The adventures that led us down to the south

That evening when I left you last, we took a walk from the hostel where we stayed at in Wanaka to go to Fransescas Woodfired Pizzas, to have the most amazing pizza, that I dare to say I've had in New Zealand. Even though it was after 7pm, it was still so hot and the que to the little caravan where they sell the pizzas from was long and I felt sorry for the people working there (but they still managed to be kind and in good mood, which I find very impressive!) Unfortunately they don't have a vegan pizza on the menu, but they were so flexible so that I could kind of create my own without cheese. I always say that you know that a pizza is really good, even if it tastes divine without any form of cheese!

The next day we took a little detour before heading down south, to Mount Aspiring National Park, where we did a 3 hour return track to see Rob Roys Glaciers. The scenery was absolutely amazing, but the track was mostly uphill that made us having to dip our heads as soon as we were close to one of the streams from the melting glacier.

This is without a doubt the coolest glacier of the ones we have seen so far, and yet I hadn't heard about Rob Roys Glacier until just recently. Even before I left Europe I'd heard about Fox and Franz Josef Glacier, which are of course cool to see as well, but they got nothing on Rob Roys! Maybe it is just not well known among tourists, because you don't actually have to pay anything to see them up close? Because as far as I know they don't arrange any helicopter tours or walks on the actual ice here.

It could be that and also the fact that just the road leading to where the track start is on a bumpy gravel road, which was kind of scary since it takes like 30 minutes on that road to reach the start. And the fact that you do have to have a sweaty walk for about 1,5 hours up to the top to see it all clear, and then go the same way back.

Anyway, it was totally worth it and I could've easily skipped seeing Franz Josef and Fox and just come here.

After that we were exhausted though and decided to drive straight to the next free camping site.  Up until now we had mainly used the camping spots that the Department of Conservation owns (don't know if you can say that DOC owns it, but you know what I mean!).

DOC has all kind of different camping spots some of them are free, some of them have a small fee depending on what facilities is on it. We have mainly used Basic Campsites which are always free, but they don't have much going on there, maybe just a toilet without flushing water or the Standard Campsites which costs 6 dollars a night, and usually comes with running water and toilets, maybe even cold showers and picnic tables sometimes if you're lucky.

However, it seems like the more south you get the less DOC sites there are so we have had to use an app called Wicked Campers, where all campsites there are out there are listed. It was via this app that we managed to find a free camp finally in this area, that wasn't too crowded (around Queenstown there are almost only camp sites for self contained vehicles, there's like one that is free for everyone and apparently that one is absolutely cramped!) and as we wanted to avoid that as much as possible to get a good nights sleep we went out of our way a bit and found a decent one with the best morning view.

We continued our way towards Queenstown, with a stop at this cafe in Cromwell, where the niecest man worked. Please go here if you get a chance. The coffee was so great and they had kittens  running around in the garden (= I'm sold!)

And so. This is the only reason we went to Queenstown again. This baby was so worth the trip back, the long que in the heat and the crowd of people around the towncenter (and the hassle of finding parking!) The Holier Than Though (fried tofu!!!) burger from Fergburger.

I made it vegan buy removing the aioli and adding avocado and it was seriously more divine than I remembered it from last time. I had to force myself not from eating it all at once (hey, I had to save some for dinner, right?). CHRISTMAS IN MY FREAKING MOUTH! 

As soon as we were full of burger, we left Queenstown as soon as we could to continue down even further south, to try to get away from the whole touristy crowd and everything, and so today we finally reached to most southern town of New Zealand, Bluff, where we hade a coffee (yes, take away soy flat whites is our daily treats to ourselves!) and as it is a rainy day, we went on to Invercargill to sit here in a boring library and do some stuff that just needs to be done.

It's only uphill from here!