Seven years ago I started the most amazing journey so far and fell in love with this beautiful country. My friend worked as an au pair for one year in New Zealand and I visited her with her mom and a friend to do a three weeks road trip.

After a long flight from Germany to the other side of the world, we finally arrived in Christchurch where we spent our first night at my friend host family’s place. Unfortunately, there was a bad earthquake a few days ago and many parts of the city were being destroyed. We also had an aftershock during the first night but I was too tired to get scared.

We rented a camper van (we called him “Frankenstein”) and started our adventurous road trip. New Zealand has a lot to offer and there are so many amazing places. I totally am a nature lover and I think everyone will love the mountains, national parks, animals, lakes, geysers and glaciers. Every day the beauty of New Zealand made me speechless a little bit more. A must do is whale watching in Kaikoura. It’s such a great experience to see these huge animals in real life. Another highlight was hiking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, which is also a once in a lifetime experience. The 19,2 km hike is very interesting because along the way, the landscape changes very often. Sometimes the way is just straight, then you have to climb all the way up and slide the way down afterwards. The views are just stunning. Another highlight for me was Mount Maunganui, where we spent two days next to the beach. It’s a perfect place to relax and calm down. Usually we searched a camping place every evening but one day our camper van got broken and we couldn’t fix it in time. Lucky us, we met the nicest firemen in New Zealand and spent the night at their fire station (including watching tv, drinking tea and driving in a fire truck the next morning!) One of them was very lovely so he invited us for dinner at his place after finishing our route along the north island before we headed back to south island. We met two German guys who spent three days with us. In Queenstown, we met more people from all over the world. We had so much fun and a great time together spending the night in bars and dancing at a disco. Queenstown is also nice for outdoor activities like bungee jumping or paragliding but I wasn’t brave enough to do one of those things. By the way, Queenstown has the best burgers at Ferg Burger (you should definitely check it out if you like burgers).

In my opinion, a camper van is a good way to see as much as you want of this amazing country; especially when you like being close to nature. You get to be flexible and you don’t have to book hotels or hostels. You just need a camping place and -believe me- there are a lot in NZ. Once we found a very nice camping place next to the sea! Enjoying breakfast with ocean view and watching dolphins was the cherry on top of our camper van life. If you are a nature lover, New Zealand is definitely worth a visit.