Our campsite viewHerb loves to select a warm destination to get away to in the winter - although Sonoma Valley winters are not exactly harsh and often include sunny beach days. Before Christmas we spent two beautiful weeks in Maui, and now we were headed to New Zealand, where our winters are their summers.

Rather than try to take on too much, we decided to dive deep into what the South Island had to offer and save the North Island for another time. Everyone we asked said that although both islands were lovely, the South was much more beautiful in terms of dramatic landscapes, which is pretty much our thing.

Ready to e-bikeAfter some deliberation as to means of travel (guided tour, rental car and Airbnbs, or camper van), we went back to our old favorite way of travel - a campervan where we could unpack all of our stuff once into the van and travel around like a turtle with everything we owned on our backs.

Our next stop was Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, home to New Zealand’s highest mountain. Despite it being only half as high as Mt. Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary trained here to prepare himself for his successful ascent of Mt. Everest because the mountains shared similar challenging conditions and terrain.

Fox GlacierWe had no plans to deal with any challenging conditions. Our goal while here was to hike the very popular and scenic 7-mile Hooker Valley Track where we would get great views of Mount Cook.

This was not an easy decision, because driving a camper van in a new country is always a challenge, but New Zealand with its narrow, winding, steep roads was going to be particularly difficult.

Our next stop was Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park, home to New Zealand’s highest mountain. Despite it being only half as high as Mt. Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary trained here to prepare himself for his successful ascent of Mt. Everest because the mountains shared similar challenging conditions and terrain.

We had no plans to deal with any challenging conditions. Our goal while here was to hike the very popular and scenic 7-mile Hooker Valley Track where we would get great views of Mount Cook
Plus, the van we rented was 24.5 feet long, much longer than the 19.5-foot long ones we had rented in Germany, Spain, and Iceland. We soon learned that that 5 extra feet made a really big difference, especially in trying to find parking.

Oh, and did I mention that they drive on the left side of the road?

After flying into Christchurch and staying there for two very fun nights, we picked up our camper van at Wilderness Motorhome Rentals and hit the road for our 15-day camping trip.

Kudos to Herb for safely conquering some pretty hairy driving situations.