This story begins in the summer of 2016. Or, in this case, the winter, as I had travelled from Germany to New Zealand with my family. We had rented a campervan and slept in it for one night. Only to realize that we only had three thin blankets for four people. And no pillows or towels. Do not forget that it was winter.

It was a cold night. I’ve written in my travel diary that apparently I only slept 30 minutes that night. Or at least it felt like it. But then the next day we got some warm blankets and continued up north to the tip of New Zealand, the highest spot to travel: Cape Reinga.

The drive there was dreamy, you could see bright green hills with sheep spread all over. I didn’t take a picture of that, and my pictures are in a weird order, but this one was taken on one of our drives through New Zealand on one of the first few days.

We drove until the road ended in a carpark, where we decided to spend the night. The toilets there didn’t have a light switch, so it was a scary business getting ready for bed.
We lied down, finally with warmer blankets, but there was a problem. The camper was literally swaying back and forth from the heavy wind, it felt like we were on a ship during a storm. After a while it just didn’t seem safe anymore, so we moved the camper in front of the restroom so we could block the wind out a bit. It didn’t really work.

I fell asleep anyways, to the sound of thunder, rain and hail. For some reason that made the night super adventurous and memorable.

The next morning we got up at 6 and ran down the hill to see the sunrise.

The sun reflected on the ocean and the wind made the waves crash. We didn’t walk all the way down to the beach, though. It was way too far and muddy from the rain.

There was this cool tunnel that whistled everytime the wind went through it.

And that’s where I’ll end this story. This was definitely a place to remember!

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