Kia ora, Aotearoa!

Almost two months have passed since my last visit to beautiful New Zealand, so what better time to finally post my photos up?

When my (now ex-) boyfriend and I visited the Land of the Long White Cloud last year we did a fairly luxurious trip down the coast to the bottom of the South Island and back on an inland route via Queenstown to Christchurch. We drove a brand spanking new Toyota Corolla, and stayed in some rather expensive hotels (by NZ standards at least - so about $4.50/night in real money). This time for a change my friends and I opted for the cheaper alternative and drove a Jucy camper van along the approximately 1,300km drive from Auckland to Christchurch.

Living in a van was a 'interesting' experience and all I can say is, if you don't mind holding your wee in for five hours until the person sleeping in front of the door wakes up you'll be fine; otherwise, you're gonna have a bad time. If you value personal space - you're gonna have a bad time. If walking to the public showers/toilets in freezing temperatures isn't something you feel you can deal with - you're gonna have a bad time. Anyway, it's an experience I can now say I've done and never have to do again.

Aside from that, highlights of the trip included: doing the 192m high Skywalk around the outside of the SkyTower in Auckland, extreme Mario Kart-esque luging in the rain at Rotorua (sadly I didn't get any pictures but you can see the luging track here), wandering through the middle of an active volcano (which erupted just a week after we visited!), visiting some bloody impressive gardens in Hamilton, snowboarding and me accidentally stumbling across a group of seals while I was taking photos at a coastal lookout.