I’ve fallen absolutely in love with New Zealand. I just returned to Brisbane late last night after spending eight days in a campervan, road tripping around the South Island with Kelsey. It was such an adventure and I’m missing it already.

We left Melbourne last weekend on a red-eye flight to Christchurch. When Kelsey and I boarded our plane, we thought we were the luckiest people in the world – she had the window and I had the aisle and there was no one between us. We laid back, ready to sleep as much as we could on our three hour flight, but from the moment of take off, the baby behind us started screaming bloody murder and didn’t stop until landing. We arrived to Christchurch at 4:30am, exhausted, the van rental place not opening until 9am… so we found ourselves some nice-looking benches, curled up, and slept like homeless people in the airport. After four hours of tossing and turning, we hopped on a bus to take us to Wicked.

I’ve always thought hippie campervans were cool. Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to buy an old one, graffiti the outside, and take it for a cross-country road trip. Wicked Campers hires out crazy-looking vans all over Australia and New Zealand – our Wicked van for the week was Norton. Norton, the “iconic two-seater,” wasn’t too flashy. He was a little beat up with dents and scrapes, but we loved him all the same. After all, he was the one keeping us warm at night. We loaded Norton with our bags and some groceries and immediately hit the road.

Kelsey and Norton at Lake Tekapo

To be honest, Christchurch wasn’t all that exciting. A lot of the city had been destroyed by earthquakes years ago, and that destructed feeling was still present. Our plan was to leave Christchurch and do a week-long loop around the South Island, hitting up Lake Tekapo, Mount Cook, Milford Sound, Queenstown, Wanaka, and the glaciers on the West Coast. But one of the best things about our week was that New Zealand had different plans for us. On Norton’s dashboard, there was a bumper sticker that read, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans,” and a prior Wicked renter had added “Don’t make plans!” We learned last week that that’s the best way to go.

With Kelsey driving the first leg of our root, I dozed off. When I woke up, I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven. We were surrounded by mountains, purple and snow-capped, green fields filled with sheep. We reached Lake Tekapo and took a dip in the bluest water I have ever seen. It’s hard to put into words what it was like. The only one I can think of is “unreal.”

Heaven

From there, we headed to Mount Cook, where we planned to camp and hike in the morning. When we pulled into the campsite, we began to doubt ourselves for the first time. Everyone at the campsite was decked out in long pants, hiking boots, down coats, gloves and hats. Our warmest layers were summer raincoats and leggings that barely covered our ankles. We bundled up in as many clothes as we could find, and drifted off to sleep. And in the morning we woke up to rain… the question was, do we hike Mount Cook, or move along with the journey ahead?

My dad had just left New Zealand when we arrived. He had planned a similar route on a motorcycle, but his trip didn’t go as expected. From Christmas day through New Years, the temperature had dropped and it rained every day. My dad ended up cutting his trip short and flying back to Sydney to spend a few days before going home. Kelsey and I didn’t want that to happen to us. We didn’t want to come all the way to New Zealand to skip out on everything we’d planned. And after all, we weren’t on motorcycles – we had Norton to keep us dry and warm and out of the elements. So we hiked anyway.

Hiking Mount Cook

Big mistake. It was freezing. It was raining hard. Our “raincoats” soaked all the way through and we got back to Norton completely drenched with numb hands and feet. We didn’t think about the fact that when you’re living in a van, there’s no clothesline or dryer for your wet clothes. We found a place to take a five-minute warm shower for $2 and used hand dryers to dry as much of our clothes as we could. We still ended up driving around for a couple days with wet clothes hanging all over the van, and it started to stink really badly. Not only that, but they were our warmest layers. I started to get stressed I wouldn’t be dry or warm for the whole week.

We camped at Lake Gun, and drove to Milford Sound in the morning for a cruise. I’d heard that it rains about 360 days a year at Milford Sound – but we got extra lucky and sat on the boat with sunshine. I guess the universe started to feel sorry for us and wanted our clothes to get a little dryer. The cruise ended up being amazing. We cruised through mountains, waterfalls flowing from high above, seals bathing on rocks, free coffee on board. We got back to Norton feeling pretty good, only to find that we’d left the headlights on and the battery had gone flat. Luckily, some cute French Canadian guys helped jump start us and we were on our way again.

Milford Sound

We drove straight on through to Queenstown. The adventure capital of the world. I had heard so many great things about it and it was every bit as great as I’d expected. We ended up getting sucked in so hard that we ditched the rest of our plans and just stayed. Part of that was because Queenstown’s weather turned into warmth and sunshine, and we couldn’t stand the idea of moving on to the West Coast where we were bound to have rain.

Kelsey and I found an awesome campsite right outside of the city – Twelve Mile Delta. It was right on the lake, and we brought our soap and took freezing cold baths in the lake and warmed up in the sun. We spent a couple nights there, and booked a hostel for one night in the city – a chance to do some laundry, take a real shower, and sleep in an actual bed. I have to admit, even just being one night away, we missed Norton a little bit.

I think we definitely made the most of our few days in Queenstown. On Day 1, we headed to AJ Hackett to look at bungy jumping again – after going in Cairns, we knew we had to take advantage of our lifelong discounts at any AJ Hackett in the world. We booked a tandem canyon swing and it was amazing. When I studied in Florence, I went canyon jumping in Switzerland – the two crazy Swiss guys who took my group told us there were only two places in the world where you can jump from a platform and swing into a canyon: Switzerland and New Zealand. I had one down, so naturally I had to go in Queenstown. Kelsey and I were strapped together in harnesses, suspended 150 meters above a canyon, and dropped, adrenaline coursing through our veins.

Nevis canyon swing

As if that weren’t enough of a rush, we went canyoning the next day. A group of eight of us went with our cute British tour guide Rauel – bundled in wetsuits, swimming socks, shoes, jackets, hats and helmets. We climbed to the top of the canyon and ziplined over it, abseiled down into it, climbed back up and cliff jumped into the freezing cold water, swimming, slipping down rockslides, and having an absolute blast. Everyone had a name on his or her helmet. I was Bubbles and Kelsey was Ke$ha. I felt so silly when Rauel would pull me around by my harness and call me Bubbles.

Canyoning crew

For the rest of our time in Queenstown, we chilled. We got clean. We got warm. We drove to Glenorchy, only 20 minutes away, and had coffee at a café overlooking the mountains. We wandered around Queenstown, which was adorable, with so many little shops. We ate world famous Fergburgers, the biggest burgers I’ve ever seen. We stumbled across a weekend market down by the waterfront, laid in the grass and listened to live music, getting a little sun after days of rain. We threw away our plans and could not have been more content.

So in love with Queenstown

The last day and a half of our trip was spent driving through pouring rain back to Christchurch. Although the rain wasn’t all too fun, New Zealand still looked absolutely beautiful. Kelsey and I made it to the airport and boarded our flight home to Brisbane last night – all the while scheming our next trip…