For those of you that don’t know, I’m currently driving around New Zealand in a sweet little 4door hatchback that I’ve rented for 7 weeks. It’s working out to be a bit more expensive than I had anticipated but the freedom it affords is amazing!

I bought a bunch of used camping gear from a guy in Auckland that was just finishing up his 3 month road trip and it was a great deal for everything. For 8 days now I’ve been camping by the beach, by some rivers and here in Wellington in my car by the boardwalk with a bunch of other campervan folk!

Some of the highlights so far have been:
- Having showered only in the ocean, rivers and lakes of NZ for the past 8 days.
- Waking up at 5am to leave a camp site early so I wouldn’t get yelled at for camping there and having the bonus of the clearest star studded sky I’ve seen
- Body surfing masssssive waves!
- Trying to learn how to surf for 2 hours (did actually get up a few times too! But this was also in those same massive waves hahah hard to learn on)
- Sleeply packing up my stuff in my tent at 6:30 in the morning then having a nice elderly New Zealand man come by and say, “Knock knock are you awake? There was an earth quake in Chile so there is a taunami headed our way. Should be here by around 7 or so. Care to come up to the top of the hill and have some tea and coffee with us?” (which I took him and his wife up on and had some great coffee and toast!)
- Hiking the my first “Great Walk”, the Tongariro Northern Circuit! (around Mount Doom for you LOTR fans) and doing it in 2 days vs the standard 3. Although my feet would beg to differ that this was a wise choice hahah
- Driving 2000kms and having maybe 10kms of straight road lol a biker’s wet dream!

And now I’m headed to the South Island for 5 weeks! I’ll try and get some pictures up sometime in the next week or so to share because my god it’s beautiful here!

Until then my friends…