Milka Teat

In the past few weeks we have entered into the world of “freedom camping” here in New Zealand. This is essentially just finding a park or rest stop without a “NO CAMPING” sign and setting up for the night. It’s great, because it’s free. We hadn’t done much since it was bloody cold at night in the past, and we (Andrea) wanted to pay for a camp site with power to run the heater.

We’ve been able to find some pretty amazing sites with better views than at most camp grounds. We’ve spent a few nights on those beautiful blue lakes we’ve been writing about. Craig even dared a swim in one on a warm day, but lasted under water only long enough for a picture since his limbs began to go numb with cold almost immediately.








For the last week or so we’ve been staying at the beautiful Invercargill Top 10 Holiday Park, run by Diane and Phillip. We’ve been doing a few hours of gardening or cleaning each day in exchange for a free place to stay and a few yummy home-cooked meals. They even put us up in one of their hotel-room-like units for the past two nights, so it’s almost seemed like a vacation away from our vacation... just with more weeding.

Today we begin our next adventure: we are going to live with a family on a dairy farm in the Catlins Forest area for a few weeks. We joined a group called Farm Help in New Zealand, which hooks you up with farmers and the like for whom you can work a few hours a day, in exchange for accommodation and meals. We have no idea what we will be doing, but we are confident it will be a great experience!

Mountains of Fun

From Invercargill, where the lamb bottle-feeding took place, we began to head north up the west coast. We are now in the Southern Alps, which means more breaktaking snow-capped mountains and glacier-fed blue lakes than you can shake a stick at.

Just outside of a tiny town called Clifden we ventured into a network of underground limestone caves, with our hikers, a torch (aka flashlight), and fairly low expectations of how good free caves could be. Well, were we surprised! The caves took over half an hour to navigate, and involved tight squeezes, spider walking across underground streams, and even glowworms. At the end we discovered a tiny lamb that had wandered into the caves, so we carried it out and it became attached to us. Andrea wanted to keep it, but Craig convinced her that the van would probably not be the ideal location to raise a lamb.

Next we spent three days relaxing in Te Anau where our campsite had wonderful views of Lake Te Anau, which is New Zealand’s second-largest lake and is part of Fiordland National Park. Unfortunately the weather was rainy and we were both sick, but it was the perfect place to recharge our batteries. Apparently you still get sick while on a year-long vacation.

From there we headed to Queenstown, New Zealand’s adventure capital. The town itself reminded us a bit of Whistler, and we only stayed one night, since everything was very touristy and overpriced. If we end up wanting to do a bungee jump or anything else EXTREME we will do it when Craig’s parents are here in a few months. That night we went out with a fun Scottish couple who were camped next to us and we watched the All Blacks (NZ’s rugby team) lose to South Africa. The night ended in a tiny Whisky Bar where we traded travel stories in front of a fire and played hacky sack with the British bartender who was so impressed with Craig’s “stellar ‘chops” that he bought Craig a beer.

Now we are in Wanaka, once again at a lakeside campsite and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Yesterday we did a five and a half hour hike to the top of Roy’s Peak, which at 1578m is the highest tramp we’ve done here. Although it completely kicked our butts, we were rewarded with panoramic mountain range views at the top. You just don’t have these views in Southern Ontario!

Today we went to Puzzling World, where we went into the Illusion Rooms and were amazed by holograms and puzzled by rooms that were at an angle or played with our sense of perception. We also navigated our way through a giant 3-D, two-story, kilometre and a half maze that took close to an hour. It was a-MAZE-ing!

I Love Lamb

We arrived on the south island on August 27, and proceeded down the east coast towards Dunedin. We did the 900 km journey over two days, arriving the next afternoon, which luckily was a Friday. Andrea was able to catch up with Branden over a few beers on their deck overlooking the Dunedin harbour with the ocean in the background. That night we went out with Branden, his wife Ana, and a group of their friends to catch some live Kiwi music. We saw Sola Rosa put on a fantastic show, and recommend any Canadians looking to sample some Kiwi music to check them out – their newest video is on YouTube, “Turn Around”.

Branden and Ana were gracious enough to let us stay in their spare bedroom for a week, to take a break from campervan life. We explored Dunedin, including the University of Otago campus, the many gorgeous old buildings in the downtown area, and Baldwin Street, the world’s steepest residential street.

After a week in Dunedin, we once again heard the call of the road. On Saturday we returned to campervan life and headed further south to the Catlins area. The Catlins are an area rich with forests, waterfalls, scenic reserves, and tons of wildlife, along the southeastern tip of the south island. We were incredibly lucky yesterday to catch a rare glimpse of a couple of yellow-eyed penguins in the wild. After two hours of waiting in the cold on a rocky beach, we were rewarded with two penguins returning from the sea to their breeding grounds. They hung out by us for almost half an hour, coming within 5 metres of where we were, allowing Craig some great photo opportunities. What also made this encounter so unique was that this was not a tourist attraction where you have to pay – it was just a beach, with us and four other people and our cameras. Seeing wild penguins so close was Andrea’s dream come true.

We are now continuing west along the southern tip, again without any destination. The caravan park we are staying at has sheep, lambs, and a goat. The owners have adopted an orphaned one-week-old lamb, who Andrea was lucky enough to be able to bottle feed tonight. This was Andrea’s second dream come true, and within 24 hours of seeing penguins!