What we did on our very relaxing Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Once we had our route planned, we were able to roughly work out where we needed to be at Christmas time so that we didn’t get stuck with too little time before or not enough time to fill our first two weeks. Last time, I came down the east coast and so this time I wanted to come down the west. We settled on New Plymouth as an area that would work with our route, things we wanted to see and somewhere we could roughly aim to be over the 3 days of Christmas. 

Once we’d made this decision, I looked for a campsite and got us booked on to the Urenui Beach Campsite (Urenui is just north of New Plymouth). This site has beach access, clean facilities and was fairly priced. It was really hard choosing a site as we just had no idea, so we just settled on this one. I think whilst it was a nice site, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest staying in New Plymouth or at the campsite. We enjoyed it because we wanted a chill out, but there was really not a lot to do without driving off the site, and so we were definitely ready to move on and get back out exploring. 

So, what did we do? 

We arrived in New Plymouth on Christmas Eve. We were slightly behind schedule, the drive had taken longer than we expected it to, but it worked out in the end. Due to the time, we went straight to the campsite and checked in, got our site spot and key card before heading off to the nearest supermarket. The best option was the Countdown but that worked quite well as we’d been thinking about what we could do for food that would resemble a summer version of a typical UK Christmas dins. 

We needed to get supplies for the next couple of days and more as we wanted to be ready to head off after Christmas Day and hit the road without any delays. We managed to get everything we needed and luckily we got one of the last pre-cooked chickens. We bought a packet of beers – alcohol is so expensive, but we felt we needed something different for Christmas! And finally, we picked up a few snacky bits, something nice for Christmas Day breakfast and then headed to Dominos for $5 pizza’s. 

After successfully collecting our pizza’s, we headed back to the site with our dins and parked the van up ready to leave it in the same spot for the next couple of days. Enjoying our pizzas on our camping chairs in the sunshine was so lovely. It felt like we could really relax for a couple of days. 

The whole of our Christmas Day was dreamy – it was actually mine and my boyfriends first Christmas together, so it was really special to do something just completely different. We had a lay in, spoke to our families back home on their Christmas Eve and soaked up the sun on the beach. Our successful dins topped it off. I even got him to wear the silly santa hat that I got as a surprise! 

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Surprisingly I didn’t miss the normal Christmas dins. What we had was so good. Our chicken – that came with stuffing (!!!) was sooo good, and we also had salad, in replacement of cooked veggies and fried potato cubes, instead of roasties. It wasn’t traditional, but it was perfect! Very fitting for the hot, sunny day and our dins was enjoyed along a side of New Zealand beer and The Muppets Christmas Carol. 

This was actually my second Christmas experience in the Southern Hemisphere. The first was in 2019, in Sydney. I never wanted to spend one Christmas away from home, but now I’ve done two and I think it is so worth doing. I find Christmas quite intense sometimes, it can be hard to manage all the emotions of a day when it has so much build up. However, taking a step back and doing it completely different really made me realise that it’s the people that you’re with that counts more than anything. Whether you’re in New Zealand or in the UK, you just want to be with the people you love and spend the day with them. 

Have you experience a Christmas away from home? Let me know below!

lots of love,

Han x