Lockdown Story from the Olie Family

Hospitality in lock-down

We are a family of 4 from The Netherlands, traveling in NZ with our two sons aged 8 and 10 for a fabulous 3 month’s.

We started off with a few days recovering from jet-lag in Auckland, being amazed by the spotlessly clean streets and parks. 

We lingered down to Wellington, enjoying great hikes and walks on route. After the spectacular beautiful Cook Strait crossing we traveled via Abel Tasman National Park and West Coast towards Wanaka. It took us about 6 weeks from the start of our holiday, and every day that we traveled further, we’ve been enjoying NZ more and more. The people. The views. The variety of landscapes. The things to do. 

When we arrived at Wanaka our son immediately said: “this is the place where I would like to live when I’m a grownup.” Initially we planned to stay for about 2, 3 nights. But our sons’ vision proofed to be right: we found the perfect spot at Andrea and Justin’s campsite, so we decided to stay for almost a week. Every day again the campsite staff came up with new tips of things to do, every day again with genuine enthusiasm.

We reluctantly left to continue our travels to see more of NZ beauty.

But then...we heard about the lockdown.  We called Andrea straight away. Our wish to stay four weeks in lock down at Wanaka TOP10 was based on our previous experience - the true and kind hospitality that we experienced at a fantastic campsite.

We had all the luck in the world that Andrea and Justin had a luxury, fully equipped 3-bedroom house vacant which we could rent during the lock down time.

Initially we were worried by the perspective of being locked up for four weeks inside a house - with two kids full of energy. 

However, it turned out that with only a few other self-isolating guests at the campsite, the kids found this spot the perfect ‘private play-garden’ to play and run around without disturbing other campsite guests.

The best thing for them was the ride on the quad trailer which Justin’s mother; zipping around with ‘super-grandma’ is a memory for life!

Thanks to Andrea and Justin’s kind and caring hospitality for four weeks of self-isolation, seems more to be a 4-week holiday retreat. We have enjoyed having heaps of time together for genuine quality-family time and to see autumn coming.

We feel so much ‘home away from home’ in Wanaka!

In the future, when Covid- 19 is treated, we wish to return to Wanaka  and definitely stay at Wanaka TOP 10 again. 

Already looking forward it! 

Posted by Andrea Kendrick on April 10, 2020