Car Camping in New Zealand

Shepherds. Shep. Wanna go? What's up P Nation? We are in downtown Christchurch and today is the day we start our 10 day New Zealand road trip. We just made it back from Antarctica and now we're going to go into nature. Yes! We are so excited. We're going to go on so many hikes. We're going to see so many beautiful waterfalls. We're so excited. Let's go! And we made it to the car. We have a rental car. We decided to not get a camera van because we were like, oh dude it's all pink. If you haven't seen her first camping excursion in Antarctica, you should definitely watch that because that's very interesting. Ah. No she doesn't. You don't like camping. Camper vans doesn't mean you're camping. Ah. We're actually doing more camping in this car than we would be doing. But we have car camped before so we're going to try and sleep in here and it's going to be very cozy. But right now we're hitting the road going from Christchurch up to the mountains. And our first stop is a pie shop. I think it's called Sheffield's Pie Shop. Shepherds. Shep. Is it? Is that what it's called? No. It's called Sheffield's Pies. Oh. That our friend Courtney told us we needed to go to. So let's go. So unfortunately we got here too late and it's closed. No. I want to buy so bad. So bad. We're sorry Courtney. A good road trip needs essentials. We have kiwis. We have bell peppers. We have hummus. We have cheese. We have dressing. We have mayonnaise. We have cucumbers. We have bread. All the essentials. Oh. Ham. All the essentials for sandwiches and snacking and hummus and it's great. Alright. Now we have made it to our first stop. Castle Hill. Which is really funny because that's actually the place that me and Leah used to live back in Texas. And it's a bunch of rocks that look like castles on the hill. Let's go check it out. It is so much fun because you get to walk in between the rocks and like really get to interact with all the scenery. But it's weird because you're walking on grass steps. I've never seen anything like this. What is really exciting about New Zealand is that most of like these attractions on the side of the road are 100% free. We didn't have to pay to come in here. This is just a free, absolutely gorgeous rock formation that nature has provided to us. And New Zealand isn't making us pay for to come visit. It's amazing. We're laying down in our car. It might not look like that right now. We just got done hiking Castle Rock. The sun is setting. As you can tell, we are car camping. In the true meaning of that word, just sitting down in the seats. Sitting in the car. From what I can tell, New Zealand is like the most camper friendly country in the entire universe. Like everybody has their own van. Everybody, even if it's not like a sleeping van that you'd consider a sleeping van, like a camper van, people have like outfitted their regular, just like minivans into sleeping modules on wheels. It is so cool to see. Like there's such a culture behind it. And they have just a bunch of like campsites that you can visit and pay a very small fee. It's like eight New Zealand dollars per person, which is very inexpensive. And there aren't like a lot of facilities, but they have like a bathroom. There's a, there's an outhouse pretty much, but like a nice outhouse, but it's just like everything you need. Cause you should be pretty much be able to sleep in your car or your van or in your tent and not leave a trace behind. So they're like relying on you to do that. I think it's pretty much honor system, but yeah, it's just really, really nice. They make it really easy for all campers. Whew. Good morning. We did not sleep last night. We were in the car for eight hours. It was the coldest I've been in months. And I just spent four months in Antarctica. So I just guess we weren't prepared to go car camping. We didn't have any blankets. So we might not be doing that again. Who are the people on the black horses? Those are bad guys.