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      • Almost Gone
        03/25/11
        Joe looked into prices for flights out of Dunedin and compared it to Christchurch. He also looked into vans for sale in both cities. We save $300 by flying out of Christchurch instead and there are more vans for sale there for more, meaning there should still be a market of people coming in to buy

      • South Coast
        03/23/11
        Arriving in Queenstown was a bit exciting because it was the first bigger town we had been in, in a while. We were hoping to find a good dinner. Since we had some time to kill before dinner, I got some work done while Joe wandered around the park. He struck up conversations a few random people.

      • Glaciers
        03/18/11
        We arrived at the DOC site we were planning on staying at. It had been sprinkling a little, so Joe reached back to get his rain jacket. That's when he realized he had left it in the cafe we had been working at back in Ross. It was just under 100km back... So, we hopped back in the van, and

      • Driving in the Rain
        03/16/11
        We left the next morning and headed towards the west coast. We stopped along the way to buy a bag of apples for $1 (8 apples) and then a little later, there was another fruit stand with pears for $2. It was a pretty big bag, so we'll be eating crunchy pears for a bit, but they're pretty

      • Coast Hike
        03/15/11
        After the library, we headed towards a campground in Totaranui. It's huge! It can fit 850 campers, or so the DOC book claims. We had a relaxing evening and decided to do a section of the Abel Tasman coastal hike the next morning. One option was the whole loop, which would have been around 2

      • Driving
        03/13/11
        We headed back north, aiming for Abel Tasman National Park. Yesterday we drove within 35km of Takaka, down a narrow, gravel road. It was 11km long, but not too bad of a drive. A cheap campground was at the end. We went for a short walk to Harwood's Hole, which is the deepest hole in New Zea

      • Whale Watching
        03/12/11
        We drove south of Picton for one reason only. To go whale watching. Off of Kaikoura is the main place to see Sperm Whales. There is a deep canyon (about 1000 meters deep) where they dive to feed. We headed out and they spotted a whale pretty quickly. The whale we saw, we ended up seeing him 3 t

      • Wellington
        03/11/11
        We sat in Wellington for a couple nights. They have the 3rd largest bell-tower-organ-type thing in the world we were pied-pipered to it without knowing what it was. Someone can play all the various 77 bells with a keyboard. (biggest was several tonnes) Stayed in the van parked behind a hostel for

      • Bungy!
        03/09/11
        We re-met a German couple at a campground near Tihape. Upon talking we were both thinking of going to "Gravity Canyon" where they have a bridge with bungy/zipline/swing setup. We also talked a solo traveling german woman to join us as well for fun and to hope to net some group discounts

      • Walk Through Mordor
        03/07/11
        We woke up this morning to frost and ice covering the windows... We had purchased hats and gloves the day before just because information on the hike we were going to do mentioned you should have them. We figured we would probably need them on the South Island anyway. Boy are we sure glad we pick

      • Rip, Raft and Rock
        03/06/11
        We were tourists and gave $300 to be taken tubing down a cave system. We abseiled (repelled) 27 meters down into the limestone, river cave. Our guide took the 6 of us upstream, trudging through the water, using our head lamps, through various passages and for a look at the glowworms. We had haule

      • Cave Day!
        03/05/11
        It rained all night last night and continued into the day. We just did cave tours, so it worked out well. The first one was pretty neat. They're all limestone caves so have a lot of very neat formations. They also have glowworms, which are apparently only found in a few places in the world.

      • Busy Couple Days
        03/04/11
        The hot water beach ended up being quite interesting. You dig a hole and the water that comes up is hot. In some spots, it was too hot to touch. We stayed for about an hour before heading back to the van.

        The next day, we headed back up to Cathedral Cove because it wasn't raining

      • Lots of Driving
        03/02/11
        Beginning our long journey South now from the Northern tip of NZ. We stopped at the giant sand dunes, and boy were they big. Maybe twice the size of the Oregonian dunes we were used to. We did a short, grueling hike to the top of a dune displaying a grand shoreline view.

        From there,

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