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15/12-08
First adventures from New Zealand!
Christchurch to Abel Tasman National Park: We arrived 10. December in Christchurch, and spent the day just walking around and eating a fabulous dinner at Dux de Lux, I really recommend it!!! The following day we picked up our rental camper van from Spaceships, which is a Toyota Lucida pimped so you can camp with it. The car contains all the equipment you need for camping, including a cooker, utensils, table & chairs, a double bed and dvd player:) Our original plan was to head south from Christchurch, but after checking the weather forecast we decided on going north instead. So we went through Lewis Pass to Murchison, and then further north to Motueka and The Abel Tasman National Park. We decided to camp at one of the DOC camps in the national park, and headed to Canaan Downs. After following a gravel road for 11 km we finally arrived to the most lovely and secluded camping spot you could wish for. It was in the middle of nowhere, only with sheep and trees around, and luckliy only 2 other vans.
Canaan Downs -Totaranui: Woke up early in Canaan Downs to sunshine and had nice breakfast and some freesbee playing time before getting on the road again. Stopped shortly in Puhara Beach and Takaka, before heading to Tataranui which was gonna be our final destination for the day. Arrived at a rather posh DOC camping ground, which even had showers!! Wow! Had some nice lunch in the shades, and then headed for the beach. Spent approx 15 minutes there before the weather started to be chilly, and went back to the car. Had the coldest shower EVER at this camp, the 5 minutes I spent in the shower were really painful!! Afterwards we just went for small walks on the beach before having an early night with red wine and card playing by the car.
Totaranui-Punakaki: Started relatively late from Totaranui and headed south to the west coast. Drove through Murchison again and then to Westport. The drive was a little bit longer than we had expected, so at 20.00 we stopped at a commercial camping ground in Punakaki since the sun goes down around 21.00 here. Had a lovely sunset at the beach there with nice company and red wine, so we were pretty happy with stopping there. We also used the opertunity to charge all our electronic stuff at the camping ground, we sat in the kitchen for 1 hour loading iPODs, computers, batteries, phones etc...we must have looked pretty desperate:)
Punakaki- Haast Pass: We started the day by visiting the famous pancake rocks at Punakaki, which are some stacks of stones...but they were pretty nice to look at! Continued driving south and sopped at the Franz Josef Glacier. We even walked the 20 minutes up to the lookout point for the glacier, but I must say I was not so very impressed...we have better looking glaciers in Norway!!!! And the Franz Josef town itself is so touristy that we only spent some 10 minutes there before driving on again. Had a small stop at Fox Glacier too, but it wasn't much to see. Continued further south, but as the night was almost upon us we had to stop at a DOC camping ground a little bit before Haast Pass. Just as we were finished with making the dinner the rain started, so we crept into the car to watch a DVD. We have been so incredible lucky with the weather so far, its been really nice and warm, so I guess this night our luck run out!
Haast Pass-Queenstown: Woke up in the morning with the car FULL of sandflies and pouring rain outside! NOT very nice at all:) We quickly chased the flies we could out of the car, and started to drive through the Haast pass without any breakfast or anyting, just wanted to get out of the sandfly hole we had been camping in. Had rain all the way through Haast Pass down to Wanaka, which is really a shame because the nature there is supposed to be really beautiful! Got some breakfast at a Subway in Wanaka, before going to the Puzzling world a little bit outside town. The puzzling world was filled with optical illusions and trickeries and we had a really fun time. Drove further south towards Arrowtown and had short stop there, it was too many tourists and the whole city seemed incredible fake I think. Lucklily the clouds and the rain were going away by now, and we got some sun even! Continued to Queenstown where we now have spent the day in sunshine and heat, completely different to the night at the Haast Pass!! Queenstown is really a lovely city, I like it a lot! High mountains and lakes; what more can you ask for??? We even treated ourselved dinner at Dux de Lux again, and now we are checking email and updating blogs etc...I guess the blog will not be updated so frequent while we are camping, stressing around to find internet cafes are not our first priorities when camping around :)
So we will spend the night here in Queenstown now, and then most probably head towards Mt. Cook or the east coast tomorrow, have to see how the weather is first!
Will try to post some more photos from New Zealand later also!
We are having a pretty cool time here in New Zealand, so far I like the country a lot and it has a lot a different nature and surroundings! The Kiwis are also were friendly and laid back, and there are hardly any cars on the roads we have been driving on so far! I like it!!!!! :)
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