Today we officially began our NZ South Island road trip. We had the usual start of checking out by 10.

Let me just take a moment to rage about the rental car we have. They “upgraded” us to a Mini Countryman, which is like a normal-sized Mini. Should be called a maxi. It is a lesson in over-designing the things that don’t matter and ignoring the basic user needs. Nick and I have both had near psychotic breaks when trying to deal with the circular (why?!) infotainment center. It has a clippy / Siri thing that appears every time he speaks, even though it has never once understood him correctly. Hybrid RAV4 is still winning the rental car rankings.

Anyway, we set off and drove the [checks above photo] 1:05 to the gorge. Within about 5 minutes we were in rural farmland, sheep everywhere. It felt so English with its large hedges and sheep, the names of everything, and the dreary weather.

It rained most of the way there but we got a break when we arrived. We walked across a bridge and down to the gorge. The water was bright blue from the silt in the mountains. We think it’s the same thing that made the water in the Omani wadis bright blue. Whatever it is, it was breathtakingly beautiful.

After throwing approximately 75 rocks into the water, we walked back to the car. Next stop: Sheffield pies. Sheffield is a small town and home to a famous pie shop. NZ is known for its meat pies so we had to try one.

We got a traditional mince, a venison steak pie, a butter chicken (overall favorite), and a boysenberry. Terrible photos, yummy pies.

From here we continued our drive to Arthur’s Pass. We had a couple of places we wanted to stop for hikes, but the rain got worse and worse. This is known as one of the prettiest drives in New Zealand, but not so much when you are inside a rain cloud the whole time. We didn’t know the difference so were still pretty impressed

We skipped the hikes and drove right through to our hotel. We are staying at a caravan park. Millie and I killed some time playing ping pong in the rec room and testing out the very wet jumping pillow and playground.

We found a sweet little pub restaurant on Google about 10 minutes away. It had live music (acoustic covers) and great food. Nick and I shared a slow cooked lamb dish that really hit the spot. And the vibe was very cozy on a wet and gray evening. We were the youngest ones in there by about 30 years.