Kiwiland

Island similar to Norway? Check. Freezing Cold (Norwegian summer)? Check. Eaten kiwi? Check. Smuggled items into New Zealand and being fined a small fortune? Check. Crashed a car? Check.

We flew in to Christchurch a couple of days ago and believe me, it was the bumpiest flying-in I've ever been on: Scary pilot-lady! I think Julie was watching the Simpsons on our in-flight screens at this point, so it could be an earthquake for all she notices :P All good when we had landed, we had our luggage superfast and we filled out our immigration forms and our customs forms... and Julie got caught. And fined the budget of a small country.

"You, Julie Stave, have been found guilty in smuggling in food items, fruit, namely one banana."

And how much did she pay? A pretty 200 dollars. (Our rental car for five days was 274...)

Anyways, we had to get a taxi and pick up our van! We arrived at Wicked Campers and met our designated car: Davie Bowie. He is a truly amazing car, but more about that later. We payed, had the usual tour of the facilities, oil, water, petrol, and grabbed freebies (leftovers) to go. Everything was fine, Hanne is getting into her head that she has to drive on the wrong (read: left) side of the road, we get in, I get out.

"It has an AUTOMATIC???"

I've never driven an automatic in my life. But once you get used to it, it's not so bad (don't tell anyone..). We started, got out on the road, Julie had her maps and told me to turn right at the next intersection. I turned into a one way (not my way) street. And it was very little empty. So I drove over the road and out of the road, continued on the sidewalk for a while and found somewhere to get back on the right (yes, left) side of the road.

We got safely out of Christchurch and headed for the mountains. I drove for some hours, we took some photos, had food in Darfield, passed Springfield, Sheffield, and a number of creeks with funny names (list is to be posted at a later time).

We spent the night at Jacksons, completely out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, but the nice man running the site said he would help us the next day.

We woke up (not completely mosquito-eaten), and Julie made burgers on toast for brekkie. It was good, but we had to throw the rest away because we have no way to cool things down. Well, we checked out, and the nice guy came over to the car to save the ladies in need. He seemed so confident that we had loads of petrol and could get really far, but he was just checking in case..

"It's not even running on fumes!"

No.. It was running on sheer will-power.. I was not about to go empty downhill the mountains..

He filled us up quarter of a tank for 15 dollars (cheaper than hoes in Amsterdam), and told us we had 30 k's left for a petrol station in Moana. Not the road we were planning on, but we got to Moana, filled up and headed for Greymouth. Just before Greymouth we saw the sea.. We had driven across the island and were safely on the other side. Or so we thought. I crashed during the first five minutes in Greymouth. Ladadi ladada, I took the door (the whole door) of a youngsters Corolla. And he was an angry little kid he was.

So, we stayed in Greymouth for a while longer than expected, before we headed down south for the longest journey to date. We saw the coast and glaciers, and were in desperate need of music and ended up buying crappy stuff. We drove until late last night and slept at Makarora. Freezing.

Woke up this morning and had toast and jam, drove to Queenstown, found food and Internet (the basic needs are covered), and here we are. The plan for tonight is to drive as far North as possible before I near fall asleep at the wheels, and the find somehwere to park our van.

The time difference is 12 hours exact, if anyone wanna txt :P

(We've each had our day of misery, Julie with the expensive banana, and Hanne crashing another car, Julie's turn today.. )