After a quick stop in Sydney and another night at Scotty's place, we arrived in New Zealand. Although we were expecting some slightly cooler weather, 5 months of t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops had really softened us up. Our first 3 days in Auckland were rainy and cold. Luckily we had no intention of doing any site seeing, mostly just trip planning (which we had yet to start for NZ).
Our original plan was to rent a car/camper and drive down to Christchurch in the south island, and fly back up. However one of the companies had too many vans in the south island, and if you were willing to drive them back up gave you a really good deal. $19 a day, a third of what we paid in Oz. Not bad for transportation, kitchen and a bed. And although we didn't know it when we booked it, it also had built in DVD player. Sooo clutch. These are actually minivans converted into campers. A little tight, but it did the job, and was way better on gas than the hog we hired in Perth. We flew to Christchurch the next day.
While renting it, we asked a few important questions since there was a chance we'd encounter some snow along the way.
"Does the car have all season tires?" - yes
"Is the car front wheel drive?" - yes
Splendid, we're on our way.
As we were quickly finding out, this was not the best time of year to come to hike (ya, I know, winter, obviously not). However before we left, most people had told us the south island, where most of the hiking is, is still good year round. It might be cold, but how bad could it be?
oh, i see...pretty bad. After about an hour getting ourselves out of the parking lot, we soon discovered that the supposed "all season" tires which all spaceship rental vans are apparently equipped with, aren't quite the same as all season tires back home. In fact they bear a striking resemblance to our summer tires. ie, they SUCK in snow. Hunh, that's funny, the rear tires also seem to be the ones spinning. Oh wait, that because this isn't front wheel drive!
Well that's okay, everyone else with rentals seems to have chains, bit of a pain, but should be fine (note, chains are not included in spaceship rental)
Okay, well we can see if we can buy some, apparently you should be able to pick them up for around $60, they'll probably come it handy again ($180, actually)
Alright, well lets see how long this is going to last (road we're currently parked next to is closed, it's supposed to snow for 2 more days).
Bollocks!!!
Well this is just swell. Luckily we bumped into a couple English guys who'd stopped at the gas station we were at to put on chains (included with rental, of course). They'd just come down the road we needed to drive, and said it actually wasn't too bad. And their tires were as bald as ours. And from my experience in England, where any snow shuts the cities down, if English guys say it's okay, it's okay. Sure enough, the hardest part of the drive was making out of the parking lot. The snow stopped about 20 minutes up the road. To Mt. Cook we go!!
(Mt. cook is currently in thick fog, no point) To Queenstown we go!
Luckily we finally encountered some decent weather. Our standards had adjusted quite quickly...by decent, I mean overcast with mean looking clouds...but no rain/snow.
Time for the age old Cole thanksgiving tradition of hitting rock with a bat made out of a tree. Never gets old. Apparently my baseball swing bares a striking resemblance to my golf swing. Golf swing or not, the rock's goin yard town.
That night, we hopped on to an organized pub crawl. Jager bombs anyone?
We'd been told that in NZ you could park a campervan basically anywhere (unlike most countries were it's illegal to camp unless is a campground). However we were awoken at 7:30 the next morning to a knock on the window.. "Hi, my name's Dave from the Queenstown parking authority, you can't camp here, and if you do it again I'll give you a $400 ticket. You've got 5 mintues to leave". I love how friendly people are here, even when this guy's being a hardass he still introduces himself first. All jokes aside, NZ has probably been the friendliest place we've been (Brazil gives it a run though). This early morning wakeup was one major drawback of freedom camping I suppose, and it onyl happened once. The other drawback is lack of showers, however we found ways around that. The big hostels are quite easy to just walk into and usually have shared showers in the hallways, so we made due (not without getting shut down a few times along the way).
After Queenstown, we were back on the road on our way to Milford Sound.
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