Winter

It seems such a long time ago that Eefje (my friend from Belgium) and I started our travels with our beloved Van (beware of the capital!) at the end of October. The Van, Eefje and me had enough time to get to know each other better; he told us all about New Zealand, his previous adventures and the good life. Eefje and I told him loads about our lives and it was great to catch up on everything which had happened in the last months.

While leaving Christchurch, heading South, our first day was beautiful: nice weather, great views of Lake Tekapo and were we genuinely screaming out ‘waaauuuuuw, look at that!!’ (well, in Dutch of course…). The second day we had horrible weather; loads of rain. Upon entering the small town of Te Anau where Eefje and I wanted to do the Kepler Track (4 days) we got the sad news that the track was partially closed due to avalanche danger and bad snow circumstances. Big disappointment, but positive as we all were (and the Van liked to have some unsupervised evenings in town…) we decided to go anyway, but only half way. Especially because the Department of Conservation (DOC) said it was going to be miserable weather all the way through, we were well prepared with loads of nice food and hot cloths. The next day we took off in the cold, freezing cold to be honest. And it was wet, and the track was pretty much going up the first hours…But still, the feeling you have when you get to the hut: great. And amazingly the sky cleared up and we had a magnificent view of the mountains around us! Since it was still really nice weather the next day we decided to ‘ignore’ the avalanche danger sign (sorry dad) and go up the mountain top. Snow up till our waists, hiking became falling and a snow fight was inevitable. The views were excellent and ‘worth’ the danger!
In the meantime the Van and we got on very well. If we weren’t hiking, we slept in the Van, just somewhere along the river or road or where ever the Van wanted to lay down his head and feet. We made dinners on a stove, we had nice wine (even the Van had some!) and only when the Van said we smelt too bad we pulled in for a shower at a camping site. Imagine how wonderful the showers are after one week without…just fantastic…

So far for the Winter episode…