We had another midnight landing into a crazy parking lot campsite. We get up and move by the posted time just 20 feet away to a public road that is lakeside. Breakfast and a swim in 8 degrees. My back is acting up again as we slept on a 20 degree angle so I forego the cold water muscle tightening activity. We research another campsite and move to our favorite place in the entire trip from here just several miles away on the edge of Queenstown- Top 10 Creeks...

We continue our journey and finally have ample data to explore the strange phenomenon we have driven by numerous times- farmed deer. It's not met with any kind of horror like we felt in Iceland when we discovered they farm and eat horses. The horses in Iceland seem to have a worse life than we are used to expecting. They were out in open spaces with bone chilling wind and foraging through volcanic rock looking for grass under the snow. The deer here are in a...

We leave the glacier and make our way towards Queenstown. Our lunch stop is a pull off just across one of the many single lane wooden bridges we have encountered on our journey. We average about 35 mph with our limitations of both speed and the necessity to pull aside at widened shoulders to allow faster moving traffic to pass. The mountain roads seem to make the caravan scream as it fights gravity. The pull off we have selected is on the banks of the Parin...

Dragon flies, aqua blue glacial streams, palm tree bases with fern surprise fronds at the top (my beloved tree ferns), an abundance of creek stones smoothed and on occasion splashed with shimmer, No SNAKES…anywhere, bee boxes randomly on the roadside. There is such energy and positivity in the air and in the people here. Relaxed and uncomplicated. Nothing heady, attitudinal, conjured. Straight forward and every ounce of everything is real. I am amazed at...

Wild camping was extinguished by kamakaze insects that sneak attacked from the brush bordering the beach. We fled and the next perfect place never seemed to appear. The Tasman Sea was to our right- deep blue with giant cliffs randomly rising up out of the water. To our left were patches of green with hydrangeal pom poms springing up bursting in indigo. Darkness fell upon us and miles of road before us with not even a shoulder much less a pull off. Winging-...