Driving Southern New Zealand

The flora and fauna of New Zealand is subtly different than Northern California. There's ferns literally everywhere. It's odd to imagine a place that gets snow also having ferns. I wonder what they do during the winter. Are they deciduous? Are they hardy and evergreen? Many of the small birds are similar, but they have different songs. I woke up to a bird that I immediately called "the old spice bird" because it whistles the beginning of the tune that plays at the end of the commercials.

The night was cold in the RV. There's a heater, but it uses an electric fan, so the batteries drain pretty quickly, and I'm worried we won't be able to turn on the water pump. This means we have to prioritize warmer clothing and bedtime options. We stopped at a Warehouse™ outside of town, which everyone told us would be the best bet for kids clothes and wellies in the off season. The baby was napping so I headed in with the awake ones and, success! We found wellies and pjs and everyone was happy.

The RV place recommended that we go to a holiday camp or powered site with a dump station every 2-3 days given that we're a family of 5. We didn't want to risk any catastrophes, so we decided to take their advice and book a night at Jackson's RV Park, a recommended place on our way across the mountains towards the west coast. We plugged into their power and charged every electronic device. We also got wifi codes, but the internet on the southern island has been spotty at best, and we've been making better speeds with the mobile networks on our phones.

Tomorrow I hope to see some of the sights of the west coast. We don't want to go too far south, but there's a couple of national parks just about an hour away that I think would be worth seeing. I'm getting the hang of the RV's size, though it's still a beast to manage up and down the passes in the hills.