I had lots of hesitations when preparing this trip: should I do it with the tramping club (I really like tramping and they already have the car but I would go to only one place) or should I do it with friends (I could go to all the places I want to and be free to do what I want… but it means renting the car and buying the tramping gears…)

Finally I decided to go to the north of the south Island with three friends: my Japanese flat mate and two Americans. It was a bit short to prepare this trip 3 days in advance but we made it! Well… everything was not booked yet but there is nothing better than adventure!

After a “crêpes party” I had in the afternoon with friends of the uni, I directly went to the ferry. Yes, the last hour available was at 3 AM! The journey lasted 3 hours and a half. We expected to see the sun rise but it was just 6am when we arrived, so to early!

(1)    When we arrived at the place to rent the car, the person in charge told us that we didn’t book the car as we thought but fortunately the one we wanted was still available. While he was preparing it, we did a small walk and discovered Picton. This is the kind of place that exists only thanks to tourism: what we could see was only car rentals, backpackers, hotels and souvenir shops. However the landscapes were amazing!

We had our first bad news when we realized that to drive, we had to be over 20. We planned that the two American girls could drive but in fact, only one could…

The first place where we stopped was Kaikoura

(2)    This place is famous for people who want to see whales, swim with dolphins… minimum $170. We heard that it was possible to walk to a place where there are usually seals. That’s what I did with Tomomy and YES, we saw them. Quite impressive for a city girl who only sees animals in the zoo!

The place where we stayed was a backpackers and I first realized that it was true that a lot of German people loved traveling in New Zealand!

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  On the 29^th we decided to do a walk before taking the car. We didn’t expect so much from it but I think that it was actually the best landscapes ever!

We spent the end of the day at Hammer spring, this is a place known for its sulfur springs. We decided to go to those pools. I expected it to be natural but in fact it really looked like normal pools next to each other at different temperatures. The only difference was the sulfur pools that were at 40-42 °C. I can be sure it was sulfur: sulfur and silver react with each other! Fortunately they had a special product to give jewelries their original color!

We didn’t have any place to stay for this night but the second place we went to, still had camp sites available!

On the 30^th we also did a small walk (if you go to New Zealand there is one condition for you to like it: you have to love tramping!

The walk was supposed to last 20min but as we got lost it lasted 1 hour (we met Germans who helped us find our way back).

(4)    For the night we stopped along the highway. We decided to use the stove we bought to cook our dinner but realized that the cashier, from the place where we bought it, led us astray: the gas bottle didn’t correspond to the stove we had! I went to ask German people if we could borrow there stove and luckily it was exactly the one we needed! (Second time that German people “save” our life!) And we had a wonderful dinner in the darkness surrounded by sand-flies, our best friends! I may have already talked about it: they are very small flies. When you see them for the first time, you may think that they are nice but in fact those are the worst! They bite you and you can’t help scratching for 2 weeks!

(5)    On the 31^st we drove almost all day long to go to Abel Tasman which is one of the best places for tramping. We went as usual to the i-site. We booked a boat for the next day. When we booked it, we didn’t really realize that we would have to walk for 8 hours to come back…We also booked two nights in the Mac Donald farm, a camp site. Did you know that Kiwi people were crazy about lamas… now you do! I asked a guy why they had some, I couldn’t find the reason. Maybe just for the wool to make some competition with the sheep.

The next day we took the boat for 30 minutes which brought us along the coast and dropped us on a beach. We were ready for an 8 hour walk!

At the beginning we really took our time, did some loops but then we realized that it was going to take us much more time than what we thought! The only nationality we met were German. At the end of this tramp, we couldn’t feel our feet anymore but we had had a great time and saw impressive sceneries!!

Before the last day, we went to the golden bay. Called so because people found a lot of gold there, during the gold rush. The water there is so clear (this is the second clearest water) that Maori people consider it as sacred.  Then I had a swim. On the pictures, the water seems so hot but believe me, this is not the case! We went back to the east, going to Nelson (6). It is told to be a historical place… I didn’t see much of it! Tomomy and I borrowed some bikes (be careful, the helmet is compulsory!) and went to a “Japanese garden” that didn’t look like one according to her!

And finally the next day, we came back to Picton (1)! We arrived way too early for the ferry. We did some walks but it was raining for the first time in 1 month… so a real good rain! I finally preferred taking the car and stopped to take pictures under the rain. And now we had to wait for the ferry. What can we do to kill time after having lunch, visited all the shops and ate donuts?... Get your hair cut! So did Evelyn! The result was not exactly what she expected but it was a good souvenir from Picton.

We finally took the ferry to reach our home sweet home!

No words to describe this trip! Just extraordinary!

A big thanks to Evelyn, Tomomy and especially Destinee who drove during this whole trip!