An Honest Review of New Zealand From My Husband 😍 (VIDEO)

Ever wondered if New Zealand lives up to the hype? After 3 months, 38 towns, van life and cozy Airbnb hopping—plus working remotely on the road—we’ve got answers. My husband joins me to share an honest and in-depth review of our quintessential New Zealand adventure. 

WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE

Takeaways:

• 🎒 What it’s really like to live out of a van (freedom camping, routines and unexpected challenges)
• 💰The real cost of traveling New Zealand - with tips on saving money
• 💻 Being a digital nomad in New Zealand (Wi-Fi, time zones, coworking culture)
• 🐻The surprising pros (and cons) of living in a country with no wild animals
• 🏞 Who we think New Zealand is perfect for (and who might be disappointed)
• 🌍 Plus: the freedom lessons we’re taking home with us and what we’d do differently next time

About the show:

Sam Laliberte -  entrepreneur, digital nomad and freedom seeker, hosts the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast to expose people to the many ways you can design your dream life and unlock your own version of the freedom lifestyle. Her guests have empowered themselves through flexible work as a way to “have it all” - financial, location AND schedule freedom. 

Transcript

Sam: 0:02

Hello, freedom seekers. I am back in your ears and maybe in front of your eyes too if you are watching this one on YouTube or Spotify. I have officially entered my vlogging era and I am episodes that are now a full visual experience. I definitely recommend you watching this new season, I just couldn't help myself. You can imagine how much content. I got during those three months, I had even bought myself the brand new iPhone before the trip I knew the nature was gonna be picturesque and it was, We visited 38 different towns. We traveled across both the north and the south island. We spent 50 nights living in a van, 3 nights in an RV and 6 nights in a tent. I really feel like we had the full quintessential New Zealand experience. So before we forgot it all, I invited Jared to come. Back on the podcast so that we could together unpack all of the highs, all of the lows, all of the miraculous moments, and even the meh ones because this is an honest review. Of our time in New Zealand, we got nothing to lose. So we're keeping it super real. What we thought of the people, the food, the weather, the vibe, so much more. These are the things that we wish we knew before we flew across the world and committed to spending three months there.

1:26

you're about to learn what it is really like to live from a van in New Zealand. Everything from freedom, camping, the routines, we had unexpected challenges that we had to navigate. Speaking of navigation, how we figured out working remotely from various cafes and coworking spots, because getting free wifi turns out isn't that easy there not to mention the time zones that we had to deal with. We talk about the real cost of traveling to New Zealand and some tips on how you can save money and avoid some of the common surprises that we had along with who we think New Zealand is perfect for, and who we think will be disappointed if they choose New Zealand for a big trip. So with no further delay, freedom Seekers, here's. Jared.

Sam: 2:13

You are a recurring guest, I think is your fifth time on the show.

Jared: 2:17

it's always an honor to be here.

Sam: 2:19

welcome back to the Freedom Lifestyle. Welcome back to Canada. We are recording this in Whistler. We're still not back in our home. No. We have our home rented until May 1st. So we're living at a suitcase, but we've been back in Canada for a month. why New Zealand? Because you are actually the one who pitched New Zealand as the location for the sabbatical. What was drawing you to that country?

Jared: 2:42

Similar to when we did our previous sabbatical to South America, which I think we've talked a bit about on the podcast previously. I just sort of had a sense that this was the next adventure, that I wanted us to take together. It was, had a lot of similarities to South America, but it was better fit for this period of, in our life. the South America trip was backpacking, hostiles, partying. Yeah. Uh, buses. all the different things and this felt like we could have a adventure together, but it was more about us and more about, this next phase in our life. So we were still kind of living simply and being out in nature, but instead of being in a hostile, we were in a van. And I also knew that New Zealand. If we wanted to try living in a van was the number one place. We might want to do that because of how good the infrastructure was and because of how outdoor focused it was, which is something that increasingly over our life, we've realized we love more and more.

Sam: 3:37

Yeah. I think for me, when you said New Zealand, it made sense we had both already been to Australia. We had both had our own separate trips and I'd always thought that was the best place in the world. I'm a huge animal lover. are my favorite animal, I love the Australia Wildlife, and when you said New Zealand, I immediately thought, oh wow, this is my chance to go back I had never really considered New Zealand before. I, embarrassingly didn't even really realize it was a country made up of two islands until I started planning the trip. So I had a lot to learn. how did you find New Zealand as a country compared to other places that you've been, and what is your country count these days? You've done more traveling than me.

Jared: 4:20

I actually don't know the exact number for how many countries. Come on. Give us, we've been revisiting, it's like somewhere in the, it's maybe about 60. Say

Sam: 4:26

maybe about 60 say.

Jared: 4:28

And how was New Zealand? I mean, New Zealand was super cool. I thought it was really a combination of a lot of different countries in one over short distances of time. So you had the south island and the southern parts of it, which were mountains, very much like bc but also the mountains looked different and it was a different enough vibe that I think we. Thought it was super interesting. I mean, we were driving around, we're like, there's literally a view around every single corner. Mm-hmm. And also as you move more north, there's kind of. Nice hills and it kind of reminded us of Italy. then you start to get to, ocean waters like the South Pacific and kind of beachy vibes. so it kind of has a little bit of something for everyone I found. The fact that it wasn't so foreign and different allowed us to really disconnect and live with safety and ease and not having to kind of make everyday living so difficult. cause the van life in itself is already relatively difficult in terms of just like. Meeting your day-to-day needs. So not having a language barrier or having a very developing country helped with that aspect.

Sam: 5:34

Totally. Okay. Who is New Zealand? Perfect for, who do you think will love it and who do you think might hate it? Who do you think New Zealand is not for, if anyone?

Jared: 5:44

Love would be anyone who loves the outdoors. Definitely hikers. Definitely people who are curious about living in an RV or a van. Surfers. Mm-hmm. People who wouldn't like it. I mean, I would say if you're looking for a big city expense, restaurants that are good. Hotels.

Sam: 6:02

Yeah, we didn't really like the food. No. Maybe controversial opinion, and it's not just because we're vegan. The food was meh. Yeah. It was actually the first time I had ever even been to a winery and I didn't finish my flight of wine as part of my tasting. You finished it. Sure. But that's because we paid for it. Yeah. I didn't like the wine. I didn't like the food. Every time we would go to a restaurant or would splurge, we just left disappointed and yeah, they didn't have any sour beer, which is my favorite type of beer. So I would say the food and the drink, if you're like a foodie or. Someone who is connoisseur of craft beers and cool wineries. The views were cool, but I, I can't say I enjoyed tasting them.

Jared: 6:48

They did have some great juicy pale ales. They excel in those?

Sam: 6:51

Yes, that is their thing. Okay. So not really people who want that big city vibe and energy. And we did go to all of the big cities. We went to Wellington Christchurch Auckland. We did them all. We spent a few obligatory days. In each, but mostly we were in the small towns throughout New Zealand and that's really where we thrived and I think that's what it's all about there. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. close your eyes and the prompt is a pinch me moment. What comes to mind? Was there any pinch me moments for you in New Zealand?

Jared: 7:25

The first one that comes to mind was actually our first day alone in New Zealand. cause we started in New Zealand with some friends, which was awesome. and then they dropped us off at the beginning of what is, quite a well known hike called Routeburn multi-day hike. And if you do enough research and understand how to camp, you can go off the track and find your own place to camp, if you do it in a safe manner. And we did that on our first night, and we were just completely alone with surrounded by glacier peaks, by this lake. And I just looked around and I was almost in tears. I was like, this is literally exactly what I imagined, but so much better. Mm-hmm. And it was our first night of the trip and it was just such a hot start. Uh, and I just felt like already, no matter what happens after this couple days, I feel like we're okay.'cause like we just invested so much time and energy and money and thought into getting to New Zealand and were nervous it was gonna be. Too much like Canada or we wouldn't be enjoying our company, wouldn't be exciting enough, and we were just like, wow, this is actually gonna be so amazing.

Sam: 8:28

That's true. I forgot about that. I remember in the weeks leading up to the trip, we thought we were maybe too late for the full New Zealand. We kept hearing how Van life wasn't the same as how it was before. Rules were changing. The locals didn't want you there. There was this animosity between travelers and the locals and overt tourism, and we just thought, oh wow, maybe we're too late for Van Life and freedom camping and adventuring in New Zealand. We also had a really high expectations, which usually when we have really high expectations, it's disastrous. And it actually starts to be really negative, So that's a good reminder. okay. Given that this is an honest review of New Zealand, what was hard for you about being there for three months?

Jared: 9:13

It definitely wasn't all butterflies although the bathrooms, the public bathrooms, there are insanely nice. Don't get me wrong, compared to Canada,

Sam: 9:22

definitely

Jared: 9:22

using public bathrooms pretty much for three months straight. And then when you, we weren't using a public bathroom when we did our workaway volunteer, which I think you're talking about separately, we had a compost toilet. So I would say the bathroom access and quality, was definitely one of the most challenging parts. But it's a real big testament to New Zealand that for three months I was able to sustain it and at times enjoy it.

Sam: 9:48

And you were able to poo in random bathrooms

Jared: 9:50

by the end? I had been able to do so quite regularly. Yes. As

Sam: 9:54

long as they had a seat.

Jared: 9:55

As long as they had a seat. Yes. Yes. Some of them did

Sam: 9:58

have. Seats.

Jared: 9:59

Yeah. Some of them didn't have seats. It stopped.

Sam: 10:01

But yes, the bathrooms there were so nice. It was something we talked about often. It's so funny when you're doing van life and freedom camping, and one of the first things you observe when you get to your new site is, oh, what's the bathroom like? Oh my goodness. Get in there, honey. There was a flush toilet. There's a sink with actual soap. I remember one time we went to one and there was a hand dryer in there and that just felt like such a luxury experience after what we had been through. So, yeah, good point. I actually read an article yesterday, it came up on my feed about how Starbucks. Unknowingly became America's Go-to public bathroom because cities were saying that they couldn't afford to maintain bathrooms and provide water and sanitation services for cities, which is just so messed up. It really is a human right? Mm-hmm. To be able to go to the bathroom somewhere clean, ideally. So New Zealand definitely has that figured out. I would say for me just being there for so long, it was really hard to be away from people at home that we loved. Our cat was with our tenants. We usually use trusted house sitter, which means we rent out our house to people who are professional pet sitters, you know, people who love animals. And we're doing an exchange where they're staying in our house for free to watch our pet, and they like treat it like a job. You know, they play with her, they send us updates. But this time, because we were gone for so long, we wanted to rent out our house on Airbnb. So we actually found tenants for five months, who then we offered them a discounted rent if they also watched our cat. So they still liked. RA and our cat, and obviously you have to be somewhat of an animal lover to agree to something. I think.

Jared: 11:49

I still think they should have paid us to be able to,

Sam: 11:52

you should pay us to watch ra. She's that too. It's hard to negotiate

Jared: 11:55

it, but they,

Sam: 11:55

so it was a different vibe and I felt really uneasy about that. They weren't sending me as many updates as I'm used to. I just felt like I didn't know what was going on and I kept having this pit in my stomach and then. Sure enough, not worst case scenario, but one of the worst things that you imagine happening where they accidentally let her out and she was lost and she got into her first fight and had to go to the vet and go on antibiotics. It was very dramatic to receive that news and be so. Far from home and just feeling just so helpless, like you couldn't do anything. You really feel like you're on the other side of the world. Yeah,

Jared: 12:35

it was stressful.

Sam: 12:36

Yeah. That was super tough.

Jared: 12:37

Yeah. It really also, I guess, exemplifies where our priorities were at when you were worried about our daughter and me. Where I take my next poo.

Sam: 12:45

Yes, but just a reminder, New Zealand is very far from a lot of countries. A lot of our listeners are from Canada and the United States, and I mean, you're far from home and you really feel that, okay, so that was what was challenging. We talked a little bit about how you took a sabbatical, but for me, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm not just gonna get paid from anybody to go on this three month trip. So I did a little bit of work just enough to be able to fund the trip, and so I think it would be good for us to also talk about working in New Zealand, being a digital nomad, coworking spaces, wifi, any initial comments or observations. You had from following me around to different coffee shops and coworking spaces? Yeah,

Jared: 13:30

well, definitely what was surprisingly easy was keeping in touch and if you needed to do in calls or something, because when we were there it was actually only a three hour time difference. Mm-hmm. I think right now it's five. Actually, with the daylight savings, it kinda makes it a little bit bigger, so that was great. What was more difficult was actually finding easy. Good vibe, spots to work. Mm-hmm. because yeah, there was coworking spots, but I mean, that takes a lot of coordination and organization to find them figure out how to book in just for a day. Mm-hmm. And most of the coffee shops there, in fact, 95% of the coffee shops there didn't offer internet.

Sam: 14:04

Yeah. They were really not Yeah. Friendly for digital nomads and remote workers. No. Like we would say, Hey, Even if we buy something, we'll buy a full meal. Can we use your wifi? And they just didn't have wifi for customers or themselves. They always had a bathroom, which is kind of backwards here. Mm-hmm. Here, sure, you can use our wifi, but you're gonna have to go to the Starbucks down the street to go to the toilet.

14:30

Hello.

Sam: 14:33

So that was interesting. We actually only got one parking ticket and it was overstaying our welcome at a McDonalds. Yes. Because McDonald's is still the go-to place for reliable internet. Mm-hmm. Free parking. Yeah. French fries.

Jared: 14:48

That's all we can really order. I don't even drink coffee, so

Sam: 14:52

I was getting the flat white with oat milk at McDonald's about it. I didn't appreciate it. It was expensive. Did you find it easy to navigate information in New Zealand? Booking huts, booking campsites, figuring out where to go? How was that? Because you did a lot of the planning. I was. Busy working, and then you would come up with an itinerary. was it?

Jared: 15:13

They have a lot of information online. It can be a little bit overwhelming at times, to be honest. I used a lot of all trails. so All Trails is a great app and you can kind of see people write reviews and and stuff like that. But some of these hikes There were very intricate, like we went on this kayaking experience, it was kayaking and hiking. You had to kayak when it was high tide and you could only hike across these things when it was low tide and you had to get, you had to drop your kayak here and you had to get, had a boat back here. Like it was very, and there were so

Sam: 15:39

many different options of what island you stopped at in different distances. Insane of where to go. Like I

Jared: 15:43

almost. I literally almost collapsed myself on that one. Yeah. and yeah, you're out there for multiple days without service to change things up

Sam: 15:51

There's a lot of logistics involved when you do these multi night hikes. Mm-hmm. But they have so many. Yeah. We ended up doing two of the official great walks, but then when I did our trip stats, I couldn't even get started with how many day hikes we did. It was, we did a lot of hikes. Yeah. We did a lot of day hikes. Yeah. Okay, cool. Let's talk about money. Everybody likes to talk about money. Do you like to talk about money? No, I never like to talk about money. Did you find it was more or less expensive than you were expecting?

Jared: 16:16

I think it was less expensive than I was expecting. Things were slightly more than Canada on the sticker price, but then we had almost 20% discount because of the exchange rate. And then there also wasn't a tax or tip.

Sam: 16:28

Makes a huge difference. Yeah. Especially when

Jared: 16:30

you're going out to eat. It makes a huge difference. We didn't, we didn't go out that much to eat. Because of what Sam said earlier in terms of us not being, because the food sucked. Food kind of sucked. But when you did, it was great. and it was nice to kind of in your head say, oh, I get a 20% discount on this. It was probably closer to 15 with everything all included. But we like to say 20.

Sam: 16:47

Yeah. Yeah. But when you see something on a menu and it says$20 and you go pay, it actually just like was$20. There wasn't a tax and no tipping came up. In fact, people were telling you like. Don't change the culture here. We just don't tip here Their, they're pay a fair wage. I don't know. I don't know the details enough about that of like how fair the workers were treated. People seemed happy. they weren't in a rush to give you the best experience. Maybe that's why the food kind of sucked and the experience wasn't that great because there wasn't an incentive to create anything. Great. And you kind of maybe felt that.

Jared: 17:19

Mm-hmm. One thing I also noticed about people and businesses was they weren't. Money hungry. They weren't like desperate for your business and they had their boundaries and they left. Like we went to a couple stores, five minutes from closing. The first was like, honestly I'm, I'm sorry, but I just wanna go surfing. Yeah. I don't wanna like wait around here for you to look around and be like, fair enough. But I think you would never really see that. Yeah. For a shop owner in North America.

Sam: 17:39

Totally. They'd be like, no, come in. Come in. Let's go. Do you have any insider money saving hacks for someone who might be going to New Zealand? How could they save some money? Anything you learned?

Jared: 17:51

Well, we got our van from Camp Amplify. Mm. Which is, that's a good one. Like Airbnb, but for Vans. So that was a money saving technique, but actually as if not more importantly, was we wanted to experience driving around, not in one of these templated vans with all the branding across it, with no vibe inside, but actually a van that somebody had curated, that they used themselves. That was a really cool experience and I think, significantly cheaper than renting, from one of those companies. The downside was you always had to return the van where you got it from. So other people sometimes did just like a one way trip, but we, we liked that a lot. I

Sam: 18:27

think Van Life, just in general, we had a few nights where we were not in the van and had to see the Airbnb prices. Mm-hmm. And it really was the cheapest option. Yeah. To stay in a van, especially if you're doing the freedom camping sites where. It's a free site to camp at, which is pretty cool. And a lot of them were taken well care of. Like there was garbage services and people coming. And I remember one day the garbage man came and I was like, thank you for this, for like servicing this free campsite. So yeah. And also the van lifers, we joked that they had the best views. Mm-hmm. That was one of the things that really surprised us about New Zealand is they didn't have any water. Front property there. None of the houses or hotels were right on the beach or the water. They would always leave a path from the water to the houses where anyone could bike or walk or hike or park your van a lot of the time. Mm-hmm. Which is pretty funny if you have one of these big, huge houses and then all these vans in front of you. Yeah. We had

Jared: 19:25

some funny experiences where I think they're trying to build up the van life infrastructure there a little bit. It's a great source of tourism. And I think some people had built these big houses and then they had provided some parking slots. Lots of times they'd have these kind of strips of parking, and you'd have maybe five or six for vans. And then these people in the big houses behind, you have to look at people in their vans every single night with the actual waterfront views.

Sam: 19:47

Yeah, totally. So awkward. Okay. Were there any unexpected expenses, things that caught you off guard that was like, wow, that is way more expensive than I thought.

Jared: 19:58

The ferry? Mm-hmm. That fair? That one. That was a surprising one. Like in Canada, you just. The ferry's not that big of a deal in terms of the price. Yeah. You have a lot of ferries in bc. Yeah. You can

Sam: 20:06

drive your car on. Yeah.

Jared: 20:08

And there we were like, you know, we're just gonna take the ferry. We have to take it there, we're gonna take it back. And it was a couple of, yeah. When you go from north to South Island, yeah, it was a couple days before. And then first of all, there was literally like almost no slots left. And then to book the ferry was like$500, at least for our van and us two. That was a big sticker shock. Definitely. So if you're renting a van and going from north to south and then have to go back, you should definitely factor that in as a cost. Yeah. And then on the way back, we had to take like a midnight ferry because there wasn't many left available, and that was the only one that was even reasonably priced.

Sam: 20:39

Definitely. That was a big one. Okay. Safety. How safe did you feel walking around at night? Being alone in the back country, hiking with just a tent. Let's talk a little bit about safety. I know for me, one thing that was very noticeable is in BC. When you are camping in the back country, you have to worry about bears. There are animals that can literally kill you and eat you, and even just small things from having to put your food up in the tree to protect yourself from the bears.

21:11

Fuck. Okay, let's go down there.

Sam: 21:17

There's no. Real wildlife there that can hurt you? No. So when we were just out there, my mom, I remember I would send her pictures of just our tent in the middle of nowhere, and first thing she would say is, weren't you scared? It was like, not really. Yeah. There's not really anything out here.

Jared: 21:33

And even with our, gear and like our van and stuff, it really felt like people had just kind of left their doors open of their van. And it was just sort of a, I did, I wasn't worried about a theft either.

Sam: 21:43

Mm. A hundred percent. Okay. Another thing people like to talk about when they're traveling or think about is the weather. So we kind of went at the cusp of spring, summer. Summer, I guess summer, fall. Yeah. Summer was just ending in New Zealand and they were starting fall, and we really noticed it, like when we were arrived in Queenstown, the sunset was almost 10:00 PM at night, sometimes we were just waiting to go to bed in the van because it was still so light out. Yeah. I think we were really caught off guard by how quick the rain can come in sometimes. Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. Especially in

Jared: 22:16

the, in the north, it, it was definitely felt tropical at times in terms of these huge storms that started to happen sporadically. It kinda reminded us of, we were in Costa Rica where it would be kind of sunny and then it would just be like a huge rainstorm, and then it was sunny again. We got such good weather. Until the very end of the trip. And they were still nice at the end of the trip, but we just went weeks without any rain. I mean, it would've been devastating to have a rainstorm like that on some of these hikes. I honestly don't even know how you would survive.

Sam: 22:46

And a lot of the hikes, you would see the signs around. alternative routes if the river was flooding mm-hmm. Or areas that you had to be really careful climbing in the winter, and these were hikes and paths that were pretty sketch even in the summer. Yeah. I can't imagine people that are going there and doing all of these in the winter. That's a whole other level of extreme for sure. Yeah. I

Jared: 23:08

mean the, the hike I was talking about earlier where we had that amazing first night, I think there's rain 200 plus days of the year in some, in the regions around there. Wow. Really? So it's like very, very wet. but we were there in summer at that time and got lucky.

Sam: 23:23

Okay. Top spots. Where is a town that you think we went most tourists might skip, that you really felt like was a hidden gem that you found?

Jared: 23:33

it's pretty hard to remember the name of all the towns'cause they're all quite obscure and it's obscure for the English language. They do a very good job in New Zealand of integrating the Maori culture, which is like their local, native peoples. And all of the names are a bit difficult to pronounce and lots of them are very similar. what comes to mind is a spot called Otaki Beach. Mm. Yeah. And this one was. I'm pretty sure like an hour from Wellington or something like that. Just off the ferry, just on the, so Wellington's on the south of North Island and then we got off the ferry and drove there. Otaki Beach, you basically just drive your van right up on this rocky beach right on the ocean. And what's cool is you have this ocean and there's this big island out in the ocean, but then if you turn the other direction, it almost reminded us of being in like a African. Sahara with all these rivers and different small lakes and

Sam: 24:31

beautiful birds everywhere. Bird. Yeah.

Jared: 24:33

And it was just like you, you had. On one side, ocean and vastness. And then on the other side, all of these amazing wildlife and things. And Sam's getting some tears in her eyes just remembering

Sam: 24:44

it. I loved it so much. And when you freedom camp in New Zealand, sometimes you get to a parking spot and there's dedicated spots where you have to be in a, literally a parking spot. And then other times. You would get to a freedom camping site that was a beach where you literally just drive up and there's no rules and it's a wild west and people are just taking up different spots. People are like listening to their music. fishing. It's a bit of a party sometimes, and that was definitely one of those vibes and it was. Our favorite. Mm-hmm. We ended up making it so that the next time we were doing that route, we had a night there. Yeah. Yeah. That was our favorite. And do you remember even the town? We loved it.

Unknown: 25:24

Yeah.

Sam: 25:24

Yeah. The next day we had to do some errands. Before Kiwi burn we had to do a bit of shopping. We went to some, sorry about the shirt. Is that where you got that shirt? The op shop? The op shop. Those were cool. Yeah, we definitely went to a bunch of those. Yeah. So

Jared: 25:36

they do, they seem to do an exceptional job at having secondhand, stores called op shops, which are usually. funding some sort of nonprofit. Like this one was some sort of animal charity that they had there. And these were, they just, you go in, it's pretty simple, and they'll be like, every shirt in here's$5. Every pair of tents, tens dollars. And you just kind of look around and you never know what you're gonna find. So we had a lot of fun checking those out in all these small towns.

Sam: 25:58

Mm-hmm. People were so chill. Like I remember we were at a store and I just asked them, Hey, do you know if there's a library or something near here to print something? And she was like, oh, what do you need printed? And we just needed literally one piece of paper printed and she's like, oh, I could print that for you. People were just really nice. Yeah. Okay. Driving. You drive on the left side of the road there. In New Zealand you do opposite of Canada. How did you find driving around New Zealand?

Jared: 26:24

The roads were insane. They were very, very curvy. The roads and very steep at times, I think I took some screenshots of some of the Google maps. It was crazy. Like I thought driving to Whistler was curvy. That was on another level, You could go a hundred kilometers an hour, but along a lot of the turns, they would tell you'd have to slow down to 20 and you honestly had to slow down to there. So I honestly thought it was pretty fun. But if you are not used to those roads. that was challenging, not so much that side of the road. And then our first van was also stick shift, so I had had a little bit of experience with that before and I had to very much ramp up again quickly. Not only relearning how to do it, but doing it on the other side totally as well. The opposite hand,

Sam: 27:05

I was the official passenger princess for three months. I did not drive for a single moment. No, we did rent a car once and you weren't there. And I did move the car from the parking spot to another area of the parking spot. Yes. He did a great job with that. Yeah. Yeah. On the other side of the car, Speaking of traveling around, something that really surprised us was domestic flights. So flying within New Zealand was incredibly chill. Like in Canada, I know it's a much bigger country. But when you are flying around, even just within a single province, I do a lot of the Sudbury to Toronto flight, or we'll do Vancouver to Kelowna. And even still, they have the full security as if you're going to the other side of the world. And I remember we were chugging our water before going into security and they were like. You don't need to jug that. Like you can bring that in. They didn't even have security, right?

Jared: 27:59

Zero.

Sam: 27:59

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You literally

Jared: 28:00

didn't even check your, or your board, like you basically just walked up to the final agent with your boarding pass. Yeah, and I don't even think they checked your id.

Sam: 28:09

No, it couldn't have been more chill. we were there super early and we just kept

Jared: 28:13

asking like, is this. Are we missing something here? Yeah. You're not even gonna look at my id.

Sam: 28:17

Yeah. Yeah. You're not worried. And they're just like, it's a small plane. What could go wrong? What could go wrong? How easy did you find it to strike up conversation with locals? They're called Kiwis there. Mm-hmm. And any particularly memorable characters that come to mind?

Jared: 28:32

Well, I mean, mentioning Australia would always kick off a conversation with someone from Kiwi. They have a little rivalry, uh, we noticed. Oh, yep. but They were all very nice, in general, people were super. Open to chatting and always wanted to share tips of hot locations

Sam: 28:49

some of the slang that we picked up, mm-hmm. Too easy. I was too easy sweet as they love their slang in New Zealand, a lot of the times I would be texting with some of our friends. We made at Kiwi Burn and I didn't even really, so you'd be like,

Jared: 29:05

Jared, can you decipher what he's even saying?

Sam: 29:07

Yeah. I couldn't even understand. It was like they had a different language. I reckon

Jared: 29:11

they do have a different language. I

Sam: 29:12

reckon they do have another language. reckon they use that so much. Anything else?

Jared: 29:18

simple Simple. They like too easy, simple. You know, simple. I reckon you can do it like that. Just too easy.

Sam: 29:23

Simple, too easy,

Jared: 29:24

I feel like there's so more, so much more, but they're, they get more obscure.

Sam: 29:28

They get very obscure, but they love their slang.

Jared: 29:31

I thought about something that I was a bit disappointed by. Mm-hmm. And that was, I was a bit disappointed. By the inability to get organic good produce. Mm. They weren't really into that there it seemed, I'm not sure. But fruit and vegetables, they almost didn't have anything organic. And then they also seemed to have a less recycling than I expected. So those were two things on during Van Life were, it became difficult to, even though we were making our own food and stuff, they had a lot of plastic and you couldn't recycle it. And then they had a lot of veggies and stuff that weren't mm-hmm. Organic, but I mean, I'm a soy boy, so

Sam: 30:07

soy boy. Yeah. When we were in the Chuka Valley for our volunteering, that's where we really ate the best when we were truly insane off the land. Yeah. And eating the food, which I talked about in the previous episode. If you haven't listened to our Work Away episode, you'll learn so much more about that, but I've never eaten

Jared: 30:25

so many apples in my life. It was unbelievable. Oh my gosh. It

Sam: 30:28

was too easy. Too easy.

Jared: 30:29

Too

Sam: 30:29

easy. the wildlife was a bit disappointing. We didn't actually ever see a Kiwi bird, which is of course the official bird of New Zealand. there's actually no mammals that are endemic. Is that the right word? I. Endemic to New Zealand. In fact, all the mammals that are there were brought in by the settlers who really just started to bring them in for game and for fun. I think it started with rabbits. I think they were bringing them there to shoot. Did I understand that correctly? I. When they say they're bringing the rabbits in, well, they brought

Jared: 31:00

in the mice and rats came on the boats. Yes. And then they brought in some of the rabbits and stuff to get the mice, or I don't know, something to get the mice. And then they brought in, but I think they were gonna shoot them. They brought in some rabbits to shoot.

Sam: 31:10

Yeah. And then the rabbit population got two outta control. So then they brought in some STOs.

Jared: 31:16

Yeah.

Sam: 31:16

Which I had never heard about a stoke before or even knew what that was. Mm-hmm. But they're everywhere and possums and it just seems like they keep bringing in new mammals to manage the population of the smaller animals. But each population seems to get more and more out of control. And the sad part is, is what's actually native to New Zealand as the birds. Mm-hmm. A lot of these flightless birds that are there. That are really struggling and many have become extinct. Many are endangered, and New Zealand is on a mission to get rid of their rodents. They hate all of the rats and the STOs and all of these animals that are around killing their birds, and we would see hundreds. Is that dramatic this time? No. Hundreds of traps. Mm-hmm. For these rodents, thousands of traps. Thousands of traps around the different hikes and areas to try to kill them. Mm-hmm. So that they can repopulate their bird population. Yeah. We saw lots of Kias and some CCAs though. But yeah, that I think pretty much covers it. If you were to go to New Zealand again, what, what is something you think you would do differently?

Jared: 32:24

I would. I love to do even more of our backpack trips. renting the van and the van life was amazing, but you also were paying for it on a fortnight basis, so we didn't want to also spend too many nights away from the van where you also had to get a campsite. And we also didn't carry all of our gear all the time because it took up a lot of space in the van. So I would love to prioritize doing even more hikes next time.

Sam: 32:47

Mm-hmm. And I will say one thing was cool is you could rent equipment pretty easily. It's true. Yeah. Like we were, we didn't end up traveling with our own tent. We just had our sleeping bags. Yeah. And there were plenty of, and some walking sticks. Sticks of life.

Jared: 33:01

Sticks of life. Yeah. And you can stay in the huts. You can stay in the huts. I don't like that.

Sam: 33:05

If you don't wanna have your tent and you can still do a lot of the great walks or run to tent. Mm-hmm. That was really easy and cool.

33:12

Got here early to get the cocoon. The cocoon. I'm also by window.

Sam: 33:22

this podcast is all about the freedom lifestyle. What is one commitment you are willing to make to honor the sense of freedom you discovered on the trip?

Jared: 33:34

Well, one thing you and I discovered was how nice it was to have these slow mornings together. especially when we were doing the volunteering at, with the work away, we had this amazing routine where we'd get up just kind of. I don't know if they say fath there. I've just started saying it. I wanna say it again. FFA round. We would do meditation. we would have breakfast together and talk about the things we're grateful for, or three things we were grateful for, and then we would start our day and we want to integrate that into our life here and reserving at least two days during the week to do that. And not having any calls or work starting until kind of later in the morning. And so far we've been able to easily implement that, and that's been really nice.

Sam: 34:14

Yeah, a hundred percent. One of the things that we did on our work away is we learned about a certain type of meditation called Kan, where it's like a mantra bass meditation where you're kind of singing and doing some, not a dance, but a active movement. It's a very active meditation, so I love starting our days. Mm-hmm. Like that with you and guitar. You're learning guitar. Stay tuned. She didn't believe it, but, uh, stay tuned. And finally, what is your rating for New Zealand? Out of 10, what are we getting it? 12. 12. There you have it. Thank you so much, Jared, for coming back. Sure. Thanks for having me, Sam, from Lifestyle. I hope you appreciate it. Our honest review of New Zealand, the highs, the lows don't come for us. If you didn't like what you heard, Kiwis and Friends, this is just our opinion, but we would definitely recommend you put New Zealand on your bucket list. Will we be back?

Jared: 35:05

We will be back.

Sam: 35:06

We will be back, and until next time, we'll be back in your ears. Enjoy your freedom.

Jared: 35:12

Bye-bye.