A moving month
It's been a whirlwind month, moving from place to place.
28, 30 or 31 days can take you to a lot of places. Time speeds up as we age, but don’t underestimate the changes that can occur in the space of a month. There I was, happily chopping up wood and crafting my dream EV camper in Auckland, when suddenly that fun ended and I found myself in China. A fortnight of noisy, bustling Beijing and Baoding hubbub commenced. We walked on the Great Wall, drove an electric boat around the lake at the Summer Palace and discovered the home of the ‘Baoding balls’. Yes, those jingly metal balls you shuffle in your hands to make all your worries disappear are from the same place as Zoe.
Beijing travel tip
Catch the bus from the city up to the impossibly quiet Shuiguan section of the Great Wall of China. It’s incredibly steep and incredibly empty. Case in point: we passed just three other people during our two hour march along the wall. Afterwards, we caught a taxi to the Badaling section to take the train back to our hotel and saw normal China levels of busy again!
Back in Aotearoa, we quickly packed up my things from my brother’s house where I’ve been staying for most of the last two years and hit the road in the van south, towards Queenstown. On the road, Zoe answered a Facebook ad for a room, which we somehow landed. Us 1 - 0 Queenstown Accommodation Crisis.
Over about a week, we shot down the motu, via Wellington, Nelson and the West Coast. Actually, “shot” is only a feel. The reality in an EV of this range - and in a van - is the feeling of being on the go all day, but not covering as much ground as you think you are. It’s definitely a different way of travelling.
