South Island. Now I don’t know many 13 year old boys--if I did that would be weird--but Kelly’s son Connor was the coolest kid ever. He knew all the band members to Led Zeppelin, quoted Family Guy and South Park, loved chocolate – Matt said that this just reaffirmed he married a little kid, lol. We said our goodbyes and back on the road

This still being my bday, Matt asked me what I wanted to do? I said, in these exact words, “I want to drink with a bunch of really old guys so I feel young.” Matt waved his wand and poof we were in a tiny pub in a tiny town called Amberly, in a pub filled with old men who just got off work. We made great friends, and the owner offered us a spot in the back to park over night.



By the end of the night, the back was rocking out to the juke box, everyone sang me “Happy Birthday” and I got a Kiwi Trucker hat and a drink on the house. Definitely one for the books.

The next morning we pulled out of the bar lot, and headed for a nearby beach parking lot to make breakfast. We finished our eggs and headed to Wine Land. No this isn’t an amusement park… although that’s a good idea… it was the land of different wineries. We picked the biggest one and strolled inside. Matt informed the wine expert that this was our first tasting. This gave this man a chance to roll out the big guns. We smelled, swirled, tasted and swished over 12 glasses of wine! Thank goodness we could chill in the camper afterwards. It was a blast, and the wine guide was drinking right along with us. We sobered up, had some lunch and started back toward Methven for laundry and relaxation.

On the way we stopped at Castle Hill Station so Matt could use the climbing shoes and chalk he borrowed from Bobby to scramble around on some big boulders. He got high enough that he had to turn back (or climb up over the top) since he didn’t have a rope.

Safely back on the ground, Matt found a shortcut in the form of a skinny, 10-mile dirt road that cut almost an hour off our drive back to Methven.