So, after meeting back up with Jen in Christchurch we picked up our new home for the next 4 weeks. We think we have a better model on the Spaceship, a black "explore more' van. It is a bit bigger, the layout is much better and it's slightly cheaper, bonus! We spent our first night in a car park with lots of other campervans, surrounded by beautiful scenery of lakes and mountains. We've been told that unlike Oz, you can pretty much free camp everywhere in NZ. We soon got back into our routine of cooking dinner, setting up the bed and being tucked up before 9pm! We woke to a beautiful sunrise...took some photos, and then slept a bit more. The difference here to Oz is that it's absolutely freezing, so when we would wake up at 7am before and be glad to get up, has now changed to wanting to stay in our sleeping bags for as long as possible.

The driving in NZ is no chore whatsoever, the scenery is that amazing it's actually enjoyable. We are doing lots of stops on the way to get photos, none of which are doing any justice.

After getting to Queenstown we decided to find a spot just on the outskirts of the main town, where there were no 'no camping' signs. Despite it being particularly cold we slept quite well....until 8:30am when we were woken up by 3 loud knocks on the window as a man shouted "come on, open up". (If there wasn't condensation all over the windows we would have ignored him). I actually thought I heard him say "it's the police" so I was relieved to see it was just a guy from the Council who then told us we had to move on and would be fined if we were caught there again. He actually did us a favour because he told us about the very cheap and sometimes free DOC (Dept of Conservation) sites that are all over both the south and north island. If it wasn't for this little incident we wouldn't have gone to Moke Lake the next night. It was a fair few KM's down a dirt track that we didn't believe would lead anywhere, but it did. There was a gorgeous lake surrounded by mountains and lots of space for people to camp...and even a toilet! We soon got talking to Bobbie and Tom and a group of American girls that were also camping for the night and got a camp fire on the go to keep us warm/alive!

The next morning was my birthday, it was the perfect place to wake up! There was a low mist separating the lake and the mountains and the sun was shining...looked lovely. Jen sang me Happy Birthday and cooked our porridge while I opened my presents and card to find out I was having a much needed hair cut!! We decided to stay on a camp site that night, we thought it would be a good idea to have a shower before we went out (something we are otherwise having about every 3-4days!). We had a spot next to Sybille and Rudi, a Swiss couple who we got chatting to and ended up coming out with us and Tara (someone I had previously met in Christchurch). We had a great night, Tom and Bobbie came and met us too. As you can imagine/see from the photos when they are on, the next day was spent recovering! This was how we kind of spent the next few days, either going out, or recovering! It's great being part of a group again.