“Let It Snow, Let It Snow”…maybe No? :)

Have you explored the South Island’s gorgeous lakes?  There’s a lot of them!

We’ve had a ball visiting quite a few over the last few weeks. Many don’t appear as potential camp spots on our mobile apps, so we have some homework to do before our next trip! 🙂

The map below provides a brief overview of our wanders since our last update. The greyed-out areas have been covered in previous blogs.

This blog includes links to short videos we’ve made of our travels. If you follow us on social media you may have already seen some of these clips.

Be inspired by what others do, but don’t just try to copy their approach. Take the time to decide what you and your family value and what works for you… and then get exploring!

It’s not often you meet the same people more than once on a trip, as everyone’s itinerary (as in life) is slightly different. Many travellers (ourselves included) have a broad idea of where we want to go, but the where and when changes, depending on how much we’re enjoying a place and what the weather’s doing 😊 We’ve been fortunate this trip to meet a couple of couples more than once, so it’s lovely to share a drink (or two) and get to know them better!

On with the travel update!

When we left our last blog (see here) we were heading towards Milford Sound.  Our previous visits to the Sounds have focused on arriving in time to catch a boat tour! Sound familiar? 😮

This time we picked a couple of spots to camp along the Milford Highway, so we could enjoy the scenery overnight and pop out to explore the different sights. We found a quiet camp next to the river to enjoy the first night and wandered down the road to visit a few lookouts. When we returned later that afternoon (see short vid below) a couple of cones had been put across the entrance to say the camp was closed and vehicles would be towed!

So we packed things up, hitched up, and just as we started moving off the DOC Ranger turned up to check that we’d seen the note, as he was putting a chain across the entrance. Contractors were starting aerial spraying nearby so they had to clear the camp. He kindly let us stay the night, so we had the camp to ourselves! We headed out early the next morning to set up at another nearby camp.

[Maybe check your audio volume before you play these clips. YouTube can default to max volume which isn’t great if you’re at work and don’t have headphones on! 🙃]

The three video clips below show some of the sights on the Milford Highway. We had fine weather most days which always makes a difference, but we recommend taking your time through this area.

From Milford, we headed into what has become a favourite camping location – Mavora Lakes.  There’s 40kms of gravel road to get there, which takes it off the main traveller route and means it’s relatively quiet 😊

We did a day trip from Mavora Lakes to the Walter Peak Station (which is across the water from Queenstown).  We knew you could access the Station from Queenstown on the iconic 1912 TSS Earnslaw steamship, but then we heard about driving in from fellow travellers.

It is a beautiful drive and one we’d highly recommend.  It’s also a popular cycle trail, with some bringing their bikes across from Queenstown on the ferry and then continuing their cycle journey over a LOT of metal road!

Looking for a dine-out venue? Best try the Walter Peak Homestead Restaurant! We wanted to do the drive to Walter Peak but thought we’d see if the restaurant had any space for this lastminute.com couple. Fortunately, they did… and then we saw some signage and realised it was Valentines Day! Isn’t Brent the romantic planner? (Not! 😂 )

We had an interesting trip back from Walter Peak, after picking up a couple of young German cyclists (and their bikes) who’ve been travelling through NZ for six months. Unfortunately one of their bikes had broken down three times that day, the last being a complete gear failure, so they appreciated the lift! 😊

We just managed to fit their bikes into the ute tray (fortunately our bikes were back at camp), although we needed to leave the rear canopy doors open. Amazing how much dust comes in on 50 km of gravel road! We drove them to the Mavora DOC camp so they could work out where to go next. They wanted to get back on their bikes rather than just be dropped off at Te Anau since that’s their reason for being in NZ.

They wound up staying at camp for a couple of days while they created workarounds, enjoyed the scenery, and some generous entertaining by our ex-Kerikeri caravan neighbours 👏🎉

From Mavora we headed up to Cromwell for a few days, which included taking a short 30km 4-wheel drive track through the Thomson Gorge and a visit to St Bathans – the latter has been added to our list of potential camping spots! 😊

We then headed up to Lake Ohau – there are fabulous camping spots around this lake in the Waitaki District, Southern Canterbury. We did have a significant storm while at Ohau, and then at another nearby camp – winds over 100km an hour!  Quite glad we’re in a hard-shell caravan rather than our old pop-top camper! We were blown home on our last couple of pop-top trips (winds over 70km/hr), which persuaded us that it was finally time for a caravan 😅

It is “interesting” when a 3-tonne caravan is rocked around for hours on end, although not too many worries that she’ll be tipped over 😊 We also had -3 degree temps at Lake Camp, (see further down the blog) so we’re trying out all seasons!

After Lake Ohau we spent a few days in Tekapo cycling and paddleboarding. The lake levels here, as with many others we’d seen, were very low.

From Tekapo we did a day trip out to the Tasman Glacier walk at Mount Cook – we hadn’t been this way previously and it’s well worth a look. We weren’t keen to stay at the White Horse Hill camp at Mount Cook with the huge number of visitors around. 

We did drive up to the White Horse Hill carpark since we didn’t have the caravan in tow. It was chocka, with kilometres of cars parked on both sides of the road as you head into the carpark! Despite all the “talk” during Covid that the break in tourist numbers (including kiwis) was an ideal opportunity to reset how we manage visitor numbers, we’ve seen little evidence that we learned or changed much!

We headed off a couple of caravans that were just about to drive into the melee, and suggested they have a look to see if they could fit (maybe later in the day?) – there wasn’t room to swing a cat around in the carpark! They of course had bookings to stay, but that isn’t much help with all the day visitors.

Another of our wanderings from Tekapo…

We’d seen signage about wallabies being a problem in several areas but were surprised to read about how big an issue they are. Five wallaby species were introduced to NZ in the late 1800s, mainly for hunting and private zoos. Two of these species are causing significant damage each year in Rotorua (never knew that!) and in Canterbury / North Otago.

With that info, we’d been surprised that we hadn’t sighted any on the roads, after being hit by cars etc, like possums or rabbits. That all changed when we went for a cycle from our campground near Aviemore Dam, in Canterbury. On our nine-km cycle, we came across 10 dead wallabies, although most had been “dearly departed” for some time.

A couple of other pit-stops on our travels…

❄❄❄ Snow already?! ❄❄❄

You may have wondered what the “Let it snow, let it snow” blog heading is all about! We headed inland to the Ashburton Lakes and had some rather unexpected weather – see the short video below…

We’re avoiding camping over winter so we haven’t insulated the water / waste-water pipes sitting under the caravan. We had our first experience of water freezing in the pipes at Lake Camp, which gets slightly serious if your pipes decide to burst! Fortunately, ours didn’t – we just had to wait a bit to get running water.

Of course, the main reason we try to avoid the cold is that it seriously impacts our exercise regime… or is that mainly affected by us choosing to stay in bed and enjoy the morning coffee? 😂☕😴

From Lake Camp, we weren’t planning to head off to Mount Sunday on this trip, but with such a gorgeous day it just had to be done…

As the map at the top indicates, we have headed over to the West Coast and a couple of lakes there. But there’s a limit to how much stunning scenery one should put in a blog post, so best we stop here!

Take care and we’d love to hear how things are going in your world!