The South Island so far

Mike and I have been on the road since April 16 in our own little camper home! We found a great deal so we ditched the tour bus idea to go explore the island on our own. The camper is really great...it's got a stove, fridge, comfy bed and everything...even got a toaster! No toilet, which I am fine with as it would be very gross to empty. We've mostly been staying in campgrounds (Mike likes to be plugged in so we can use the heater haha, it gets fairly cold at night), although I found a sweet parking lot near a bathroom at one point hehe. That was when the only campground around was $38. Forget that!


So far in the South Island we've spent one night in Christchurch, where we didn't do much besides eat a gross Chinese dinner and I frantically ran around buying Mike's bday presents lol...hard when you're never apart! We left pretty much right away to drive north to Kaiteriteri, where we did a kayak/hiking trip through the Abel Tasman National Park. It was very beautiful, great weather. In 2 hours of kayaking we saw a huge group of seals lounging on rocks, including a mother nursing a baby and two young ones play fighting, many gorgeous sandy beaches and coves and cool rock formations and caves that you could kayak into! Mom you would love it! For the rest of the journey we hiked, stopping over in a hut for one night.



The hike wasn't quite as exciting, although it was still very pretty, passing through nice beaches, and had very nice viewpoints of the beaches. The one funny part was there were a couple of low tide routes (to hell if we're going the long way around for the high tide route! an extra hour and a half!) where you had to take off your shoes, walk through a giant stretch of mud covered in crabs and clam shells

and wade through washouts from the ocean. The beaches there were crazy...when the tide was out there were tons of boats just sitting stranded on the sand, and when the tide came in it came wayyyy in to places you would not think it could make it to! The afternoon of the second day, we caught a water taxi back to the starting point. To our surprise, the boat drove right up on to a trailer pulled by a tractor, and we were given a ride back to our camper! It was hilarious. That is the only time we will ever ride in a boat on land.

After Abel Tasman we drove down the west coast, stopping in various cute towns along the way such as Hokitika and Greymouth, which had cute little shops which I enjoyed. We camped at Punakaiki and in the morning went on a walk to see the Pancake Rocks - absolutely amazing, layered rock formations on the coast (looked like precariously stacked pancakes!)




We also explored this cave to the side of the road, which was very cool, even though our only light devices were a dying head lamp and a small MEC LED light. We had to take pictures with a flash to see what was in some parts haha.

We proceeded down the coast to Fox Glacier (we decided to skip Franz Joseph, as it is harder to access cheaply/without going on an expensive tour). We were able to walk to within 80 m of Fox Glacier.

It was quite cool looking (ha ha), although we've seen better in Canada :). We also tried to go sky diving again but too cloudy. Thus, we continued on to Wanaka. The drive along the west coast was absolutely stunning. And if you think driving the Sea to Sky is crazy, just wait til you drive NZ roads. So much fun to drive...VERY curvy. And they don't seem to like building two lane bridges here either. They're all one ways. In Wanaka we stayed in a very beautiful lake front campground. We went to this VERY cool movie theatre called Cinema Paridiso, which had all sorts of old comfy couches and chairs to sit in, fresh baked big cookies during intermission and homemade icecream. We watched a Swedish subtitle crime movie that was really good. I absolutely loved the cinema.

The next day we....finally went sky diving!!! The views around Wanaka were GORGEOUS. Beautiful blue lakes, dry hillsides and huge, jagged mountains. And the sky diving itself was so exhilerating. We were super excited and it was even better than we hoped it would be. We jumped from 12000 metres and had about 45 seconds of free fall, followed by a couple minutes of parachuting to the ground, and on the way down we got to do cool 360s and such. It was amazing.




Now we are in Queenstown, finally getting some internet time. Many more exciting adventures to come, including jet boating and exploring the Sounds! Can't wait! More updates soon!