A Rest From Road Tripping

As we sit in our budget hostel in Auckland, sapping the free wifi and sheltering from the rain, we have a little time to reminisce about about our very own kiwi experience (this became a bit of a running joke between us as the other main way of seeing the islands is on a kind of 'party bus' aimed a younger crowd called Kiwi Experience that we decided wasn't really our scene, but which we kept running into with their garish green buses anyway).

We've massively enjoyed having the freedom to spend our days exactly as we wanted to, stopping when we saw a sign we liked the look of, having the time to take our time at the places we enjoyed, rather than being rushed onwards by a group leader and being able to freedom camp in some beautiful nature reserves along the way. The only slight problem with self driving is having to take full responsibility for all aspects of your travel. Particularly unpleasant tasks include removing your own waste water - definitely not fun to see last nights washing up and three days of toothpaste and cold coffee coming back out of the van, getting flustered when the sat nav doesn't realise the road layout has changed and being taken in all sorts of crazy directions, angering locals at the same time and trying to do some good old fashioned map reading whilst attempting (and sometimes failing!) avoid prohibited roads. However this was nothing more than couple of small stresses in what has been an overwhelmingly positive experience. I think the NZ road trip is something we definitely want to do again in the future, as there is always more to see and do in such a beautiful country. Below is a little map of all the places we visited on the approximately 4000km we drove across New Zealand.

For now though, our thoughts are being turned to the next stage of our adventure - 4 months backpacking through South East Asia! For this we are hitting some of the 20 somethings backpacker favourites, including Bali, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam (plus others!) The change of pace is likely to be a bit shocking, but we're ready for a bit of backpackers party after being sensible designated drivers for such a long time!