Thanks dear friendly Kiwi !

Forgotten the few days “down” because of the culture shock with Asia! We quickly turned UPUPUP!!!

Thanks to our friend Nick, we had the best introduction to New Zealand and very good advices to start our travel through this beautiful country. Nick, thank you so much for everything!

The decision was taken: we would travel around NZ by HITCHHIKING! This was one of our best decisions! In fact, while it helped us staying on our budget, it gave us the great opportunity to meet so many friendly New-Zealanders and to learn much more about their country. Without them our trip in NZ wouldn’t have been the same (*)! So we really want to thank all the people who gave us lifts (34 all together!), who invited us at their homes or just persons we had nice talks with! Merci, Merci beaucoup!

Here, a very special thanks to our best drivers and hosts because they made NZ so special to us!

• Nick, Nick and Nick!

• Dave a great Kiwi with whom we had very good talks in the car. After a 3 hour drive, when he invited us to stay at his place in Paraparaumu, we accepted with pleasure! We postponed Wellington and took the opportunity to discover the huge beach of Paraparaumu and spent a very nice evening with Dave and Isabel. Thank you very much for the invitation and the Martinborough wine tasting!

• John… a very special meeting for us. We first meet this catholic priest in the plane from Bangkok to Sydney. He gave us some good advice for travelling in NZ, told us some interesting stories and invited us at his place in Westport (NZ). There we had such a lovely evening with him watching a rugby game and eating chocolate ice-cream!

• At John’s place we met Kerry, a very friendly British girl living in NZ for years. Thanks to her, on the way to Hokatika, we stopped at the beautiful Pancake rocks and had a funny drive!

• On the way to Queenstown a nice and interesting Australian stopped for us. Retired from accounting, he is now living in Christchurch and studying filmmaking! After the earthquake, he had to run away from home… so sad…

• Hanna, so nice and such a good person! By the way congratulations for your sport achievement! She drove us the long way to Dunedin, but on the road made a stop at her friend’s place in the countryside to greet a newborn baby. We were invited for tea and cakes and also had the opportunity to visit a dairy farm! More than 800 cows! Huge!

• Matt and Renarta (friends of Nick) were our great host in Dunedin. Living in an old charming house, we discovered with them the local wildlife: royal albatross, seals, sea lions, penguins… Experienced tuatuas fishing from the beach and learned how to cook deliciously this seafood. We also had a big fear about a tsunami…

• James a funny and good looking 17 years old boy (the perfect brother in law if not to young!), in a nice car (his fifth’s car...!!!! oups what happened to the 4 first??).

• The last but not the least, The Baudets family (François, Paula, Luc, Mathieu and Stéphane)! Thanks to Arnaud G, they were our hosts in Christchurch. We had a very nice time with them, particularly teaching crêpes baking to the children, or how to eat them with Nutella and lot of whipped cream!

• And we don’t want to forget the frenchies, Laure & Julien, we made friend with in Rotorua. We had a very nice journey visiting and driving to Taupo. Hope we will see them again in Australia!

(*) Even, the few hours waiting under the strong sun or the heavy rains for someone to stop, the small couple arguments (because Navina was fed up waiting) or repeating 34 times our world trip story, were absolutely worth!!!!