Tasman bei Janina & Jonas

As mentioned in the previous post, we took the camper and the ferry to the South Island to Tasman to Janina and Jonas. We even saw a few dolphins and a penguin during the ferry ride. When we arrived in Tasman, we were able to stay with Janina and Jonas in our camper and were also allowed to use their bathroom, kitchen, etc. The two of them live quite secluded in a really nice little house in the middle of the field, surrounded by sheep, olive trees and lots of birds. You can look out to the sea from your kitchen window and it's a 15-minute walk to the beach.

During our time in Tasman, we not only equipped our camper so that we could live in it, but we also did a lot. One day we went to Kaiteriteri to rent kayaks. Kaiteriteri is located just before the Abel Tasman National Park, which is considered one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand. Kaiteriteri also has one of the best-known and most popular beaches, which can get pretty crowded in the summer by New Zealand standards. We paddled to Split Apple Rock with the kayaks in the best weather and good conditions (waves). This gets its name because of its shape, as can be seen in the pictures. During the kayak tour we saw quite a few large jellyfish that had been washed towards the beach due to the stormy weather of the previous days.

Another day we went back to Kaiteriteri to do a little hiking. We borrowed Minnie for this. Minnie is the family dog, for which Janina and Jonas looked after the house and Minnie for 3 months. This is relatively common here in New Zealand and is called house sitting. In Kaiteriteri we walked to several bays and occasionally had beautiful views over the golden beaches.

The rest of the time we looked at the towns of Motueka and Mapua, drank coffee there (just Hildi ;-)) and also had dinner in the evening. On the last day we did a wine tasting in Tasman. Otherwise, we grilled with the two of them almost every evening and finally managed to open a bank account here. In Auckland we would have had to wait almost 2 weeks for an appointment to open an account, in Motueka it took 15 minutes at Kiwibank (comparable to Postbank in Germany).

After almost a week in Tasman, we are now heading further south because we have a job as a supervisor on a cherry orchard in Cromwell (near Queenstown) from the beginning of December.