Life in Wanaka

Living in Wanaka is simple and relaxing. Our only concern is who to hang out with at night and where to park our van to sleep. We wake up everyday at sunrise, which is about 8:00 and head to the bathrooms at the lake to brush, wash and get ready for our day. Most days we head up to Cardrona for a few hours and then come back to town in the afternoon and hang around until its time to make dinner. Depending on the day, we sit at the beach, read, go to the grocery store, walk around town or organize the van. Almost every day groups of people come down off the mountain and meet at "Kai WhakaPai" a small cafe that serves food and local beer. We only go once in a while, but its nice to sit down and meet people over a glass of "brewski". When its time to call home, we head up to the internet cafe, which is above the "Kai" where it costs about $4 an hour to use the internet. Most nights we cook and eat dinner in our van parked at the lake. Despite only having a stove and not an oven or microwave, we make do and have even came up with some new dinner ideas to take back with us. One nice thing is that they have free electric bbqs to use by the lake so that gives us more options on what to eat and how to cook it. After dinner we bum around town some more or head over to a friends us to watch movies or just hang out. Some nights we go out to meet people at local bars and play pool and what not but its pretty expensive to go out so we try not to make a habit out of it. As for showering goes, every couple days we switch off between using friends bathrooms, going to the indoor pool in town or just wherever is convenient. We always try to repay people for their generosity by showing up with beers or snacks and it works out very well.

Cardrona Alpine Resort

Cardrona is the closest "ski field" to Wanaka and where we have a seasons pass. The easiest way to get to Cardrona is to hitch hike from town because our van isn't really made for mountain roads and it saves a lot on gas. We park our van in a parking lot in the center of town, then walk up to the corner where everyone waits with their thumbs out. On an average day, it takes about 10 minutes to get picked up, usually by a local kid or the occasional family headed to the mountain. From hitching rides, we have made all of our friends in Wanaka, because it gives you about a half hour to talk on the ride up. After a 25 km easy drive on a paved road lined with sheep, you head up the side of the mountain on a winding dirt road for about 13 km until you reach the top. The snow line here is much higher up, so all of the skiing is done on the very tops of the mountains, where there are no trees. With only 4 lifts, Cardrona is not a very big mountain, but its filled with a good variety of terrain. Its nice because its always sunny there, even when its cloudy in Wanaka. We haven't had too much snow yet, so the mountain is a bit bare and icy, but hopefully a storm is on the way. On the front side of the mountain you can see all the way down into Wanaka and if you look over the back side, you can see into Queenstown. Its definitely much different than what we are used to in Utah. At the end of the day when were ready to leave we hitch a ride back into Wanaka and meet new possible friends.

Tour of our van Seymore

This video is showing our accommodations for the next couple months. Click the white arrows on the right bottom of the video to make it full screen.

http://vimeo.com/13139913

Wanaka New Zealand

After only spending a night in Queenstown, we drove up over the mountains and arrived in Wanaka. We heard that this town was where the real locals lived and has a small town vibe and we immediately felt that. The town sits right on Lake Wanaka and is surrounded by mountains with snow on the tops. it is filled with small cafes, ski and snowboard shops, and ski bums from around the world. We decided that this would be the place where we would live for the summer(or winter). Now that we chose our city, it was time to make friends and we immediately started trying to talk to everyone we could find. It was lonely for the first couple days but we soon began to meet a few people and it is beginning to feel more like home. One down fall with Wanaka is that many other people are doing the same exact thing as we are so it has been hard to find a job. We're being persistent and hoping something opens up so we have a little more spending money and don't have to live on as big of a budget as we have been. Sorry for the lack of pictures but more Wanaka blogs will follow.

Queenstown

We arrived in Queenstown mid afternoon, again to encounter a magnificent rainbow. it stretched across the sky and ended in the lake (we saw a pot of gold). Sitting on a super blue/green lake with massive mountains surrounding, its no wonder Queenstown is a popular city among tourists. We first began to drive though town checking things out and looking for a hostel to stay in because it was supposed to be a chilly night. We checked into Black Sheep Backpackers where we had a warm room to share with four other people. That night we ventured out into the town in search of new friends and fun. The town seemed similar to Park City and we soon found ourselves in a bar where peanut shells covered the ground. We met people from many different countries and unfortunately found out that they, along with the whole town were trying to get jobs as well. Although we had a great night and met lots of people, we decided to head to Wanaka on the other side of the mountains where it was supposedly less commercialized and had more of a local vibe, which was what we were looking for.

South Island Drive

We boarded the Blue Bridge Ferry right about sunrise. The scenic three hour voyage took us to Picton where we boated though multiple different ocean sounds with mountainous coasts. On the boat you could sit and watch a movie, dine in the cafe, grab a drink from the bar, or watch the journey from one of the decks. Once on the South Island we began driving down the East Coast along the Pacific Motorway. This drive was similar to the Pacific Highway in California, only with much bluer water, huge mountains on the opposite side and hardly any towns. We made it to Christchurch (a decent sized city) at sunset and decided to keep driving a little further, then slept in a town near the beach. The next day we headed inland towards Queenstown. We were faced with snowy mountain ranges and sketchy roads, which made our drive take longer than expected. Like the rest of the country, there were sheep everywhere. :)

North Island Drive

We headed out from Auckland in our old but trusty Toyota Hiace camper van. The van is equipped with a pop top, bench seating that converts into a bed, a fridge, a sink, stove and many cabinets for storage. Once we moved in, it became even more homey on the inside. We began our journey down the West Coast of the North island, where we encountered mountains, rainforest, farms and black sand beaches. These beaches were in a volcanic area, so you can dig into the sand and create hot pools which are warmed by the earth. The next place we headed was Lake Taupo. This was also surrounded by volcanic mounds and you could see several islands from the shore. Unfortunately, we had experienced our first rainy day and were not able to do much at the lake. We continued our drive and ended up at Otaki beach where the water was clear and extra blue. Millions of sheep, more rain forests and some cows later, we arrived in Wellington where we were catching the boat to the South Island.