8389 km of Caravan Stories

Exactly, 8389 km we travelled on New Zealand's roads!

Many little funny & intresting stories & experiences , besides all the lovely pictures we already posted. Let me share some of our New Zealand stories with you.

The Black Forest

New Zealand is for me like the Black Forest and the Alps surrounded by the sea. It is a kind of compressed Europe . It felt like Home and it was--- like the next story shows…..

Meeting half Germany and a lot Schramberger

Remember that I once met a Schramberger, Florian Flaig in Sri Lanka on the beach - you think that´s luck …. Well, such a Schramberger surprise happened again to us in a little cafe in Kaikoura.

I was just ordering a coffee and cake at the counter. While waiting, I turned around and looked at the table in front of me and somehow I thought …. Oh this guy, he looks familiar….so I asked him: "are you from Schramberg"…. He said: "Yes - ANDY Hafner?"…..Manuel Fehrenbach and Manuel Rapp two Schramberger travelling with their girlfriends in New Zealand. INSANE!!!

Another Schramberger we met was Wolf, togehter with Kathrin and Leopold Erdman. they have lived in Shanghai 6 years as well and just recently decided to move back to Germany. As we knew they will be traveling for a bit in New Zealand, we had some couple of meetings like a breakfast in Dunedin, a beer boy night at Franz Josef Glacier and a wine night in Hokitika.

As already mentioned in one of my last post. We just had the intension to say "Hello" at Susies (known as Tolle Knolle) and her kids Rebecca and Leoni place in Nelson and stayed nearly for a week with them - it was just wonderful. Thanks

Travelling on the Road

New Zealand, known as the country of sheep, will soon have more Campervans than sheeps. It is incredible how many people traveling in NZ per van. Expecially Germans - here are definitley more Germans then everywhere we have travelled to so far.

Unfortunately, this also has one negative side effect. Every drive we had we literally drove by a lot of dead animals. Most of the time the were possums or birds. Luckily we didnt hit any of but it was really luck as it is super hard to avoid it. Once I almost hit a cute possum on my side of the road, but managed to quickly avoid him by driving to the other side….. Lucky me that no other car came.

Food Shopping with the Passport

Normally, buying alcohol in NZ isn't a big deal. You need to be 18 - Thats it. But when you look young they always ask you for the passport. Exactly this happen to us more than 5 times. Hahaha you can imagine how flattered and young I felt after such a compliment.

Well, but if´you go food shopping and you don't have your passports with you, you will have issues at check out conter for sure. We literally always had to run back to the car to get our passports, before the finally let us buy it.

Burraco Champion of New Zealand

In the beginning of our travel Giulia taught me the Italian card game Buraco. As we had lovely cozy evenings in our campervan - we started playing the Burraco Grand Prix of New Zealand.

After playing 6 weeks of Burraco, some games went over 2-3 days period, and the count was 12:2 for me. After her last 3 devastating losses she refused to play with me any longer.

Since then we play dice.

Speeding Ticket

After 2 weeks of travelling, I finally found & bought my first surf board from Rangy a surfcoach on the ninty mile beach in Ahipara. We agreed that I would test ride his surfboard the morning after he showed it to me, directly in front of his beachhouse. Unfortunately, there were no waves in the morning so Rangy told us to drive 30km up north.

So we packed up our gear, took the board, jumped into our van and drove up north. After just 5 km I saw in my backmirror a police car turning his car and turned on it's ligths. Well I looked at my speed and thought "mmmhhh- 70 thats alright - that's not for me - they probably have another case". Well, the police car didn't leave my back at all, but also didn't give me any sign to pull over.

Alright after a while I decided to stop - the police car stopped too. Damn it - it was me!

So a big young policeman came out walked towards my window.

He: Do you know why we stopped you?

Me: No

He: Speeding!

Me: Oh really?

He: Yes- here is a 50 Zone

Me: Oh no, I'm sorry how fast was I - 60 km/h ?

He: 81 km/h !

Me: Really - oh shit - Im so sorry - I didn't see that 50 km/h sign.

After a nice chat with the policeman, a short double confirmation of my speeding from the police side and another 100 of apologies from myside - I ask the policeman: How much do I have to pay? He answered: Well normally 300 Dollars, but I just write a speeding ticket for 65 km/h - so it will be 80 Dollars. I was first speachless, and thanked him for his kindness.

Well but that´s not all of the story…

So after 4 days we paid the speeding ticket online on a website - super easy. 4 weeks later I received from my best friend Valentin a picture via Whatsapp that he paid my speeding ticket.

We were wondering why the heck he got all the details of my speeding ticket and why did he pay.

It turned out that my dad got a postmail from New Zealand police, open it, didn't really understand and gave it to Valentin who was fortunatley at this moment in Schramberg, to handle that matter.

Without even telling us - he just paid. What a wonderful friend.

SO 300$ = 80 $+ 80$ = 160$ = Hello still a saving of 140 $ ;-)

Well at least I recived this lovely picture from home :-)

Surfing with Sting Rays:

On exactly that day , after the speeding ticket we arrived on the beach. Finally! The waves were perfect to try the new surfboard. It started raining and a lot of surfers where inside their cars and didn't jump into the sea. I just saw 2 guys way on the left where almost no waves were. So i put my wetsuit on, took the board, ran to the water and when i was just on the shore, feet in the water, i saw a guy taking pictures of something in the water.

Well there were sting rays , at least 4 or 5 big ones. Exactly where the good waves were. Damn it! So, of course I pulled back.

But I didn´t want to give up as I really wanted to test the new surfboard.

So I walked down to the left, jumped into the water and joined the other 2 surfers in the water.

I asked them: "Hey guys how do you surf when there are Sting rays in the water?"

One of them replied: " Just dont fall…on them!"

Well thanks - sure - the surf was not that good - of course - but finally I had my new board and actually stood up on the first wave I caught.

Besides the sting rays I also had the pleasure of surfing with a little blue penguin in Coromandel (just 2 m away) and a seal in Kaikoura (10 m).

2nd price:

On our first trip to Roturua, (known for the volcanos thermal spas), it was so rainy that we decided to go to the Mary Poppins musical in the evening. It was just a wonderful local production. During the break Giulia saw raffle tickets and we decided to buy 3 raffle tickets for 5 $.

3 weeks later we were already 1000 km away - Giulia got a call from an man telling us that we won the 2nd price of the raffle.

Of course we stopped by again on our return way to Auckland. The 2nd price included a big basket with toileteries from the warehouse, plenty of coffee and High Tea vouchers in Rotorua and a cable car ride with 6 ludge ride.

SO we had 2 amazing days hopping from coffee to coffee and enjoying our vouchers.

Ed Sheeran:

The only thing we bought before we planned anything for our worldtrip were 2 Ed Sheran concert tickets for the 1st of April 2018 in Dunedin. Probably almost a year in advance.

When we arrived to the stadium at 4.30 pm it was super empty and I was wondering how that could be. Hello, this is Ed Sheran, one of the best singers nowadays and super popular, exspecially among the teens. Also all Kiwis told us that almost half New Zealand is on the way to Dunedin cause of his concerts there. At 5:30 we thought it should start but it was still super empty ( 5:30 was the time mentioned on our online tickets)

After a while we found out that Ed Sheran would only at 8:45 pm and the pre bands at 6:30 pm.

Well Well Wel,l we started laughing and this was probably our 1st of April fool :-).

BTW the concert was amazing and the stadium was full - well of course it had time, exactly 4h 15 min to fill up until Ed came out.

The Kiwi bird:

There is basically almost no chance to see a Kiwi bird in the wild. Nevertheless we were always so eager to find one and were desperately looking for one. On one day we spotted a bird on the street. So I parked the campervan on the side waited waited and took picture after picture until we realized that was a Waka bird… (in the end my favourite NZ bird)

We had to wait 7 weeks until we finally saw a Kiwi Bird in a naturally re-created environment at Franz Josef wildlife house.