Farewell New Zealand, you beauty!

This photo is almost exactly a year old now. I took it when me and Guy first arrived to New Zealand, before we knew anyone or anything here. On this particular day we had to go off to buy cheap pots and pans to be able to cook in the first little shitty hostel we stayed at. 

A lot has happened since. We've gotten to know amazing friends that we will really miss, we've had jobs that has taught us a lot and we have been lucky to be able to see almost every corner of this beatiful country. Ofcourse there have been x number of different kinds of struggles aswell, but it hasn't been anything that we haven't been able to work out together in the end. 

And so, tomorrow we are officially breaking up with New Zealand (I know we are so evil to break up on Valentine's Day!) and we will travel back in time when we continue our travel adventures in South America. So next time I'll see you, it will be from higher heights in Bolivia. 

Kia ora Aotearoa, thanks for having us!

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! 

Roadtrippin' our way down the westcoast

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!

Yes mum, I'm still alive.

I I just got back to our little caravan, saw young a bunch of young cows on the way back and gave one of them a stroke over her head but felt sad when I saw that she was marked on her ear. I know I’ve probably said this before, and I am sure that I will say it again, but how can anyone hurt cows (or any animal for that matter)? It doesn’t make any sense to me, not at all. 

I know you guys haven’t heard from me in a long time. I am currently out on the country side and almost have zero connection to the world of social media and/or internet. A lot have happened since last time though. I went back to work for a few weeks after the holiday with the Marsdens ended, but on New Years Eve I had my very last day as a part of the supporter relations team at Greenpeace NZ. It felt sad saying goodbye to my little team, but at the same time very exciting to know that the end of this chapter also meant to beginning of the next one - a grand tour of the New Zealand South island for 5 weeks before breaking up and take a fight to Bolivia. 

Before ending up here in the caravan, before taking that flight down to Christchurch and everything, we had a beautiful Christmas with the Auckland gang on the beach, I cooked way too much vegan Christmas food, we ha some amazing vegan burgers from the Burgerie on K-road (YES they have a whole vegan menu in this burger joint!), we had loads more visits from Fidel (“our” little cutie cat, who always knew when it was a good time to stop by our house for a cuddle) and celebrated the New Year by going back to Bethlehem, Tauranga and have a house party with amazing company and sleep in a shitty little tent. 

Then, a couple of weeks ago, we officially broke up with our life in Auckland. Moved out from our house, got rid of a lot of stuff, packed what was rest and headed down to Christchurch for a few nights. We did feel that we spent a night too many here. Because we didn’t have a car, we felt as if there wasn’t that much to do around here and to be completely honest, it felt pretty sad being here. The memory of the massive earthquake a few years ago, lay as a shadow over the whole city center. There are construction work going on everywhere you look and even though there were loads of cool art work (and it is really cool how they’ve managed to do all of these amazing arty things around the city to make something that was such a sad part of the citys history, into something beautiful) it still felt sad to be there in a way. It seems as if more is going on in the outskirts of the city nowadays. 

In Addington for example, we found this cool little coffee gem where I could’ve spent hours. Cool atmosphere, nice people and they even had a laundry machine = perfect stop for a coffee for backpackers!

In another part (which I really cannot bring myself to remember the name of, sorry!) we found the Lotus Flower - a fully vegetarian restaurant with plenty of vegan (what sounded like) yummy things. Due to the backpacker wallet, we are trying not to eat out that much, cause let’s fa sit - New Zealand is expensive, so we only tried a smoothie full of nutritious goodies, each and they were divine! 

We also had a lovely picnic one day, in beautiful botanic gardens before visiting the Canterbury museum.

On our last day in Christchurch we picked up our little silvery star of a car and left the city (and hostel) life and began our roadtrip around the south island. First stop was my favourite spot from last time - the sushi place in lovely Kaikora where we met up with Danni, Scott & Emelie for a night. 

After saying our good byes for this time to them yet again, we did a few nights freedom camping (camping spots where you pay nothing, but then there might not be running water etc there either) and for the first time in New Zealand it really felt like we were hardcore backpackers. We had our portable cooker with us and cooked some meals on that by the side of the roads. One that we are not so proud of was when we just HAD to stop at by the side of the road in the heat of Queen Elizabeth Scenic Drive. We were just too starving to find a better spot.

Then last week we started the biggest adventure so far, when we entered the Abel Tasman National Park to do the Abel Tasman Coastal Track. I didn’t think that much about it at first. I just knew it was going to be a walk, where we had to spend 4 nights in a tent and in total over this time, walk about 60 km. I just thought that I would enjoy it. I mean walking, how hard can it be? I LOVE taking walks, I love heights and white beaches! 

It wasn’t until we packed up our backpacks for the trek, that I realised how much you actually have to carry around to be able to do something like this. I might be good at walking and running, but I have no muscles. I mean my shoulders get soar just from carrying my bag from the bus to the airport and my right shoulder always aches as soon as I even carry my string back with like, a wallet in it. 

Anyway, we realised that to be able to do this, we couldn’t bring our cooker and like half of the cooking gear that we had planned to bring. So we didn’t and instead we bought loads of rice cakes, bread and tinned beans (one for dinner each night) that we didn’t have to cook or anything. And of course some Oreos, just to keep the sugar strength up as well. Thanks to my coffee addiction, I had to mix my instant coffee with cold water every morning, just so that I wouldn’t get a headache.. One might say that we could’ve planned this much better. This was my thought many times, especially that evening when we had to wait for the tide to go down to be able to continue to the camp site for the night and it was raining and we were sitting in our crappy, cheap rain ponchos that broke as soon as we took them off again with sand flies biting us e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e.

Okay, so this all sounds pretty shit. But despite all the bites, the soar muscles, the sleep deprivation (however spoilt it may sounds; I don’t know if I will ever get used to sleeping in a tent, basically on the ground without a pillow), the achy feet, all hills up and down, the heating sun burning in the face and all insects everywhere I am so happy that we did it and proud of us for making it through. It was definitely much harder than I could’ve ever imagined, but oh-m-g - it was so cool. Packing up and and packing down the tent became a habit pretty quickly, and a five hour walk always went by so quickly, because of the beautiful nature and views that we saw and of course because of my partner in crime who always have patience with me when I need him to have patience with me the most.

We met funny rangers, had a morning swim in Cleoptras Pool (a cool little waterfall with a slide made out of mother nature herself!), saw cute birds and really felt as we had accomplished something huge when we finally reached the end of the trek. 

That feeling of finally getting back to civilisation was amazing and so we went straight to hippy town Takaka to celebrate with the vegan pizza that they have at the cool cafe Dangerous Kitchen (wow-my-wow this pizza is amazing and it makes me hungry only to think about it now). For being a hippy town though, I am not impressed with the range of vegan food, or vegetarian for that matter around here, I expected a lot more when I heard that this was the town for yogis and tye dyes. 

I still have burn marks from the backpack on my shoulders now when I’m sitting here and writing, where we ended up that same evening when we finished one of the Great New Zealand Walks, close to the little village of Collingwood in Golden Bay, where we live in a caravan in the farm hotel The Innlet, where we do HelpX for the forth time since coming to NZ. We’ve been here for exactly a week now and it feels like we’ve already done pretty much everything that are the touristy things to do here. 

The other day we did the hilltop walk to Wharakiki beach - it was awesome climbing on hills and seeing the pretty view from the top of Cape Farewell.

Yesterday we walked for an hour to find some cool caves, which was actually pretty scary as we were there totally alone. 

We’ve done the bush walk that is only in the backyard of the hotel, gone to the chocolate house (Rosy Glow) in Collingwood where more than half of all the hand made chocolate happens to be vegan (and super yum!) and we’ve found a few other cool tracks around the area where we've see waterfalls and the clearest water in the world. It’s a good thing my Guy and I likes walking, eh!