New Zealand Road Trip Day 3

After so many near death experiences in the first two days of our adventure, we decide to take it a little easier. We slept in a little bit, took our nice warm showers and made our way into the city centre of Queenstown. We walked around, took in the sights, and bought some gifts for people back home, and ourselves. By this point we were starving and decided to go to Naff Caff where I had the most marshmallow-ey white hot chocolate of my life and it was delicious. Oh and don't even forget the pancakes, they were just as good. Yummy. Good Food. We walked around a little bit more, emailed home once again and we were back on the road. We filled up the gas tank and Nelson, Caroline, and Jeff were on the road for day 3. We drove the short drive from Queenstown to Te Anau. However, the excitement was not done in Queenstown yet, as we were driving out of the city, A PLANE FLIES LITERALLY ABOUT 10METERS ABOVE US TO LAND!. We cannot escape death enough! We arrived at our new campsite where we would be staying for the next two nights and we found out about the glow worm caves by Lake Te Anau. We decided we had to go, but had to hustle to the wharf to make the boat. We made it just as they were boarding and went to the glowworm caves where they looked like stars on the darkest, clearest of nights. It was really cool, too bad no pictures could be taken. We came back to the town after the tour and went to buy some more gifts and find some grub. The town was dead and most things were closed, new zealand shuts down in winter. We came to a restaurant where we grabbed some grub to eat, i nearly lost my tooth here. On a full stomach, we made our way back to our camping ground and slept for the night because in the morning we were going to Milford Sound for day 4 of our camping trip.

New Zealand Road Trip Day 2

We woke up in Hokitika, took some money out at the ATM and got some essential food, BUMPER BARS!, and we were off to Franz Joseph. It was a couple hour drive from Hokitika to Franz Joseph, which turned out to be a pretty cool town even though we were only in it for about 20 minutes. In Franz Joseph, we bought our phone cards, which of course did not work, but we sent our first welcoming emails to our families and friends back home. After that quick pit stop, it was onto the Franz Joseph Glacier. Honestly this thing was one of the coolest things that I have ever seen. It was about a 40-45minute walk to the glacier, but what was crazy is how far the glacier had receded since the early 1700's. We walked through a river bed which was almost dried up, but trust me, after a storm this area would be gushing with water all over. We walked as close as we were allowed and for the first time saw the beauty of New Zealand as we stood like midgets in a huge valley with mountains surrounding us with waterfalls poking out throughout them and a massive sheet of ice in front of us. We stood in amazement for awhile, but knew that we had to get back to make it to Queenstown that night. We got back in Nelson, and Jeff hopped in the drivers seat for the first time in a foreign country which drives on the wrong side of the road, scary thought, I know. I did the drive from Franz Joseph to Haast, where Caroline then took over for the night shift. It wasn't too bad of an attempt for not driving a stick in the past 3 years. We drove past some amazing mountains with huge blue lakes at the bottoms, the scenery was breathtaking. However, the horrors came as Caroline took the wheel. We were on our way in the darkness to Queenstown when we hit a patch of black ice and sent both of us screaming like little girls. Nelson regained his position on the road and slowly we made it towards Wanaka as our hearts slowed down. We saw light in Wanaka and absolutely went crazy for seeing people; however, our night was not over. We drove through Wanaka and pushed forward towards Queenstown. But once again, the roads did not like us, as soon as we saw the lights of Queenstown we are making our way down a mountain. This mountain was much like whatever that famous street is in San Francisco which curves back and forth, but this was on a mountain. After screaming about how dumb this road was and seeing a man with a boat driving up the mountain, which we thought was absolutely proposterous, we made it to safety in Queenstown. Before even checking into a camping ground for the night, we stopped for a beer and some steak at the Speights Ale House. Speight's is as they say, the Pride of the South. We made our way to the Creeksyde Camping grounds where we spent the night in safety and made it on to day 3 of our adventure.

New Zealand Road Trip Day 1

So we arrive in Christchurch, New Zealand at about 1 or 130PM their time after a 3/3.5 hr flight from Sydney. We got through customs with another stamp in the book! and went forth to the Backpackers RV place to pick up our RV, the nomad, which would soon be called Nelson. We picked up and learned about Nelson, how to drive him, and how to put snow chains on his feet. After the boring stuff, we hit the road. Not long after, about 1km down the road, we had our first of many near death experiences of this trip at the roundabout. After surviving that one, we were off onto highway 6, to the west coast via Arthurs Pass. We drove through the remaining daylight left in New Zealand, it is winter here and only daylight for about maybe 8 hours or so. We stopped to pick up some food and moved along down the road stopping at a lake to take our first scenic pictures. It was already dark and we still had a couple hours to drive, not very many kilometers but through heavy mountains. We finally made it through the pass and onto the western coast and to our first night in Hokitika where we almost immediately passed out and slept into what would be day 2 of our road trip.