A rolling castle, a dog house... or something in between....

01.26.20

Today is the day! We are starting our camping trip! As soon as we wake up, we are excited to see what our campervan will be like. We deliberately decided against the green dog house from last time... but it won't be the rolling castle that Uncle, Doodle, and Cousin were traveling in either. But for now, let's enjoy the comforts of a private bathroom.

The shuttle bus comes on demand and takes us to the Apollo rental station. First, we need to take care of some formalities. So we take out our driver's license and reading glasses, and off we go. Wait... Where are my reading glasses?????? I search the backpack, the doll searches the backpack. We have to mourn the second loss of the trip. It seems like the glasses are still enjoying themselves in Qantas' business class.....

But let's continue.... after the formalities, we head out to our camper. It already looks good from the outside! The perfect mix between a rolling castle and a dog house. We quickly find out why it's worth not wanting to do without a toilet this time. It can be perfectly used as a luggage room 👍👍. Quickly stow everything away and off we go! After all, we want to drive to Blenheim today, which is a distance of 300 km....

After an hour, we interrupt the drive, as we need to do some shopping. We storm the local Countdown and carry away what we think we need. The shopping takes longer than expected and we have to hurry a bit.

Blenheim is not really one of the tourist hotspots and we are more interested in the wineries in the region. That's why it's not dramatic that the campsite is not one of the most beautiful. However, we have to move again right away.... the first spot is practically IN a construction site. We like the second spot much more! We are greeted with a glass of welcome wine and slowly settle into our little camper. Oops... we must have made ourselves too comfortable... it's already getting dark! Time for dinner! The first New Zealand meal on the menu is marinated lamb with Balkan salad! Delicious! We also serve a bottle of white wine that we bought two days ago at the wine tasting with Marti. It's getting unplanned late