Greetings everyone from Middle Earth, home of Hobbiton, kiwis, and our long time mate Stu. We bid the Sh-he-la wagon a fond farewell and left Oz...or tried to - before we were allowed to check in for our flight bound for Auckland we found out our flight tickets didnt include luggage (honestly Im a dweeb and read the small print and it didnt mention it at any point when booking!) and could we therefore pay $120 each if we wanted our backpacks containing everything we own to join us in New Zealand, and if that werent a ballache enough they then asked to see the flight out of NZ...which we hadnt at that point actually booked. So half hour sitting on the floor of departures later battling with intermittent wifi and a credit card that the bank took that moment to decide there was suspicious activity on and so blocked we managed to book a flight and were finally, and somewhat poorer, allowed to check in. We landed in Auckland to be met by our fab mate Stu - awesome to see the big fella after more than a decade, and bless him he took the usual backpacking ballaches out by picking us up from the airport and sorting the camper - cheers dude! Let us introduce you to our New Zealand home, the Barbmobile. Discreet she is not, reliable she is not (more on that in a moment), and fast she is not but she does have a big comfy bed and that to people whove been sleeping in a tent for a month makes it a winner. We left Auckland heading for Wellington there to take the ferry across to the South Island, when the weather turned rough with driving rain and pretty strong wind. We had to alter our intended route when we discovered the road we had planned on taking was closed because of the weather, and so a drive through mountain ranges ensued with our brick shaped completely non-aerodynamic van being rocked by what we thought were just really strong gusts (quite terrifying when youre driving on the side of a mountain round hairpin bends!) whilst avoiding areas of mini landslides and indeed trees which seemed to have just fallen off the top of the cliff above. Crikey, we said to each other, that looks recent. And it appears it was, as we discovered from a post Stu had put up about there having been an earthquake - it seems our luck is holding. A delayed (owing to the weather the day before) ferry across the Cook Straight and we were on the South Island, and it is beautiful - as I sit and write this post we are in a valley surrounded by snow capped mountains. Weve driven through some stunning scenery, walked to (but not on, you werent allowed to unless you took a helicopter up and that sadly was outside of our backpacking budget!) Franz Joseph Glacier, and been to a sanctuary where we saw two real live kiwis (as in flightless birds not the people). The Barbmobile bears a remarkable similarity to our much beloved Mr Mojo, and so we quickly settled into our new home. Sadly she resembles Mr Mojo a little too much and has taken to needing a jump start if we stop anywhere for a day. Still its all part of the adventure and thankfully campsites are familiar with campers asking for a jump! So Barb willing tomorrow we continue our tour of the South Island and so bid you all farewell and send you as always buckets of love xxx
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 05:56:32 +0000
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