Author: K&N

This is going to be our final NZ blog post, being written entirely from the airport lounge.

This trip has been quite the adventure, from motorhoming for the first time, to the unique and beautiful scenery, to one-of-a-kind experiences and everything in between. There’s still so much we would love to do here, though, and we’re already thinking about coming back.

With our last blog, we ran out of steam before finishing off the trip, so we wanted to really work to complete this one. It’s been hard, with the spotty internet (which was admittedly way better on the North Island) and our general tiredness at the end of the long days, but getting all of the experiences written down and sorting through photos helps us remember all of the best things we’ve done here. Ultimately, it’s a blog for us as well, to make sure we appreciate the little moments as well as the big ones.

We’re going to leave this one with some of our favourite experiences overall. Which is hard, because there were SO MANY great parts of this trip. But this is what we came up with.

Hobbiton.

Milford Sound.

Kayaking on Milford Sound and drinking water from a glacier – that four hours before was part of the glacier we could see – was unforgettable.

Rafting on the Mohaka.

Freedom camping.

There’s nothing quite like waking up with no one around, next to stunning scenery and surrounded by nature.

Finding pounamu.

Walks to incredible places – Blue Pools, Hokitika Gorge, and falls galore.

Redwoods Treewalk.

Driving around the South Island.

Every bridge, every corner, every mountain – the South Island took our breath away more times than we could count, and certainly more times than we remembered to photograph it.

I’m going to preface this post by saying we weren’t allowed to fish for the big trout. Sorry, Mum, we asked, but they were pretty against it.

After Hobbiton, we had some free time – nothing planned, and no pressing places to be – so we drove back towards Taupo to the National Trout Centre. Because fish.

It’s a museum, aquarium and nature walk all in one, and was a neat experience. The fish were huge (feeding from visitors will do that!) and the history of trout in NZ was really interesting. As were some of the native fish showcased in the little aquarium.

From there, we headed to a glassblowing place called Lava Glass. You’re not allowed to take photos there, but the glass was pretty awe-inspiring, so google it if you’re into that kind of thing!

We backtracked to Huka Falls (navigator error, bad Nicole) and while they were definitely fast-flowing, they were also pretty touristy and similar to other falls we had seen. (It’s also possible at this point in the trip we were getting numb to NZ’s natural beauty. There’s just so much!)

The last big highlight of our trip was the Redwoods Treewalk. It’s a walk among a redwood forest, on rope bridges (all very secure and safe) and platforms about 20m off the ground.

You can do it at night and during the day, and we would definitely recommend doing both. We started with the nighttime experience, but think the daytime one is probably the better starting point, to give you an idea of the scale of the forest first. At night, it turns into an artistic light installation, with lanterns and glowing lights, and even some projectors with interesting animations. A completely different experience, and a stunningly beautiful one.

There was also a cross-section of one of the oldest redwoods, which was over 2000 years old. Insane!

Above: Redwoods Treewalk in the daytime.

Below: Nighttime!

Below: The Giant.

The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. After finishing our rafting trip, we headed into Rotorua and stayed the night there, eating at a great historic pub called the Pig & Whistle. (The pork was so, so good, but beware, the serving sizes are huge!) Cameras were left in the motorhome… so no pictures of it, sorry!

The next day (Wednesday) we had our Hobbiton tour booked in the evening. We were excited, but it was too early to check into our Airbnb so we explored some falls along the way – Okere Falls and Trout Pools. A lovely little walk (easy) with some impressive rapids and pools along the way, and a rafting trip screaming past every once in a while.

Having killed enough time, we headed to our AWESOME farmstay Airbnb. Highlights of the stay there were the dogs (so lovely) and the breakfast the next morning.

We didn’t get a photo of the breakfast Jenny (farm owner) brought over to us, but it was home cooked muffins, home made yoghurt with honey from the farm and fresh orange juice – free of charge. Amazing.

And now we get to the big part of this post. Honestly, the highlight of the trip for Kurt and a top three experience for Nicole…

Hobbiton

We opted for the evening banquet tour. Everything we had read before booking said it was a great experience, and even with those high expectations, we were still blown away.

It’s a commercial experience – you pay, you see the film set, you leave. It should feel a bit impersonal or perhaps a little fake. We were completely unprepared for how welcoming and initimate the entire experience felt. Being in the evening tour means you’re the last group through, so you get to see Hobbiton without the crowds, at a much more leisurely pace. And we took full advantage of that, enjoying the tranquility of the place, the feeling that a hobbit might run past at any moment.

Along on the tour were guides Sonny and Alice – and they were nothing short of spectacular at their jobs. Every hobbit hole had a history and a story, every corner and path was rich with tidbits of what was filmed there, and how it was crafted exactly that way because of the books, or Peter Jackson’s vision, or even to give the clever illusion of hobbit small-ness or Gandalf giant-ness.

When we completed our loop of Hobbiton, we wandered into the Green Dragon for our (surprisingly good) cider and our scrumptious, rustic meal. We ate like hobbits – so roast meats, roast veggies, gravies, breads, and finishing off with crumbles and cakes for dessert. Simple, but so well done.

After dinner, we got to enjoy sitting in the Green Dragon for a while, then we went on a walk through part of Hobbiton at night. It’s not lit, so you get little lanterns to light your way, and Sonny led the group in a really lovely moment near the Party Tree to end the experience. (I won’t ruin it, in case anyone decides to go.)

By the end, we were exhausted but so, so satisfied with the experience. There was honestly nothing they could have improved upon, and that’s a rare thing.

Even rarer, though, is that they managed to make a touristy experience feel magical, personal and comfortable at every step of the way. We’re still not entirely sure how they did it. But we highly recommend it.

Our last post ended at a freedom campsite within Kaimanawa Forest Park. It was quiet and uneventful and definitely not worth writing home about, but free, so no complaints!

On our way out, though, we crossed a little bridge and could just see the edge of some falls. We decided to see if we could drive to them and took a detour towards the sound. A short drive later, we came across the Waikato Falls and Rangipo Outfall (kind of like a dam).

The amount of water rushing through the area was a bit nuts and we later found out kayakers launch from underneath the dam-like-thing and head down-river. So that’s on our to-do list next time!

From there, we headed towards our raft fishing adventure, which led us past the beautiful Lake Taupo and some more almost-offensively pretty countryside. (Really, NZ, tone it down.)

We stayed the night at Raft Fish NZ in our motorhome (thanks again, Deon, for the hospitality!), so we could be up bright and early for our trip. We were super-excited, both for the fishing and the chance to be on the gorgeous Mohaka River for two days.

And it did not disappoint. Not only was the river stunning (again, tone it down, NZ), the fishing was great fun and our guide was awesome. Even our little tent for the night was cozy and fun (though the night itself got pretty chilly, so we didn’t stay up for night photos!).

We managed to catch a couple of great fish, and so did Deon (aforementioned awesome guide). Sadly, some fish were lost in rapids and some more through unlucky tackle issues, but still a great experience overall.

Oh, and the dinner was fantastic. Nothing like steaks cooked on a campfire (okay, it was a gas hotplate because the wind was nuts, but we’re counting them as camp steaks).

The rapids along the way gave us plenty of chances to get splashed (thanks Deon!) and some really exciting fast bits, but we were really confident with Deon’s skill and felt safe the whole way through (and yes, Mum, we were wearing lift jackets on the raft).

We’ll leave this post there, with some more photos of the Mohaka River. There will be more photos and even videos to come, but it’s hard uploading them with caravan-park wifi!

Still a day ahead of schedule, when we left Murchison, we headed up to Nelson via Wakefield (specifically, the Bakery at Wakefield – highly recommended if you’re in the area). From Nelson, we drove the incredibly squiggly route to Picton, boarded the Interislander ferry and travelled across to Wellington.

It was a bit of a whirlwind day with not much time for photos. We made one exception, for a lookout near some stunning ocean views. The sign said 500m, and we figured we could use a break from driving after a couple of hours on the road.

Turns out, those 500m were pretty damn vertical, and the views were average at best, half hidden by overhanging trees. Still, we took the photos because we’d trekked the whole way up the damn mini-mountain and we were going to get our lookout photos.

Above: Views from Cullen Point Lookout. In case this blog post is unclear at all, we don’t recommend this one.

… And then we got back in the car and passed a WAY better view point from right next to the road less than a minute later. There was some swearing.

Still, the views along the road were stunning and the drive was… interesting. (Read: Nicole was scared half to death while Kurt navigated the bendy road like a pro.) Screenshot below is of just one section of bendiness as an example. See? We’re not kidding. The road was pure squiggles. Whoever designed it was either drunk or evil.

We reached Picton and headed straight to the ferry terminal. It’s a little hard to find parking for the motorhome in bigger cities, and we only had about an hour spare, so we figured it was safer to just check in… and then wait, and wait, and wait, while they unloaded the previous ferry. Sweet jebus they can load a lot of vehicles onto those things!

We finally boarded (perfectly on time, it just felt like forever after watching the unloading process) and headed up to have some lunch and settle in for the trip. The crossing itself was pretty smooth, but raining on and off, so we didn’t go outside to get photos much. (Also, the outside deck is where all the smokers were… no thanks.)

We arrived safe and sound (and a little seasick, poor Kurt) in Wellington for the first real rain of our trip. We decided to stay in a caravan park that night – there aren’t many options in Wellington for freedom camping, and they’re all carparks in the centre of town (no thanks).

So, Wellington TOP 10 it was, which was nice and clean and actually pretty quiet for being in a city. The next morning, bright and early, we did Weta Workshop (in case you haven’t heard of them, they do all the props, costumes, make up and heaps of other stuff for movies, including Lord of the Rings). So fun! Really cool learning about how all of those things are made, including the use of a CNC machine, which got Kurt’s nerd side into a tizzy.

Onwards and upwards! We left Wellington that afternoon, heading towards our fishing trip to be sure we got there in time. The trip took us along the coast, towards Taupo.

Being us, we took the scenic routes wherever possible and stumbled across a little place called Stormy Point Lookout. So. Freaking. Beautiful.

Above: Stormy Point Lookout.

From there, we kept heading up towards Taupo, passing some stunning(ly cold) mountains along the way to our campsite for the night in Kaimanawa Forest Park.

Above: Yep, all those photos were taking within about an hour of driving. Completely nuts!

Kaimanawa State Forest was meant to just be a campsite for the night, away from the road. It was that, but we also stumbled across a gorgeous river and falls, and took a detour to see them the next morning. More on that in the next blog post though!

Turns out, the little river spot we found just before writing out last post was not only pretty, it was also one of the few places you can find pounamu (NZ jade), which is limited to a few river mouths along the west coast of the South Island, and also the Fjordlands.

While pottering around the morning after camping nearby, Kurt nudged a rock with his toe and asked if it was jade. We studied it, decided it might just be, and then proceeded to hunt for over an hour to see what else we could find. And then count and judge them (because competitiveness in marriage is healthy and needed).

Above: Some of the pounamu we found.

We didn’t know how rare it was until we chatted to a lovely gentleman in Hokitika. We’ll talk more about that a little further down, though. Don’t want to skip ahead!

After finishing off our last blog post, we hit the road again in search of fishing spots. Which, sadly, we didn’t find. The whitebaiters were out in full force and according to everyone we chatted to, whitebaiters do not share well, so we steered clear of them and tried to find areas they hadn’t claimed. Access points to the rivers were few and far between though, and instead of fishing we found ourselves wandering a few riverbanks and walking paths looking at pretty scenery instead. Not a total loss, but a certain bearded person was a little disappointed.

Above: Attempted fishing spots, and a ladybug! (It was cute.)

With no reason to stick around that area, we decided to head further up the coast, soaking in the awesome sunshine and coastal views.

We reached our next stop at Franz Josef and stayed at our one hotel on the South Island, the Rainforest Retreat.

IT WAS AMAZING.

The view was indeed rainforest-y, and there was a spa outside to relax in which was magic.

Feeling refreshed, we headed off the next day for another meandering drive. We stopped briefly at Lake Ianthe, hoping for some fishing fun, but were thwarted again, this time by weed… So much weed, catching in whichever gear we tried. To say Kurt was disappointed at this point would be an understatement. We’d really wanted to fish in the little bit of free time we’d carved out. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be, so we headed further up the coast.

We made it to Hokitika just as some showers started. Not put off at all, we made the walk into Hokitika Gorge and… just wow. Worth every slightly-damp step.

Back in Hokitika for lunch, we stopped by Bonz N Stonz Carving. The shop has great reviews, helping people carve their own jewellery from bone or pounamu. We didn’t have the 4-5 hours needed to carve something this time, but we still checked out the store and chatted to the ridiculously friendly guy there. He checked out our smaller stones (the ones Nicole was carrying around by chance) and confirmed we’d actually done pretty well. Most of what we’d found was really pounamu. Apparently most of what is brought to him isn’t real (just greenish stones), but we had a success rate of more than 50%. So yay us!

Above: The Hokitika beach sign, and two of the stunning pounamu specimens from Bonz N Stonz Carving.

We didn’t have time to take the bigger stones back to him, sadly, but we’re 99.9% sure they are pounamu, based on how they look next to the ones he confirmed for us.

We finished off the day with another couple of hours of driving, to Murchison. We stayed the night at a neat little motorhome park out of the city which had free range eggs (yum).

Oh, and also we got the worlds biggest jar of honey (slight exaggeration, obviously). Nicole was trying to cheer Kurt up after his fishing depression kicked in, and… Look, she might have gone overboard. But he loves honey and it was the only size they had left!

Plus side, it is super yummy!

So, we left Queenstown a day early and that put us ahead of schedule. It was a gorgeous day so we decided to drive the Haast Pass because we knew it wouldn’t be icy (safety first, kids).

The drive for the day was Queenstown to Wanaka, via Arrowtown / Arrow Junction, then over the Haast Pass to (shockingly) Haast, then on to Jackson Bay.

(Above: Drive route (roughly).)

We picked the scenic route rather than the highway, travelling via Arrowtown and then some squiggly roads towards Wanaka. We were lucking in having a school bus driver ahead of us, showing us where the pull outs etc were for larger vehicles. Thanks random bus driver!

The view on this little drive was stunning, but hard to capture in photos. So instead of a beautiful scenic shot, I give you my “slightly-blurred and poorly-exposed with hot air balloon if you squint” shot. You’re welcome.

Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea were both lovely. We stopped briefly in Wanaka for some groceries and other boring necessities, and then it was on to Haast Pass!

(Above: Shots from Haast Pass, where we failed completely to read names while gawking.)

Every time I think we’re getting used to the beauty here, it comes and hits us with something new, like the Blue Pools. This was about a 30-40 minute walk, and worth every step. So, so pretty.

We continued on Haast Pass, stopping at Fantail Falls and Thunder Creek Falls along the way, and eventually popping out of the mountains at Haast. Population is apparently about 200 most of the year, and then it spikes to 2000 during whitebait season. Which is now. So I suppose it’s busy here at the moment, but you wouldn’t know it!

(Above: Fantail Falls and Thunder Creek Falls.)

We had lots of sunlight left, and decided to head down the coast to Jackson Bay. The drive was completely different scenery, with glimpses of stunning ocean. Almost everything was closed, so we turned around to find a campsite for the night.

Kurt found us a looker, too! A gorgeous, private little spot off Arawhata river. We cooked the fresh salmon we’d bought on the drive for dinner and settled in for a quiet night.

In the morning, we explored the river more and then headed back into Haast for some much-needed phone reception and fuel. And now we’re not sure where we’re going to the rest of today. So, off for another free-form adventure!

(Oh, almost forgot – thanks for the super-comforting signage, NZ!)

Six months ago we unintentionally booked a trip to NZ. How do you do that kind of thing unintentionally, you ask? Easy. We had a flight credit, and had planned to maybe visit Sydney, and instead New Zealand was on sale and (as often happens with us) we got distracted by the shiny thing and ended up booking return flights to Auckland.

We then ignored the trip for several months, almost forgetting about it completely until people started asking us, “what are you going to do over there?”. After the third or fourth time that happened and we had no answer, panic started to set in and we decided some planning and booking might be in order.

And thus began the long and arduous journey of “top ten best things to do in New Zealand” lists and YouTube vlogs of other people’s travels. It took us so long to decide where to go that the first thing we ended up booking was a month before the trip – and that was Hobbiton (priorities all in order over here, thank you very much).

We followed that up with a car booking, and patted ourselves on the back for coming up with a decent North Island trip for our two week adventure… And then we changed everything completely when we came across an awesome deal on a motorhome. The catch? We have to drive it from the South Island to the North Island. So three weeks out from the flight, we cancelled everything we had booked so far, booked the motorhome and then proceeded to panic wildly about not knowing where we were going.

We hurriedly researched more (being honest here, Kurt researched more, not Nic) and over the next week or so came up with a new plan. A better plan! It’s now been fleshed out a bit more, with some bookings sprinkled in, and we’re at the airport about to set off on our adventure. (You can thank a one-hour flight delay for this blog post, otherwise we might not have had time for it!)

Day 1 – Saturday 7th: Flight to Christchurch, picking up the motorhome and driving to the Mount Cook area, to what NZ calls a “freedom” campsite. These are campsites that are completely free to use, provided you have a self-sustaining motorhome (which we will!).

Day 2 – Sunday 8th: A morning of fishing, then off to Queenstown.

Day 3 – Monday 9th: Milford Sound! (Hopefully. Weather pending. Fingers crossed!) We’ll be doing a short flight to Milford Sound, followed by a cruise on the water and then kayaking.

Day 4 – Tuesday 10th: Queenstown exploration (and maybe more kayaking, who knows?).

Day 5 – Wednesday 11th: Driving the Haast Pass – gorgeous road through the mountains between Queenstown and Hasst (or so we’ve heard).

Day 6 – Thursday 12th: Franz Josef glacier and a rainforest retreat.

Day 7 – Friday 13th: Driving towards Picton, via Hokitika Gorge.

Day 8 – Saturday 14th: Picton and the ferry ride to Wellington, then (maybe) Weta Workshop so we can maintain our Lord of the Rings nerd-status.

Day 9 – Sunday 15th: Drive towards Napier.

Day 10 & 11 – Monday 16th and Tuesday 17th: Raft fishing, baby!

Day 12 – Wednesday 18th: Hobbiton.

Day 13 & 14 – Thursday 19th & Friday 20th: Redwood walk, Kerosene Creek, maybe a bit of Taupo time. We’ll see how tired we are by this point!

Day 15 – Saturday 21st: Auckland to return the motorhome, and then some city time to re-integrate ourselves into society. Maybe even a shower. Who knows, we’ll basically be hippies by this point.

Day 16 – Sunday 22nd: Flight to Brisbane, followed by the drive back to Bundy the next day.

And that’s it! Our great, unintentional adventure of 2019. Stay tuned for fun times, like us freaking out over emptying the black water from our motorhome (that’s the toilet stuff, we’ve learnt) and Nicole catching more fish than Kurt again.

Ok so we’re a little behind with blog posts, but we’re slowly catching up and already have the remaining blog posts in the works, so stay tuned! (You know, if you want… we’re not dictators… yet.)

Leaving Ketchum
Ketchum and the surrounding area is still our favourite part of our trip (spending time in SF with Donna and Jas was a very close second… but more on that in a later post), so leaving Ketchum was sad for us. If we could have, we would have stayed longer there. As it was, the best we could do was take the long (and scenic) route out. We know, we know, this whole scenic route thing is getting to be a habit, but it’s one we really enjoy, so we’re not at all worried about adding an hour or two to the drive to see a little more amazing scenery.

With this in mind, Nicole planned a less-than-direct route from Ketchum to Boise, Idaho, where we planned to stay for the night. Instead of going down highways and freeways, we went up into the mountains through Stanley, and then wound through said mountains before finally heading back down to Boise.

Google Maps showed the drive would only take 4 hours or so, so we took our time packing and loading the car that morning and left Ketchum around 10am.

Snow!
Even though we left a little later, there was still fog (or clouds, maybe?) shrouding the mountains as we wound through the gorgeous little town of Stanley and then further into the mountains.

Low clouds 1

Low clouds 2

Low clouds 3

We were a little bummed that the clouds blocked our view of the Sawtooth Mountains – so no photos of them for you – but that all changed when we rounded a corner and saw this…

Kurt had never seen snow before, so naturally we pulled over so he could explore. He poked at it, marvelled at the strangeness, and then threw a lovely icy ball of it at Nicole. (So charming, really.)

Kurt’s first snow

Kurt in the snow

Frosty snow flower

Snow selfie

We were pretty chuffed we’d gotten to experience snow at all and got back onto the road thinking that was that. As we climbed higher into the mountains, though, it became clear that what we’d just seen was just the beginning. The higher we got, the more snow there was – we’re sure to locals it was nothing at all (barely a few inches, really), but for us it was pretty magical seeing footprint-capturing, ground-covering, still-falling snow.

Footprints in the snow

Bench in the snow

Trees in the snow

Mountains in the snow

Boise and the whoopsie drive
For this part of the trip, we hadn’t pre-booked accommodation. By all accounts, it’s a quiet time tourism-wise in America, so for days where we didn’t want to lock ourselves into a particular drive for the day, we had decided not to book in advance.

Turns out, that’s all well and good until a football game (or conference or something) books out every single hotel, motel and most of the AirBnBs in a city on the night you’d planned to stay there. We arrived in Boise, searched, and came up with… nothing.

So we got back on the road and figured we would stay at the next town. Except the next several towns have no accommodation at all (unless you count the horrible, you-might-get-murdered-there motel at one in the middle, which we DID NOT), and so on we drove all the way to Winnemucca, Nevada.

It ended up being a long driving day, but that didn’t end up being such a bad thing. Kurt drove, Nicole blog-posted, there was an awesome sunset, and then we saw some UFOs together. Not so bad at all. (We’re kidding about the UFOs – there were some very odd lights flying in the desert at one point, but we’re pretty sure they were US Air Force planes practicing night landings… Pretty sure. Maybe. Well, logically, that makes sense. We hope.)

Nevada sunset 1

Nevada sunset 2

Nevada sunset 3