Franz Josef Glacier

Our view from the car

Two post in one day! (scrolla ner mamma for att se ett till inlagg ;) So happy for some proper, quick wifi in a bar we are situating at the moment. I should not romantices alcohol but damn a glass of wine taste sooo good after two rainy days with too much noodles and sandflies-bitten feet.

Sandflies are by the way worse than mosquitos. And they have a lot of those fuckers here in the south island. And mosquites. You do not want to look at my feet at this moment (not that you ever would like to) but they look massacred from all the bites, buhu.

After Abal Tasman National Park we went a looong way south and now we are at Franz Josef Glacier. We have been a bit unlucky with the weather to be honest, very misty and rainy so unfortunately we miss a lot of the mountain view. Let's cross fingers for some better weather next week when we are going to kayak in Milford Sound, so looking forward to that!

But even though the weather has been crap, we are currently in a very quite town with a lof of nice bars and cafes and a very nice camping park. Yesterday we rented the hot pool and relaxed after a long day of drive.

Today we walked 1,5 hour to the glacier. This has been Erik's "thing to do" and to be honest I did not have high excpectations. But wow, even in the mist the walk was absolutely stunning beyond words. Looked like something from a dark fairytale (trying hard not to refer to a partical movie here again). We feel very lucky we got to see the glacier. It has already been melting a lot the past couple of years, and who knows how long it will stay there?

Tomorrow we are driving towards Queenstown, we are both looking forward to that place!

(Damn, only a 1,5 week left with our campervan. We will really miss it. A great way to get around, and very nice to have some time alone in it. After this we have 4 months in different hostels...uuggh.)

Our camping park is called "rainforest camping". It really lives up to its name...

The Glacier and us. Really stunning in real life. Not us (even if we look superhot in our ponchos) but the glacier. ;) Really sad how much it has melted though... It goes high up in the air but unfortunately the mist is covering it.

Abal Tasman National Park

I have really lost the sense of time a little bit, but I think it was Monday we arrived at Abal Tasman National park on the northern tip of the South Island. It is Thursday today, right…? ;)

Many people, including both foreigners such as us and Kiwis, comes there for “the Great Walk”. It is NZ most famous hike trail where you walk for 3-4 days and sleeping in huts along the way. Erik and I did this! Kind of! We did the deluxed version where we walked for 1 hour, got to an amazing beach and then walked back to the camping spot. Haha. We never said we were hikers! Comfort is rather the way of life ;)

I do not wish to go on repeat but damn it was the prettiest one hour of walk I ever had. Until today when we walked to Franz Josef Glacier. It is really gorgeous there. It is easier to get it on film rather than photos, however since wifi in this country completely sucks I am not able to post any short movies.

It is still easy to meet people (especially in bars, for strange reasons), however it is not really possible to get deeper connections with people since everyone is on the move the whole time of course.

A lot of jungle in New Zealand. That is something I actually did not except...not that we planned or knew anything at all before going onto the plane...

So after walking for a bit we stumbled on to this very pretty, quite beach.

We drove by "Pancake rocks" on our way to the south. Pretty cool. Too boring to explain though... Google it.

First days on the south island

From my last post we have experienced a couple of days in the capital, Wellington. It has been named “Windy Welly” for an obvious reason, superstrong winds and pouring rain (lame). So obviously we did not take a lot of pictures of Wellington since we want to keep up the illusion that it always is fantastic weather during our trip, haha.

It was a nice city though, but nothing special. We visited “Weta cave” in order to have my dose of daily nerdiness fulfilled. I have known about Weta Workshop since I was 12 and saw “behind the scenes”of the Lord of the Rings extended version 20 times (I should really stop writing about Lord of the rings here, such a doooork, love it though). It was really nice to finally visit their place and also Erik thought it was really interesting to hear how they worked and made stuff (or he is just being a very supporting boyfriend). You can read about them here: https://www.wetanz.com/

We took the ferry to the south island on Friday, very smooth process of three hours and just a weee seasick. We had no plan where to camp for the night when we arrived at 18.00 but decided on a camping spot that was pretty close by. Turned out we needed to drive on windy, steep roads again but man was it worth it. Soooo pretty. Stayed here two nights. Even though it was in the middle of nowhere it was a hidden hotspot for a lot of Kiwis so very popular beach. But looking at the pictures

 one can imagine why!

Weta Cave

An exceptional pretty ferry ride

Our first camping spot in the south

A paradise!

From Mount Doom to beach life

The last couple of days we have been driving quite a lot with the car, we are now like 40 kilometers north of capital Wellington on the west coast.

We left the Holiday park in Rotorua and went south, passing Lake Taupo- a supernice spot. But we only stayed there a short while because we wanted to find our next camping place (we don’t book anything in advance- just see more or less spontaneously as we go). 

We ended up in Tongariro National Park and oh my god, really breath-taking beautiful (which I never can capture on camera). Found a nice camping spot for like 3 euro per night (no water…but there was a “toilet”, with a risk of being stung by thousands of bees in your ass while sitting down on it). This place was located under several beautiful, still very much active, volcanos. 

I totally forgot the name of the mountains/ volcanos but Peter Jackson used one of the mountains as a filming spot for Lord of the Rings. Mount Doom! We were camping underneath Mount Doom, whaaat. The supernerd inside of me loved it! 

There were some beautiful water creeks there were we (ok, only Erik and an elderly gentlemen) took a swim. Lovely, but one night was enough.

Next day we headed even more south. We had a camping spot in mind already, but after 6 hours of getting there (500 km) we saw a sign that the camping was closed off because something had blocked the road to get there (?). So tired and hungry and with no plan we headed even more south and suddenly saw a camping sign in a small coast town called Paekakariki.  It is just by a stunning beach, with warm ocean to take long swims in. We will stay here for about two days before we visit Wellington, taking a break from our travels J In others sense, all is very well down here.

This is Mount Doom from LoTr.  Less scary and more beautiful in real life isn't it ;)

Freakin cold water, as you can see :P

This is where we are camping at the moment...

Some cruisin' (truth be told I have in total driven 2 hours on these roads before I get a nervous breakdown because 200 cars are waiting behind me)

Wai-O-Tapu

As mentioned, we are in Rotorua. We got recommended by several people to visit this place because it is quite unique and different. It has a lot of geothermal activity, like geysers and mud pools (unfortunately not the kind you can have a spa treatment in since its like 100 degrees C hot).

This morning we visited Wai-O-Tapu, a big volcanic area. Really different and beautiful. The whole park smells like rotten eggs though, or  like a reaally old pair of dirty socks, iu. 

It was nice. Luckily Erik and I are quite similar so after 1 hour we got completely bored and headed back. We got to see "the majestic eruption of geyser Lady Knox". A guy puts some soap in it everyday at 10.15 in order for it to erupt. Felt a little bit too touristic if you know what I mean...

After a while you really get dizzy of the smell of rotten eggs, so a trip to the city centre of Rotorua was very welcomed and the lake is supercute. 

I have not even been travelling for a week and already my cabin bag , aka a free ''ge blod''-backpack that I got from my parents and my flipflops (10 baht from Thailand last year) already got broken so I had to buy new ones. Cheapness doesn't always get you very far. ;)

We have five days left on the North Island, on Friday next week we are taking the ferry to the South Island and we will be living the simple camping life until then (no internet!).

Fun fact: BBC used the park Wai-O-Tapu to shot the background scenes for their serie "Walking with dinosaures".

''The champagne pool"

Lady Knox before her morning eruption

So this is what it actually looked like: American and Japanese tourists, Thousands of them!

Lake Rotorua

First week

(Nu skriver jag pa engelska for de tar saaa mycket smidigare, dumma tangentbord).

We are alive and doing well, only a week ago since we left Amsterdam but oh my it feels like a month ago. I am writing this from a crappy-ass wifi so will try to keep it short (not really my thang though).

The flights here went perfectly fine, we did not crash and that is all I ask for. Flights were on time and even our checked-in baggage went through. First thing we did when we arrived late evening in Auckland was to upgrade from a 6 dorm to a private room, so damn worth it. No jetlag whatsoever!

Auckland is a nice city, but in the end it's just like any city. And I am for now pretty fed up with bigger cities. On Tuesday we grabbed our campervan and chose a campingspot only like 400 kilometers north, in Bay of Islands. Little rough start, our damn campervan ran a bit late because they needed to fix things on it so around 14.00 we went off and we had to be there at 20.00 before it closed. First thing we did was to get lost in Auckland, but thanks to Google Maps (God’s gift to earth) we arrived like half an hour before the gates closed. But oh my was it worth it. So far the prettiest place we have seen on the North Island, who needs Matamata when you can find the real Hobbition there!

OK this is getting boring I am so bad to write short texts. I will just sum things up like this instead:

•  Our campervan is FANTASTIC, we love it. So cosy, little broken in my body everytime I wake up but otherwise great.
•  We spent 2 nights in Bay of Island (already miss it), then 1 night in Coromandel Forest (jesus in the middle of the jungle with 20189389 insects, we are such rookies)
•  We then fled from the jungle and visited Matamata were they shot the Shire (Lord of the rings, jej). Did not visit the actual shooting spot though, not worth it really)
• Now we are in Rotorua. Google it, pretty cool. We have wifi and a swimming pool here (plus a hot spring) but best of all SHOWERS and drinkable water. We will enjoy this luxury until Sunday, then we will go south and live very simple again.
• Supereasy to meet people. I don’t really have to worry about losing my Dutch, the Dutchies are taking over the planet.
•  Best with travelling: the contrast of life. You have no idea how the next day may look like.

-          

Here comes some pictures (please note we are not professional photographers and reality is so much more prettier).

Oh and best part, I have driven the car! In New Zealand, on left side, and I did not crash it so far wiihu.

Waiting 11 hours in Taipei airport. Apperently it was the Chinese New Years week, happy new year!

Shared a meal with some girls in Auckland

Planning our campingtrip last day in Auckland. Miiight had my first small nervous breakdown, but hey so far the only one! ;)

 Sushi! 

Waiting forever for our car. Some very deep, intellectual quotes written on it

The tourist agency in Matamata, best looking tourist agency in the world if you ask me

Our present camping spot and the beloved, and the bit gross, swimmingpool!