New Zealand

 Milford Sound was top priority and we wanted to do a hard-core kayaking trip. We had probably seen a photo like this in a brochure and thought "Hell Yeah!  That's us!" After finding a caravan park, we settled on this trip for the next day.  Although I have no idea why, because we were neither experienced kayakers or morning people.  So it was with a certain sense of foreboding that I rugged up in bed in our van that night.  A sense of doom that skyrocketed at about 3am when a violent storm woke me up.  The heavy rain and wind rocked the van and I thought 'surely the trip will be canceled.'       Wrong! The guide was ready to rock at 6 am, despite the sheeting rain and gale-force wind.  There were no refunds (and we had paid a pretty penny for the trip) so against our better judgement we climbed into head-to-toe waterproof onesies, and squeezed into our kayaks.  And it was actually ok!  And a lot of fun! The rain eased off...

Driving around and living in our Kombi was so much fun.  Even though it was summer, the temperatures were chilly.  I loved our cosy little meals in Ni-Van.   But we weren't in New Zealand to play cubby houses!  We were here to explore the country.

       

We made the arduous 20 minute journey to the very adorable Arrowtown.  We checked into a cute little caravan park and walked the cute little streets of this cute little town. We fantasised about a life there, as we passed a bowls club where all the young locals, drinks in hand, had joined together to play an afternoon game of lawn bowls in the golden sunshine.     That night we dined at a restaurant called Saffron, where I had probably one of my top 10 all-time best meals in my life.  We were ridiculously under-dressed for such a fancy pants restaurant, but the very charismatic chef still paid us a visit and stopped to chat to us for a while.  The restaurant was designed so that the chef did his cheffing in full view of the diners.  He spent most of the night putting on a bit of a show and talking to all the guests while he prepared our delicious meals.  He was a bit of a chatty bugger really. Not my pic - but this was the vibe. In the morn we bid adie...

But not too far.  Just to the caravan park up the road.  The first of many caravan parks we would visit.  We parked and set out on foot to explore the city. This is how Queenstown describes itself: "With a smorgasbord of outdoor activities, Queenstown is the home of the ultimate adventure bucket list. There’s skiing from winter right through to spring, and activities such as bungy jumping, sky diving, canyon swinging, jet boating, horse trekking and river rafting all year round. It is also a renowned cycling destination, providing everything from easy scenic tracks to backcountry trails, road rides to heli-biking and the Southern Hemisphere’s only gondola accessed downhill mountain biking." I wish I could say that we partook in at least one of these daring adventures.  But we didn't.  We did "discover" an excellent burger joint.  Ferburger.       It was a popular little place.  Often touted as h...

While we were on posting in Port Vila, we decided to fulfill two of our greatest dreams: Romain - exploring New Zealand, me - a road-trip in a kombi van.  So in November 2011 we set off for three weeks to the land of the Long White Cloud.   We flew in to Auckland.  Davina, our friend from Vanuatu from whom we had adopted our beloved Bella, was living there and studying naturopathy.  She was our hostess with the mostess for our first couple of days in New Zealand.  Showing us the sights and delights.  For some reason I don't have a single photo from our time in Auckland.  Here's a photo of Auckland from the interweb that makes it look pretty.   From Auckland, we took a flight to Queenstown.  We had hooked up with a dude there who had a passion for Kombi vans and kept a nifty little fleet of them for wannabe road-trippers like us.   For our adventure, we chose a gorgeous buttercup coloured 1978 Westphalia Kombi van.  We n...

New Zealand!