Roadtripping around New Zealand

New Zealand has been on my bucket list for ages. Everyone's holiday photos I see after they have visited, I want to go more and more. And finally we did!

After drooling over our friends New Zealand photo's from their recent trip, we decided to just book a trip, because why not! We booked our trip for July, in 2016, even though it would be bloody cold, it's meant to be the most beautiful time of year to go - the chance of snow, snow capped mountains, and crisp winter mornings, and not to mention water falls!

We started off our journey in Queenstown, landing around 830pm at night. While we were getting to our accomodation, in the dark you could just glimpse the mountain ranges that surrounded Queenstown, and it made it even more exciting to wake up the next morning to the mountain range in the daylight.

We picked up our little van in the morning, from Jucy Rentals, which would be our home for the next two weeks. Our first morning in Queenstown was amazing; it literally felt like we were in a small european village, with snow capped mountains surrounding us, and pine trees everywhere. It was just wow.

Lake Wakatipu was probably one of the highlights from our trip, it was just draw droopingly gorgeous. We took our little van and did the drive to Glenorchy, a winding road that follows along side Lake Wakatipu, and it was the most scenic drive I have ever done. I literally could not stop smiling because of how in awe I was.

We of course couldn't miss the opportunity to do Milford sound either, while we were in Queenstown. The drive down to Milford sound was insane. It was so beautiful and crazy all at the same time. you would go from driving through a rainforest, to driving through a winter wonderland with snow everywhere - we even drove through a mountain! A tunnel is actually dug out through the middle of a mountain. It was so, so insane. Words cannot even describe it! We had to be careful of black ice too, which I was so paranoid about - we were absolutely fine though!

From Queenstown we travelled north west and tried our hand at skiing and snowboarding, and I fell in love. I Thought I would hate it, because it would be cold and wet and I thought I wouldn't be able to do it, so I was really apprehensive at first. I had such an amazing instructor through, and I loved it! From here, were continued driving up the west coast of the South Island, and headed to the Blue Pools. Photo's just could noted it justice. The water was such a magical blue colour!

From the west coast of the south island, we took one of the mountain passes to the north coast of the Island to visit Nelson and Picton - literally the cutest sea side town ever, and then got the ferry across the the North Island. The North Island was quite a quick visit as we realised we were running out of time an had to get to Auckland in time for our flight home, so we only spent 4 days travelling through the North Island (a crazy amount of driving!!).

We could not miss Wairere Falls in our crazy four day adventure on the North island. We had seen so many photos while planning our trip, and honestly the photo's don't do it justice. We didn't imagine it to be such a long hike either! We swear we saw the sign said it was 15 minutes to the lookout for the waterfall, but it was actually 45 minutes just up to the waterfall! However, it was defiantly worth it!

My highlight of the North Island, would definitely had to have been the Mermaid Pools at Matapourri Bay. It was definitely a bit of a hike - we had to walk all the way to the end of the beach and then hike up this ginormous hill through trees and over rocks. But once we got through to the other side, it was gorgeous. We went at sunset, and it was just beautiful. It definitely looked like mermaids lived there - huge natural rock pools everywhere. It's a definite must for the summer time!

Overall, it was an amazing trip! So, so cold, but definitely worth it! we are planning a trip back to the South Island to go skiing in winter this year! I can't wait.

Hope you've enjoyed all the photo's!

Love, love, love,

L x

#travel #newzealand #holiday #winter #roadtrip