After about 2 weeks in Golden Bay, we left our life in the caravan to continue with our NZ roadtrip. First stop was popular spa town, Hamner Springs, where we finally met up with Danni and Scott again.
This town is famous for its hot pools and it was so lush and relaxing sitting in a hot pool since we had spent the rainy night before in a tent when we were freedom camping.
I think the rain made this whole experience much better than if it would have been a hot day. Still think that I cannot ever get used to the sulphur smell, it's like rotten eggs!
In the evening we had many laughs, some drinking games and ate mountains of of yummy curry a la Danni.
Unfortunately our plans are heading separate ways at the moment, so we headed different directions the next day and me and Guy continued towards the west coast. First stop, Greymouth (which honestly seems super grey and boring.) and fueled ourselves up with some lovely hand cut chips.
We drove continued driving an hour to Pancake Rocks, which is basically rocks in the water that looks almost like a stack of pancakes. I thought it was pretty overrated, ok it's super cool that nature made the rocks look like that, but it was so many people there for something that only made me want to eat pancakes (and of course hey had a cafe nearby with pancakes but I neither have the money or as you know, am not ok with eating dairy or egg to be able to have them). It's supposed to be a really cool visit here on a windy day though, when the waves comes crashing up the rocks.
That night we spent at this really cute and quite campsite close to the lovely little town of Hokitika, which is probably my favourite town/village on the westcoast.
So the day after we started with a gorgeous morning walk to Hokitika Gorge, which has the one of the bluest waters I've seen in my life.
Before leaving Hokitika we also had a quick dip in the Tasman sea for the first time. The Tasman sea is ALWAYS so crazy wavey and since I'm super scared of big waves I've been too much of a coward to actually go in until today when it was only baby waves.
Next stop was the 5 km free walk to see Franz Josef Glaciers close up (instead of having to pay shitloads of money to actually get ON the ice) Only the walk to the glaciers was amazing!
It was so cool to see, but all my I could think about was that it is so sad how fast the glacier is melting away. Only from 2012 it is such a big difference!
The next day we also went on a free walk to see Fox Glaciers, which is much smaller and not as impressive to see. It only looks like dirty snow in a mountain. Again - it is just so sad how quickly it is melting away!
That night, between our visit to Franz Josef & Fox, we spent a couple of hours in the Franz Josef hot pools (because luckily enough we had found tickets for half price - a backpackers dream!) and then we camped at this crazy busy freedom campsite in between the glaciers, but with the most gorgeous location and sunset I've seen in this country; Gillespie Beach.
Okay, I need to get going now it's pizza time (!!!!) It is not easy at all blogging on the road here when I almost never have access to Internet, so I do apologies for this hasty post! We try to to mix up a few freedom camping nights in our tent with treating ourselves to a night in a double room in a hostel. Today is one of those days as we have just reached beautiful Wanaka. Ahhh it feels so good to be back in this gorgeous town, which we enjoyed so much last time we were here on holiday. So far today we've already gone for a walk around the lake and have had the best refreshing swim in it. I could stay here for so long.
Until next time!
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