A Campervan in the Capital

Saw this sign and felt a bit of kindred spirit :)

Our first night in Wellington, New Zealand's capital city, was in a parking lot in a bay.  It was really windy, but a great location to where we needed to be in the morning.  We learned several days later that Wellington experienced earthquake tremors of a 4+ magnitude this night – in the campervan that is always rocking at bedtime due to 4 kids in a small space, combined with the crazy wind Wellington is notorious for, we didn’t even notice!

The next morning we headed out to the Weta Caves, but were routed up an incredibly narrow and steep street which literally took us in a circle – yikes!  Google's first major hiccup for us. Upon arriving for the first tour of the morning, we realized we were in for a treat!  One of the founders of Weta Caves is Peter Jackson, and this is the place where the props and visuals are created for many movies we are familiar with – Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Mad Max, Planet of the Apes, Avatar, Avengers, Amazing Spiderman, District 9, and others.  The studio was filled with incredible creations and the creativity, imagination, and implementation of what we learned about was astounding!  We were able to feel silicone examples of human skin that they create, see the process they use for drawing, designing, molding, and painting many weapons, and gain better understanding as to how they use scale and specific models to increase the realness of only a scene or two.  We really enjoyed this tour and have much more appreciation for all of the details that go into cinema.

Hobbit Feet at Weta Caves

Captured by a troll - Weta Caves

Our "Gollum look"

Wellington streets are narrow, and being that most of the destinations we desired to visit were downtown, we opted to pay a bit to stay in the only camping location downtown, which also offered us electricity and a shared bathroom.  It was a great location and ironically in the parking lot of a Meridian hotel!

Here's what a camper park looks like in the city - Wellington

We got situated and headed to the WWI memorial area.  Peter Jackson has created a Gallipoli exhibit there and that was the focus of our afternoon.  The exhibit’s free but there was so much information that after starting we soon realized we’d benefit from a tour guide.  We had a great guide who summarized much of the information at a level that was easily understood by the kids and caught their interest.  Gallipoli was a battle fought by ANZAC (Australia & New Zealand Army Corp) against Turkey on the shores of Turkey in 1914.  ANZAC troops rallied to support Great Britain in WWI, and this was a big task for these troops from far off islands.  New Zealand lost a significant percent of their population at that time in this battle, and also had the highest percentage of injured and killed of all countries who fought in Gallipoli.  Although ANZAC lost the battle of Gallipoli, New Zealanders are proud of the troops who participated and the opportunity they had to make an impact on the world at large. As we left we had the opportunity to witness the changing of the guard and lowering of the flags.

Changing the flag at War Memorial

The following day was raining and a great day to spend at Te Papa, a five story museum with exhibits on everything New Zealand.  We started with the Weta Caves exhibit on Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War, which added to our understanding of this battle by displaying incredible larger than life New Zealanders and telling their stories throughout the battle.  It was very sobering and educational, truly quite amazing, and something we will never forget.  

Te Papa Museum

Gallipoli displays, built by Weta Caves, were incredibly large and life-like

Another Weta large scale model

After a full day at the museum, we headed over to the Wellington Night Market.  We really enjoyed this friendly environment of street music and ventured out trying many new and unique foods from the many cultures that are represented in Wellington. Some foods we tried were: Moroccan lamb tagine wraps, BBQ pork buns, beef dumplings, Japanese pizza (prawns fried in dough), crepes, fried ice cream, and Dutch mini-pancakes (it was more adventurous than it might sound).

Saturday Mom was able to get a haircut which was a huge treat for her as aside from our time in California, she hadn’t had alone time since mid-September.  Dad enjoyed a fun afternoon with a friend who works for an equity shop in town. He took him up to the top of Mt. Victoria and to a great little beach restaurant. But the real thrill was the chance to talk markets and business uninterrupted by kids. Meanwhile mom and the kids walked the boardwalk, played at parks and had ice cream.  Late afternoon we stumbled across a wine store that was offering a class and made room for us to attend, so Mom and Dad had a date and were able to learn about a range of New Zealand wines with some of the locals, while the kids were bribed with a movie and dessert back in the campervan! An arrangement where everybody wins!

Sunday, Dad and the boys went to a local establishment at 4am to watch the All Blacks play in the semi-final rugby World Cup match against South Africa.  The All Blacks won so all is right within the country for the next week at least. 

All Blacks 4AM semifinal at local establishment

Later we went to a church that a friend of ours in MN had attended when her family lived in New Zealand.  Of all the churches we’ve attended, the people here were extremely friendly and outgoing.  After service we were ushered to the café for conversation and beverages.  Mom randomly asked the woman she was speaking with if she happened to know our friend in the States, to which she enthusiastically replied, “YES!”  CRAZY!  It was a beautiful day and we were invited to join some of the families across the way at a fun outdoor restaurant.  We all really enjoyed the opportunity to visit and interact with these families and left wishing we had more time, but we had a ferry to catch. 

Lunch with new friends

We then took the ferry from the North Island to the South Island.  This was a 3 hour venture where we were able to get some school accomplished as we were served biscuits with butter, cream, and strawberry jelly!  We were impressed with how smoothly the ferry process went in a campervan.  Once on the South Island, we started the incredible and winding journey up and over mountains with breathtaking views over bays looking out into the ocean with random rock formations, all while mom  was white-knuckled and offering tense cheers on dad’s great driving, and letting out an occasional gasp when she felt we were over a bit too far left.  Thankfully, we pulled into our freedom campsite in the middle of a beautiful inlet called Double Bay, just as the sun was setting and everything was quiet and picturesque.

Campsite at Double Bay - first night on South Island

Campervan Update #3

Our trek south continues as we worked our way from Rotorua to Tongariro National Park. We spent one night in a free spot on the north end of Lake Taupo. We woke in the morning and headed up to Huka Falls, which is a powerful body of water moving over 220,000 gallons per minute. The color and clarity of the water were amazing to see. From there we headed on a trek around the park and somehow wound up at a wakeboard cable park. Tempted to make an unplanned run, we realized that time was against us as we needed to get driving to our next destination- Tongariro National Park.

Huka Falls north of Lake Taupo

The Tongariro Apline Crossing is considered one of the top ten day-treks in the world. It's a 19.5KM hike over three volcanos and was park used for The Lord of the Rings shooting of Mordor. 

Our hike started out reasonable but quickly turned cold and rainy and as we climbed and it continued to get more and more windy. Often people who start the trek have to turn around before the top because the wind can get dangerous. We had driven to the end parking lot and caught a shuttle to the start hoping that this would inspire us to keep going and complete the trek.  We came upon a large opening of snow and the kids were thrilled to have a snowball fight and slide their way along.  However, as we climbed and the wind picked up, SJ became a bit frightened and very cold as her gloves were wet from the snowballs, which meant she screamed hysterically unless carried.  So dad took to carrying her, while mom and our oldest carried mom's big backpack full of gear for the ever changing weather conditions as well as snacks and fuel to keep us going. 

G posing by the stream

Happy early on.. just wait :)

Ultimately we fought our way to the top through wind, rain, and fields of snow and ice that had us questioning our sanity more than once. Turning around at this point wasn't really an option, so we pressed on. We were thankful to know this was only a day hike and the miserable aspects of this hike had to be over shortly.  Amazingly, as we reached the summit we were rewarded with the clouds clearing and the wind behind us. We picked a great spot for a wonderful lunch of PB&J and praise time, and then we continued our trek through two craters, the emerald lakes and down the backside. The whole thing took us 8 hours and 17 minutes.

Trekking across the crater - yes that's snow and we are in the clouds!

A steep portion required some chain assistance

Sky clears as we summit

Pano near top of crater

The Emerald Lakes

View from the Emerald Lakes

Crossing the "red crater"

View from other side of "red crater"

SJ had enough!!

Crazy strong winds allow leaning

Glissading down the slope

G will miss snow this year

Live volcanic activity on backside of mountain - area off limits

Depleted and sore, we headed back to our campsite for showers, dinner, and laundry. This exhausting trek made for an easier transition to bedtime for the kids than we have had any night yet, but our bodies were sore for the next two days for sure! 

Campervan Update #2

Here is a breakdown of our last few days. We spent 3 nights in the Cozy Cottage RV Park (yes that's the name and it feels like we are in the Disney movie CARS), where we paid just about $20 to stay the night in the park. This is a nice park as it has showers, grills, a ping pong table, bathrooms, fresh water, power, and a dump site. We can camp in many places for free but then we don't have these amenities. Without power we can't charge anything but our phones, and with needing to dump our gray water and waste, as well as refill our clean water, we figure every third night or so we will spend the night in such a place (however sometimes we can stretch longer if we are able to find free dump and refill sites along our trail). But don't worry, we are still highly intrigued by the unique locations and people at the freedom camp sites!

We have spent a couple of days in Rotorua, a geothermal wonderland and tourist haven with tons of unique activities. It's hard to pick what to do as the choices are endless and expensive, but we are happy with the balance of activity, family time, fun and learning we've had here.

We took one day and drove about 45 minutes to Tokora where a Waratah Factory exists. Waratah is a company owned by John Deere that dad's brother manages sales and marketing for. They make these really cool attachments which loggers use to chop and farm huge trees. The attachments cost about $250,000 each and what they can do is quite impressive (search YouTube if interested). We received a breakdown of their business and overview of their manufacturing, along with a quick tour of the shop floor. We certainly appreciated the time and effort put forth by Uncle Dan and John to make this happen for us.

Waratah Attachment

Inventory of "raw frames" at Waratah

On our drive back to Rotorua we took a hike though the amazing Redwoods Whakarewarewa Forest, where about a hundred miles of walking and mountain bike trails exist. This was absolutely beautiful and a great opportunity to stretch our legs.

Beautiful forest!

We love Redwoods!

The next day we elected to spend the morning having the boys do a canopying and zip line tour where they also learned about the forest and its critters.  They had a great experience and came back talking about ferns and trapping opossums and other pests that are not native to New Zealand and wrecking havoc bird life.  In the afternoon the boys rolled down the hill in Zorb balls.  They enjoyed this and compared it to going down a water slide.  We returned to the Whakarewarewa Forest to catch a few of the last bikers come through the finish line at the big bike race that day.  Then we traveled to a free campsite about half an hour away that was on a lake with a path around it.  We spent the night here as it was free and closer to our first destination the next morning.

Some canopy showboating

Canopying

The post-Zorb jump!

Reading at our campsite by the lake

We woke and headed to the Lady Knox geyser and Wai-O-Tapu park.  This was the first geyser we'd seen and it, along with the incredibly colorful pools of water and bubbly mud, made for a unique place to hike around.  Wai-O-Tapu is an amazing natural park with colors that your eyes hardly believe. This is due to the extremely hot water, with readings as high as 300 degrees C, melting minerals in the rocks and then releasing them via steam. This makes various vibrant colors all over the place depending on what mineral is being released. Some of the bushes even look like they have been spray painted because of the minerals that are in the air.

Lady Knox Geyser

Mom & kids in front of the "Artist Palette"

Dad & kids in front of "Devil's Bath"

Afterwards, we headed back to the Whakarewarewa Forest for some mountain biking. The boys favorite activity over these last few days has been the mountain biking.  They have missed riding bikes and believe this is something they want to get into more when we return home.

Biking at last!

An excellent afternoon

We left Rotorua and headed south to Lake Taupo where we freedom camped along the lake for the evening.  Dad was the first to use the campervan shower, which despite being more or less on the toilet isn't too bad, and we opted for our first meal in a restaurant since plunging into this experience. We've been enjoying some simple meals that we were used to at home as we try to save money so we can do the activities here.  This was our 6th night sleeping in the camper and we are all suprised at how well it is going overall. The biggest challenge is getting four kids asleep in such very tight space.

We appreciate our reader's faithfulness and enthusiasm for staying connected via our travels.  It's a challenge to stay connected as much as we'd like while living this campervan lifestyle. Our electronics get drained and if we don't have access to plug them in, priority goes to mom and dad's phones for driving directions. We very rarely have wifi and are burning through our data plan as we research future stops, not to mention there's very little time for parents to be on screens in this small space where little people have constant needs and keeping the peace is priority.

One of the biggest priorities these last few weeks has been to plan and research future destinations. We have to first figure out what we want to do and then email places, wait to hear back, while dealing with getting visas (for certain countries), plane tickets, places to stay, etc. All of this while we don't have the luxury of constant Internet or wifi as we are accustomed to.  It can be time consuming, all while finding the balance of learning about where we are and enjoying the present. Not to mention that campervan living and lack of Internet/wifi has made getting much school done a bit complicated.  One humorous aspect of the kids not being "connected" is that as we drive around, they covet passing Burger King's as they can leech free wifi for about 2 minutes, assuming their devices are charged!

All in all, we have made great progress with our future plans while here in NZ where the cell signals are fast and data is reasonably priced (unlike South America). Mom has been amazingly organized and bearing the brunt of the creative effort so far, while Dad is the logistic guy.  So, those of you who were taking bets as to how long this crazy adventure would last, we have some news!  Some of the connections have fallen in place almost seamlessly, and that is the confirmation that we have been praying for to know how to proceed with our trip.  We have our accommodations booked while in northern Australia, and have fleshed out some details for our time in SE Asia.  Then we will fly to South Africa and Swaziland to help with River Valley and Children's Cup before flying up to Cairo and the middle east. All this while we don't know what we are doing next week! You can see the updated plans on our Itinerary page, if interested, as we keep this up to date as plans are made.

Updates from the Campervan #1

Our second camper day was full of highs and lows. We woke up to a beautiful sunlit valley just beyond the flowering wisteria tree our tilted camper was parked in front of. We had breakfast and headed to the Waitomo caves where we toured two different caves, learning about glow worms and cave formations. The Ruakuri cave has been doing tours for over 125 years and we felt our guide was one of the best we have had on any tour yet. The Waitomo Glowworm Cave tour included a boat ride through the cave tunnels where we saw amazing displays of glowworms but couldn't take photos. It was a very fun and educational experience as who knew that the glow worm light up snuggles once so popular were actually based off of a real creature!  Glowworms we learned are technically maggots, but the guides joked that people would be less excited about "glow maggot" caves. [We have better pictures but our computer is dead and we cant charge it until we find power - hopefully post later].

Glow Worm Strands when lit by light

Inside a cave

Wall formation

Unique Wall

From here we drove to the Shire - literally. Hobbiton is where the Shire filming for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit was shot. It's turned into quite the tourist trap and many locals we have talked with seem to scoff an the notion of Matamata (the nearest city), but the country truly is breathtaking. Apparently Peter Jackson flew around in helicopters in 1998 looking for sights for the movie and came across the Alexander's family sheep farm. They came to terms, constructed the set, filmed and tore it down as the materials were mostly styrofoam and plywood. But when some local people saw the movie they sort of figured out where it was and began asking for tours. The first tour was literally a van with four people. Then in 2008, when they wanted to film the Hobbit, the owner required that the set be made out of permanent materials, and that set is what exists today. It's truly amazing to see and the beauty is breathtaking. At the end of the tour one gets a drink at the Green Dragon, which is said to serve more beer right now than any pub in the country. 

Hobbiton

The Shire from Bag End

The Green Dragon

Yeah, she's cute!

Bag End - the tree above is 100% fake

Our third night in the campervan we realized that the stories were adding up quickly. Entering Rotorua, our next destination, we managed to make a wrong turn, get on a narrow street, and proceed to run over a large piece of concrete as we were in awe of the steam shooting out of the ground randomly in people's yards! The wheels did not run over the concrete 'rock,' but it took out our grey water cap, which we use to dump grey water. (If you are unaware, grey water is sink and shower water while toilet water is referred to as black water.) The cap stuck out ever so slightly further than the wheels. Additionally, we mangled our little step which no longer pulls out in front of our side door. So as we pulled into our first official RV park we were dragging our little cap that got ripped off. We needed to dump both water tanks, which is why we opted for a paid park on our second night.  However, the broken hose prevented us from being able to hook the hose up, so we had to do that with buckets (and some swear words--spoken out of ear shot of young ears of course). So safe to say our deductible is probably blown at this point. Ughh, but we do make a lot of jokes about Eddy and Christmas Vacation with his RV... $h**ers Full!

(Photo coming in future)

Score: RV-1, touring family-0

This has created a new disciplinary tool though as children who cant behave are required to empty the $h**er - yeah we'd do that. 

All in all it is funny to try to figure out all of this camper living stuff on foreign soil. The next morning some park staff helped figure out a sort-of-fix and we were set. 

We headed off to a park which has a luge track, gondola, wine tasting and mountain biking (perfect mix wouldn't you say?). Purchasing our pack of races we safely navigated the various courses 4 times, having a blast. Mom and dad partook of a little wine tasting (after luge) and pretended to be on a date, learning more about the many New Zealand wines, before heading back to the RV park.  

 
Luge Time

Survived!

Wine tasting with some cheese - why not a  mid day date?

The RV park is a street away from Rotorua Lake's beach, so we headed there and dug a hole in the sand until hot water bubbled up. In addition to being a thrill-seekers paradise, Rotorua is a geothermal wonderland with hot spots, steam, and bubbling mud all over the place. Right next to the lake, which is cold, you can dig about 18 inches down and the water is like a hot tub!

While the boys dug, mom was intrigued by these black swans that were nearby. Dad tried explaining the financial meaning of black swans, but eyes glazed over quickly.

Following this feat we showered up at the center, did some laundry, and changed clothes for the first time in a few days (no one's been brave enough to use the campervan bathroom which is emitting a horrific odor).

That evening we attended an authentic Maori dinner where we learned about the history and culture of the natives of New Zealand.  The boys were able to participate in a haka and train their lower bodies, Mom learned how to keep her forearms in shape while creating rhythm, and Dad and our oldest worked on response time and quick feet -all of these activities were ways the Maori would stay in shape so that they were prepared for battle at any  moment.  The evening ended with a traditional hangi dinner cooked in the ground.  It was interesting to learn a bit more about the Maori.

Traditional Maori Hangi dinner cooked in the ground

Agility training - a "ladder", ironically which dad made the boys do in basement at home.