New Zealand

New Zealand, here I come. I am curious as to what you are like. I was flying with Air New Zealand and had probably the best flight safety video yet. It was with surfers. They also have a really cool on-flight payment and order system. You order something with your multimedia screen on your seat and then you pay for it by swiping your credit card (or EFTPOS card) through a slit at the bottom of the screen. Very fancy!

Also, at the airport, you are greeted by this:

So, Auckland. Some things are still surprisingly like Australia. Pedestrian traffic lights still go “squeak”, certain brands like JB Hi-Fi, ANZ Bank, EB Games, just to name a few, can still be found, the money looks similar, and is as intuitive as Australian money - even though the two dollar coins are bigger than the one dollar coins here, which makes more sense, powerplugs and light switches are the same as well.

What I found pretty surprising is that downtown Auckland has an even greater Asian presence than Sydney, where it mainly just seemed that China Town was overflowing it’s borders. Here, every other shop was sporting either mostly Chinese, or Korean or Japanese letters. Even at the airport about half of the commercials were Chinese. Heck, most people on my plane were Chinese. I thought that was rather interesting.

Also, Auckland is a bit seedier than glitzy Sydney at first glance. There are no high skyscrapers to be found here, which I find rather calming, somehow. Oh, yeah, and Hungry Jack’s is Burger King again.

It seems that the city is pretty booked out at the moment, since both Madonna and an art festival are in town. After my arrival I was actually far too tired to do anything prolific, so I just went to the next food court for something cheap and Asian, then headed back to the hostel.

New Zealanders like their rugby and they call their team, the All Blacks, the “best rugby team in the world”.

I still felt the aftermaths of the diving incident today, which made me think that it was probably more than just seasickness that happened there. I decided to stay at the hostel and pump myself full of information about New Zealand. I found out that the Maori have more in common with the Polynesian/Hawaiian culture over 7000km away than with the Australian aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander people, which I thought was rather fascinating. I learned a lot of other things, too, but it would fill pages to write it all down.

In the evening, out hostel had a power outage. That was the first one I’ve experienced in a long time.

I felt a bit better today, so I decided to make the day a bit more busy. I did the laundry in the morning, then went to the city to get a few organisational things done. Here are some pictures of Queen Street and the Auckland harbour area.

I took the so called KiwiExperience bus south today for a tour around the North Island. We first had a small orientation at the beautiful Auckland Domain Park.

Then we drove South and East to the so-called Coromandel, a peninsula in the North of NZ. The land around Auckland and especially around the Coromandel peninsula has certain remarkable similarities with the Fribourg prealps and low lands of Switzerland. There are a lot of hills, farm houses and dairy farms. Our bus driver, Geena, told us that because of all those dairy farms, the area is also called the “cream of the country”. The vegetation is different though. For one, there are a lot more fern trees, especially the silver ferns that NZ is famous for. There are also these palm trees called cabbage trees that look very much like the trees from Doctor Seuss’s “The Lorax”. To me, seeing this landscape was surreal. Why go all around the world, to encounter something that almost looks like home? It’s so weird!

Also: Pak’n Save. A really cheap supermarket and what seams to be an institution here.

After a few hours of driving, we arrived at hot water beach. The beach is called that, since, at low tide, hot water can be found under the sand in certain places. People usually take shovels to it and then go and dig their hole in the sand to have their own privat hot pool. The area is not very big, but it looks kinda funny to see all those people dig their holes. And the water is really very hot!

In the afternoon we hiked from Hahei beach to Cathedral Cove. I did the hike with two Taiwanese girls I met on the bus. Cathedral Cove is pretty spectacular. Apart from the beautiful rock formations it also has beach caves to walk through and if you ignore all the other tourists it’s actually a really calm and secluded place to have a swim.

Something that you will hear over and over again in NZ is the term “Sweet as”. It has nothing to do with bums - as you would think when hearing it said for the first time - but rather just means something is great or good. The expression is used often and variations of it are often found in advertising, like “cheap as”, “refreshing as” etc.

I like Kiwis, as the people in NZ call themselves. Over all I got the feeling that they are generally a bit more grumpy and - be it pretended or not - a bit more easily offended than Australians. I appreciate the attitude though. They are the little guy in the shadow of the big superpowers and they have a good sense of independence - especially from Australia. To call a Kiwi an Australian is pretty much the biggest insult you can think of. A bit like calling a Scottish person English.

We got up early to move on. After an obligatory coffee stop we went to Karangahake Gorge to do a hike. This place was the location of a cyanide processing and gold mining facility, but it never really prospered, since the gold there was very hard to mine and so it was exploited only very late in the gold fever of the 19 hundreds. On the hike, I met a French guy called Mika, who lives in London and who incidentally also works as an interaction designer.

On our way to our next stop, we drove through Paeroa, a place with a carbonated spring and responsible for the lemonade L&P (or Lemon & Paeroa) a drink you can buy everywhere in NZ. This brand has also coined the term “World famous in New Zealand”, again something that is used in a lot of places. So, if something is world famous here it does not mean that it is known throughout the world, but only that every Kiwi knows about it.

We had a lunch stop at Morrinsville, a place that is known for it’s plastic cows strewn across the city center. I think they copied that from Switzerland, though. :D

Our final stop for today was the Waitomo Caves, where I participated in the Black Water Rafting Tour. This is basically canyoning and spelunking at the same time. They give you a helmet, a rubber ring to float in and you wear a really thick wetsuit. The water is so cold though that my body was still showing first signs of hypothermia when I came out of it, as in, I could no longer control my hands properly to open the wetsuit. The glow worms were pretty magical though! I just loved floating down this subterranian river in my rubber ring and staring up at them! Like at a million stars!

On the rafting tour I met a Chinese woman called Sue, who had a pretty amazing story. She actually drowned once and had her life saved. So in order to face her subsequent hydrophobia, she had learned to swim and now did activities like this one to face her fear of water. I was pretty impressed.

At the hostel I met a girl called Rosh. She is a professional cricket player and she decided to come to NZ after the female world championship in Australia. She told me that female cricket, like female soccer, is getting more exposure. Players are actually getting paid these days, too, which is good.

In the morning we went for a walk to some ancient caves at the Ruakuri reserve.

Then we drove on to Rotorua, or “rotten rua” as some people call it, because of the sulfur smell permeating the air. Rotorua is geothermally active and you can find hot springs, mud pools, and geysirs all over the city. Some of the pools are even free to be used by anyone. Others are shut off, mostly for people’s safety, because they are too hot.

Our program here, was to go to Tamaki Maori village, as good tourists do, so we first got the tickets to the village, then went to the hostel, to drop off the people that didn’t want to go or those that went only for dinner. Me, I wanted the whole package. The cultural experience.

So our group drove to Tamaki with one of the KiwiExperience buses. On our way, we had to choose a song we had to sing at the welcome ceremony, since according to Maori custom you are always welcomed by a song and should reply in kind. We chose “The Lion sleeps tonight” since it was easy to learn. We also had to choose a chief of our group. We chose a Canadian called Steve.

As we arrived at the village, we first had to sing our song and then were lead to our sleeping hut. With Maori, the huts represent the body of an ancestor. The wooden spar running along the middle of the roof is the backbone, the wooden planks forming the structure of the roof and going down the walls is the rib cage. The room had carvings over each bed and we were told what mythological and historical figures they represent. Oh yeah, and when you enter the hut, you have to take off your shoes.

Once we were all settled in, we went to an area where we learned a stick game where we threw sticks at one another without dropping them. We also learned a really catchy song, basically the alphabet song of the Te Reo Maori alphabet, that we were to perform later on.

Then the “official” part of the evening began. We were led to the entrance of the actual village and were given the welcome ceremony. Warriors came in on a small river with their wakas (boats) and performed a haka (dance) where they tried to intimidate us. It was important, that we all kept a straight face during all of this, out of respect. Finally our chiefs, one from each group, had to pick up a palm leaf from the ground, put there by the welcoming tribe, as a token of trust and peace.

Then we were lead through the gates into the almost magically lit setting of the village. The village was basically a couple of traditional huts and in front of every hut we were shown an aspect of Maori culture, such as stick games, flax weaving, war training, ta moko (tattooing), haka, and various musical instruments.

Then we were lead to where the so called hangi, baskets of food that were cooked under ground, was lifted out of the ground.

After the lifting of the hangi, we were shown another haka, which was rather spectacular. And then we had dinner. We had all kinds of veggies and meats as well as kumara, a kind of sweet potato that I’ve never had before, and something that is called kawakawa tea, a tea from a plant that is known to detoxify your body.

After our song performance and after all the other people who did not get the full package went home, the rest of our group got to have a bath in the hotpots. Unfortunately one of the hotpots was not working and so we all had to squeeze into two. For some reason, that was a lot of fun though. Our hotpot ended up singing songs and playing silly games. It was a pretty great evening.

The beds at the Tamaki village hut were great and I had a really good sleep. In the morning, we had breakfast and then went back to join the rest of the group in Rotorua.

Continuing our KiwiExperience trip, we went to something called the Te Puia Geothermal Wonderland. It was basically a small park were you could see geysirs erupt (some every 45 minutes), warm water pools bubble and visit a kiwi enclosure where you could see actual kiwis in a nocturnal enclosure. I mainly went there for the kiwis. We had a guide that explained to us how geysirs worked and demonstrated the hotness of the pools by boiling eggs in them which we could later eat.

On our trip to Taupo, Geena also told us that there is a geothermal power plant in the area and that some people raise prawns in the warm water.

Close to Taupo, we made a small sightseeing stop at Haku Falls.

At Taupo itself I had to go to the dentist, since I’ve had a tooth ache for a while now. It turned out, my mouth guard was giving me trouble, so the dentist filed off a few bits and pieces and it was fine.

I walked around in Taupo for a while. The town is one of the bigger ones on the North Island, but still very small. Most of the houses were one or two floor affairs and it hugged the shoreline of Lake Taupo with a lake promenade. The sky was overcast, but I still liked the peacefulness of the town a lot. I also noticed that most of the people here were driving very old cars and wore not very fashionable clothes, so I assumed they were probably not the richest. It was cold here. For the first time since Tazzie I experienced temperatures below 20 degrees and a pretty biting wind. Still, a lot of people were walking around in jandals (Kiwi name for flipflops).

Taupo is known as a center of extreme sports, especially for skydiving, bungee jumping and hiking the famous Tongariro Crossing. Something I would do tomorrow.

I got up at 4:30 in the morning to catch the 5:30 bus to the base of the Tongariro Crossing hiking trail. After an almost one and a half hour bus ride through darkness, were were dropped off at the start of the path. And there were a lot of people here. I guess it was because the weather was supposed to be beautiful today and because it was a Saturday.

It was cold, and I was glad that I had brought my sweater. I started walking at 7:15 am. The landscape was pretty impressive. We were surrounded by various mountain peaks, the grandest of which was of course Mt. Ngauruhoe (or Mt. Doom, for all those Lord of the Rings fans out there). We walked through something that looked like marshland, with bits of broken ice between fuzzy grass here and there, past something called the Soda Springs, to our first ascent.

People had told me that this ascent was a sort of guideline: if you could do it without a problem, then you could climb to the peak of Mt. Ngauruhoe. Since I managed that, I attempted to climb Mt. Doom.

This was like nothing I’ve ever done. Climbing this volcano was like walking up a sand dune. Every time you took one step, you slid two steps down. The sand is interspersed with bigger and smaller rocks, called scree, as well. Most of it looks stable at first glance, but often really isn’t, and when you step on it, tends to roll and fall down the hill to the people below. Also, small sharp rocks will end up in your shoes all the time. All the time. I would say this is one of the more dangerous hiking routes I have attempted. It takes you 2 hours to get all the way up there, and more than once you come to a point where you think “Oh, I’m almost there.”, when in fact there is still over half of the trek to go. So yeah, you really do feel like Frodo and the Ring.

The view at the top is amazing, though, and well worth all the suffering. The walk down takes a lot less long as well. You just slide down the mountain. I did the first part on my but (which basically ruined my trousers - so my trousers literally saved my butt) and then half ran and half slid down the mountain. The slide down took me the better part of 40 minutes.

So I climbed Mt. Doom. I think I get bragging rights and nerd points for that. :)

After that ordeal, I still had 6 hours to go and I was already pretty tired. I took a small food break and then went on. The rest of the trail was pretty amazing as well! You walked through some volcano craters, past others. You passed steaming emerald green lakes and steaming rocks, ended up walking down over lush green foothills and finally, the whole thing finished in a walk through a rain forest. The weather was perfect, too!

Some crazy people do that hike in a very short time. Me, with Mt. Doom and all, it had taken me about 9 hours. Needless to say, I was pretty wiped out when I took the bus back.

Most of my muscles hurt, so I didn’t do much today. I went to the cinema to watch “Hail, Ceasar!”. The temperature was perfect today. Sunshine and not too warm and not too cold.

I went East with a tour provider called EastAs today with a new, smaller bus, and a new bus driver called Koro. On this tour, we were only five people. I had mainly booked this tour, because it lead you into Maori owned land and you got to see how Maori live today.

Koro first lead us to a tree where, according to a Maori true story, a girl was hidden inside to protect her from an attacking tribe. The girl had survived and became a famous wise woman and wife of a chief. People sometimes leave leaves by the tree and cars would toot their horn when they passed by.

We went to a beach close to Opotiki in the Bay of Plenty area from where we could see Whakaari or White Island, a still smoking, active volcano. The carvings at the beach showed where Captain Cook first landed in New Zealand and met the local Maori.

We did a forest walk back to the bus and Koro told us about various plants, like the kawakawa the leaves of which are used to make detoxifying tea and to heal wounds, and the remu tree, cut for it’s timber (much like the kauri in the North). There is very little native rainforest left on the North Island because of the sheep farms.

We went food shopping in Gisborne, which is a big city that mostly lives off Canadian redwood timber export to China, and then went on to Poverty Bay, another landing point of Captain Cook’s where he got into a fight with the local Maori.

In the evening we stayed on a farm close to the ocean. We hung out with the locals at the ocean bar, played drinking games, and listened to music.

Our next stop was Whangara, the village where the movie “Whale Rider” was filmed. We just looked at the village from afar and didn’t actually go into it, out of respect. You don’t just walk into a marae (meeting house), you have to be welcomed.

Then, we hiked to Cook’s Cove lookout and back down to the pier nearby. We could see Hikurangi mountain on our hike. This mountain is the first place in New Zealand that is hit by sunlight.

Today I saw several women who had traditional ta moko tattoos on their chins. This is something that makes me incredibly happy. Traditions seem to be very much alive here.

On our final stop for today, we went to Tikitiki church. I loved this church, since it is a nice blend between Maori and Christian culture. It is interesting to note, even tough a lot of Maori still hold their original cultural beliefs very close to their heart, for most, it is not a contradiction to believe in God and in all of their other gods and ancestors at the same time as well. For most people those two beliefs blend just as nicely as this church.

We stayed at another farm today. With bee hives and a lot of cows. While two of our group went horse riding, the rest of us went to the beach and gathered firewood. We sat on the beach for quite a while and saw something in the water. A school of white animals bobbing in and out. They were too far away though, so none of us could tell what they were. They seemed to be a little smaller than orcas.

The guy owning the farm is called Reg. He has a great sense of humour. He also sold us all Manuka Honey from the bees on the farm. This Honey is known for it’s antibiotic qualities and is used more as a medicine than for daily consumption. In the evening, we had a bonfire, where Reg told us his stories. When we went to bed, we heard the cows mooing throughout the night.

We hiked to a lighthouse first thing in the morning.

Then, we drove on along the coast.

We stayed close to a small village called Te Kaha with a guy called Chay (pronounced as Jay). Koro had told us to practice a song as a greeting and this is what we came up with (sing it to “Barbie Girl” by Aqua):

I’m an EastAs girl
in a Maori world
on the east coast
of New Zealand

Koru drives us there
there’s honey everywhere
nothing plastic
it’s fantastic

thank you whanau
we’ll leave tomorrow

Chay was another great guy, and he loved to sing as well. He sang us his own versions of popular songs as a greeting.

Chay’s place… how can I describe it… it’s a peace of paradise. He has a house close to the ocean with a small garden in between him and the water. His part of the ocean has both a beach part and a part where you can snorkel and see lots and lots of fish. Sometimes dolphins or even orcas come into his cove. And if that is not enough, he even has his own hot tub, overlooking the ocean. Man… this guy is lucky.

We were just settling in, in our part of the housing complex, when it suddenly started to rain really heavily. So heavily, in fact, that the roof of the house started leaking. So, this English girl, Whizzy, who works for Chay temporarily, and Jason, another Kiwi guest who also stayed in this place for a little longer, both went in search for pots and pans to catch the water. But parts of the carpet still became pretty wet, and unlucky Whizzy’s stuff just got soaked. While the others were doing other things, I helped Whizzy with cleaning, for which she was pretty grateful. I ended up getting along really well with her.

In the evening, we ate spaghetti. I had a nice chat with Jason, who was on a spiritual journey and on his way to becoming a yoga instructor. We would have liked to go to the hot tub after that, but for some reason it was cold, so Chay told us he would warm it up for tomorrow morning.

Then, I went to the small bar where Koro and Chay were and ended up talking to Chay for a while as well.

One of the interesting things about this evening was, that Chay hosted Maori National Television for this night. They were here because they documented the refurbishment of a local marae (meeting house). We didn’t interact with them much, but apparently a lot of famous TV people were at that bar this night.

We got up really early today, at about 5 in the morning, to go into the hot tub and see the stars. It was pretty amazing. It was mostly Jason, Whizzy, and me and we had a nice chat and a really good time. Then Whizzy and me went snorkeling and were soon joined by Koro. There were a lot of cool fish between the rocks and sea grass, but the water was pretty cold as well. To warm up again, we went into the hot tub again, after. Now, if you think that this sounds like a chilled-out morning, you’d be right. It was great!

For breakfast, I had a chat with Koro again. To my surprise, I found out that he used to be a driver on the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit set. He was Viggo Mortensen’s and Stephen Fry’s driver. His next gig is being the driver for Ridley Scott for Prometheus 2. I’d lie if I said that I wasn’t impressed.

Around midday, we started our drive back to Rotorua and stopped in Whakatane on the way to visit a Maori cave.

On the way, I asked Koro more about Maori culture and he told me that Maori are most of all interested in self-governance and in deciding as much as they can for themselves. Most are distrustful of the government. This attitude hearkens back to the signing of the treaty of Waitangi.

After we had arrived in Rotorua, we said our goodbyes. I hadn’t really been close with any of the others of the group, but still went out with one of them to a market, taking place in the town’s center.

Unfortunately I found out that the two of us didn’t get along, something that had actually manifested itself over the last few days, but escalated this evening. So we separated in an argument. This saddened me, but I decided that I just couldn’t get along with everyone and one person out of all the ones I had met was not too bad.

I had this coming for a long time now: was sick with a headcold and stayed in bed the whole day.

In the evening I went to the kitchen to at least get some food in me. I met a girl baking cakes there. I had seen her at the hostel before last night and got curious, so I started to talk to her. Her name was Elena and she was baking cakes to sell them at the morning market at the park tomorrow to get the funds needed for her student visa. I ended up helping her with the cakes and got a bit of chocolate for it from her, plus I could lick the bowls clean. :) I also promised her to come and visit her at the market tomorrow.

I got up at seven to see Elena at the market. It was at the park right beside the hotel. Out of solidarity I bought one of her cakes and then walked around town a little, before catching the KiwiExperience bus back to Auckland.

On our way there, we stopped at Rainbow Springs Nature Park, a Kiwi Rearing Station on the outskirts of Rotorua. I saw Kiwis there for the second time. They were reared at the station by trained biologists. With this project they had been able to double the kiwi population on the North island over the last few years, which makes me rather hopeful. It means that conservation with the right effort works at least in some places.

We were not allowed to take pictures of actual kiwis, so this stuffed out model will have to do.

Once in Auckland, I was still too weak to do anything, so I decided to rest some more, especially since Luke was coming soon and I would have to drive for the next few weeks.

Yay!

But first I had to go to the travel doctor in the morning, to get all my vaccinations for South East Asia.

Then, I took the bus to Penrose, a suburb in the south of Auckland, to get the Spaceship camper van that I had booked. I was a bit unsure of myself, driving a van for the first time in NZ. But the woman renting it out actually let me drive around the block with her, just to get the hang of the vehicle. I was kinda glad it was an automatic.

So I drove back, on a route that I had previously memorized, since I could not look at the GPS on my phone while I was driving. I drove on four lane traffic, with trucks all around me, some not taking too kindly that I couldn’t read the unfamiliar traffic patterns right away. It was a bit stressful to say the least, and I was glad it was over soon.

Once at the hostel, I waited for Luke. When he finally arrived… well… we didn’t do much in the afternoon. In the evening we went to see “The Mermaid”, a Chinese film that was both funny, but also very forgettable. I had to show Luke the Metro building and its interesting architectural style. I mean, look at this:

I love our Spaceship camper van. It comes with a bed, a fridge, a table, chairs, a gas stove as well as pots and pans and all the other kitchen stuff that you would need. It’s not self-sufficient, but it’s really cool for camping nonetheless. Beats pitching up a tent anyway!

We started driving out of Auckland pretty late, since we went shopping at the nearest Pak'n Save (did I mention, that I love Pak'n Save?) and then had lunch at the food court there.

After some deliberation of whether we wanted to do it or not, we decided to drive to Matamata and, to see Hobbiton. It was pretty much all we had hoped it to be. All those details! It was incredible! Also, the weather was perfect as well!

I think my favourite place was the Green Dragon. It’s just so cozy!

After Hobbiton it was already rather late in the afternoon, around 5pm. Still, we decided to drive all the way to Taupo. It was a difficult drive, especially when it got dark, but we did make it in the end.

The problem was, that the receptions of most hotels close at around 9pm and we had arrived in Taupo after that time. The hotel room we finally found was weird. It was cramped and the bed smelled of piss, but it was a room and it was a bed, so that was ok.

Driving in New Zealand is interesting. People are mostly nicer than in Switzerland, with a bit more patience. It is common practice for larger vehicles to drive to the side of the road and let smaller ones pass. If someone lets you pass, you often give them a small toot with the horn as a thank you. There are also actual passing lanes, similar to Australia, but not quite the same, since they just come together at the end. Two roads turning into one is something that happens very, very often in this country and you’d think that would be a problem. But it actually isn’t! It just means that Kiwis are absolute masters at the zipper system. Better than any other nation I’d wager!

There are things that are strenuous though. Auckland’s streets are steep and hard to navigate and the people in the city are actually really impatient drivers (I had one blow the horn at me when the pedestrian lights turned red, but my traffic light was not even green yet!).

Driving at night is not very easy either, since a lot of the country streets are not lit at all.

Also, motorways work a bit differently from ours. Incoming lanes usually don’t flow into the motorway, but often just remain as an extra lane. However, sometimes the outermost lane branches off again into an exit lane. This means that changing lanes to the second to outermost lanes is sometimes necessary, because otherwise you might inadvertently land yourself on an exit lane to somewhere you don’t want to be.

We drove on to Wellington today.

We rose early and stopped at a road that was in the middle of a wild, windy landscape of scraggly grassland. It was rather impressive.

Our second stop was at a small town called Foxton where we made lunch at a small picnic area on our little gas stove. The town also sported a windmill and a nice little Dutch cafe.

When we arrived in Wellington, we decided to stay in the city for a few days to explore it some more. We were coming on to Easter and that meant that a lot of the ferries were booked out anyway, so we actually almost had no choice but to stay a while.

After getting a room at the YHA, and found a parking space for our Spaceship, we walked around town. We explored Oriental Beach, the shore line, Cuba Street and more. I like Wellington. It’s not too cold and not too warm. And it’s windy, very windy. It was sunny too, and I guess I have to agree with people when they say that “you can’t beat Wellington on a good day”.

We took the bus to Miramar, and if you are a Lord of the Rings fan, you know what this means: the Weta Workshop. After visiting the actual shop, we took a small tour to have a look at some of the props that were done by Weta. It was interesting to see, that most that look like they were made of metal, were actually made out of plastic or rubber.

After that visit, we walked around Miramar for a bit. It’s a cute, quiet little suburb in its own right.

Then, we headed to Victoria Park to find Weathertop, another Lord of the Rings sight, but didn’t really find it. It was still a good walk with a nice view though.

After exploring the city some more, we went to see Batman v Superman at the very beautiful Embassy Cinema. The cinema was better than the movie.

The Te Papa museum was on the program today. We saw exhibitions about earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, New Zealand animals, an octopus from the deep, and the Maori exhibition. I think the most impressive of all of these things was maybe the octopus, since it came from the deep sea and was one of the biggest specimens ever found. But I also learned a lot about Maori culture and beliefs here.

After that we were at least mentally exhausted and got some Japanese lunch in the city. Then, we decided to go up to the Botanical Garden with the funicular (which is, of course, Swiss made). It was colder up there, on the hill, and cloudy. We found a planetarium called “The Space Place” and watched a movie there about us being made of stars. It was narrated by Andy Serkis, which was a nice touch, and meant that they probably spent a decent amount of money on this movie. Then, we walked back down into town.

In the evening, we went to the cinema again, Reading Cinemas, this time, and watched Zootopia. This is a movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend. I loved the story and the message. We went to bed early this night though, since we had to catch the ferry very early in the morning the next day.

We got up at 5:30 to catch the ferry to Picton. It left the port at seven and took 3 hours to get there.

After disembarking, we drove southeast along the coast toward Nelson. It was a windy road, that went along the beautiful fjord-speckled coastline of Marlborough for a while.

Lunch was had in a restaurant in a very small place called Canvastown where the most important subject of the day was the local pumpkin competition. :)

In the afternoon we drove to a place called Pelorous Bridge, where we hiked along the river. In the Hobbit movie, this was the river where the dwarves floated down in their barrels.

We also spotted the famous New Zealand silver fern on our hike.

Our campground for today was on the outskirts of Nelson on a beautiful beach (with some airplanes flying overhead sometimes, but that was ok). I noticed there, that some people have huge camper vans, which I thought must be really hard to drive around with.

Since we were at a beach facing West, we had a really beautiful sunset tonight!

We were tired, so we went to bed early.

We decided to drive along the beautiful ocean road back into Nelson, to have breakfast there.

Nelson itself is a very picturesque little town! Full of nice little streets with flowerpots and pretty parks.

We visited the store of the goldsmith that had made the one ring for The Lord of the Rings. Then we pressed on, Southward. The drive through the mountains South of Nelson was very scenic. We stopped a few times along the Buller river, just to take in the majestic landscape.

The beaches between Westport and Punakaiki are equally beautiful and we couldn’t help ourselves but linger at a few. Let me tell you something, tough: if it’s one thing you learn here, it’s to drive curvy streets.

Our campground was at a fantastic beach again, near Punakaiki.

It had a nice tavern where we ate dinner (since we were too lazy to cook). The only downside was that we made our first encounter with sandflies today. And man, those things can be annoying. Their bites can itch for weeks.

We visited Pancake Rocks first thing in the morning.

Then we drove to Greymouth to have lunch.

While parking, I made a dent into the car, since there was a pipe sticking out into the street where the parking spot was. Right in the dead angle of the back left corner of the car. Of course.

The day did not improve from there. When we went and got lunch, something felt wrong. My stomach was acting all strange and I felt weak. It was soon clear that I had a stomach flu and that I couldn’t drive on. So we decided to find another campground close by where I could rest.

I became so weak that all I could do was wobble to the toilet and back and my main diet was coke and tasteless crackers. All I could do was hang around on the bed at the back of the van and wait until the sickness passed.

This was the fourth day and I still could not eat breakfast properly. But at least I felt strong enough at this point to drive again. And of course it would start raining, as soon as we moved on! Just our luck.

We drove to a place called Shantytown. A Disneyland-like amalgamation of the timber processing and gold digging days of old. A town representative of how the region used to be about 200 to 150 years ago. We learned about the life of the settlers here, and about what life in those days probably looked like. It was a good museum with good ideas.

Our next stop along the coast was Hokitika, a town known for it’s pounamu, or jade, manufacturers. Needless to say, there were a lot of jade shops there. The town also had a nice beach with wood art.

Our drive along the coast took us to the town of Fox Glacier, where our next campground was. This campground was far too expensive for what it offered, but the kitchen was pretty good. It was closed and heated, which was a good thing, since there was so much rain this night. So much rain.

Our reason for being at Fox Glacier was of course to walk to the actual glacier along the Fox Glacier trail. We were really lucky with the weather. The rain had let up and made way for a very brisk, cool morning. We drove to Fox Glacier and had breakfast on the car park surrounded by spectacularly steep mountain walls. Pretty amazing!

Then we hiked up to the glacier and back, which was a good warm-up.

Out of curiousity we also drove to Lake Matheson, famed for its mirror flat surface, and took a small walk there.

Then we drove on Queenstown.

Again, our road lead us along the coast for a while, then over Haast pass, which is pretty breathtaking with it’s dark forests and waterfalls.

We emerged at lakes Wanaka and Hawea, which, in all honesty, are just too beautiful for words. The mountains are so high here! And everything is so… untouched, wild, pristine. It’s really incredible! Not even photos can convey the atmosphere and the richness of light that we experienced!

We drove through Cardrona Valley next, where, I swear, the colour of the grass and hills changes, depending on the angle you look at them. Which means the colours of the hills change all the time when you drive past them, from bright green to darker green to almost reddish. It’s pretty interesting and not a phenomenon I have experienced before.

When we finally arrived in Queenstown and had settled into our campground, it was already dark, so we walk into town mainly with the goal to get something to eat. I had thought to go to Fergburger, but this place was packed and I had no intention of waiting for hours for my food. So we went to another burger place called Devil Burger, which was also pretty good.

This day had just been amazing. So many magnificient vistas. Such incredible landscapes! New Zealand is truly a gorgeous coutry!

I realized that Queenstown, or Q-Town, is a lot like Zermatt or Grindelwald, with the same landscape, the same designer restaurants and high profile sports brand shops. New Zealand is known for its extreme sports, and no town has more of those to offer than this one. The town is almost kitschy with its blue lake and its steamboats.

After finding a parking space, which is not very easy here. We had a really good breakfast at a place called Vudu. The food there is just really innovative, taste-wise.

Then, we walked through Queenstown some more, and found out that the actual town is really small. So we decided to take the gondola up the mountain, to spend some time at the top. It was a place filled with souvenir shops and restaurants and a tobogan ride that I didn’t really feel like doing.

So, after taking in the rather spectacular view, we hiked down. It was an interesting hike, too, since our trail criss-crossed with a cyclists lane and we walked under a zipline trail. It just goes to show how many extreme sports possibilities there are in this area.

When we came back to the car, our car key broke. We fixed it temporarily with some of Luke’s stash of tape, but it was harder to turn on the ignition now. Our next goal was the small town of Oamaru and we drove there on a very scenic, again very curvy mountain road. We arrived in Oamaru at sunset.

We went shopping in Countdown there to stock up on food. For some reason Oamaru feels a lot like Scotland to me. It’s probably mostly because of all the Victorian architecture (something that no other city in New Zealand has, because most other cities modernized over time and ripped it all down), and then there’s that it’s at the ocean and that the suburbs kind of look the same as some Scottish suburbs do. The weather is the same too, meaning that it was mostly rainy when we arrived. :) The campground was nice though. It was by the sea again.

Oamaru is also known as the Steampunk Capital of the world. And for good reason. Seeing it for the first time in sunlight, we realized how surreal the place really was. We went along the ocean to a steampunk-themed playground and then to the so called Steampunk HQ. This is museum of steampunk-themed exhibits such as an organ which plays science-fiction sounds, animals made from metal, a huge motorbike, a steampunk train and much more.

The best thing though, was a room with mirrors on every wall and lots and lots of lights. When you entered it, relaxing music started playing and you felt you were almost floating in an endless space. I loved it.

As we explored the city some more we found some other interesting stores, like a vintage toy store, a book store with really old adventure books and a secondhand book store that had just about everything. Not only books, but also magazines, serials, newspapers, just everything you can put on paper, really. Too bad that it was on a closing down sale.

We also met some interesting people that tried to sell us the steampunk angle of the city. They really seem to be proud of it. Most of them were pretty kooky and added to the overall surreal vibe of the place.

In the afternoon, we drove on to Christchurch and the YHA there. For lunch, we stopped at a small place called Timaru on the way.

Other than that, the road along the east coast is not as interesting. It mostly lead through dairy farms.

Our exploration of Christchurch was dominated by mostly one thing: the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake that destroyed most of the city center. Even after almost 5 years, the city center is still being rebuilt and there are construction sites everywhere. One of the sadder sights is the caved in Christchurch cathedral.

This makes the city center a dour and a somewhat boring place. Some of the shopping district has found a colourful temporary solution for itself though. They transferred the stores into shipping containers. I thought that was very cool.

Some people created art to fill up and colour the empty spaces.

Disregarding the destruction of the city, Christchurch isn’t what I would call beautiful. It has a nice park and some architecturally interesting spots, but most of it, even the places that have not been affected by the earthquake, are rather bland. I hope they make it more interesting when everything is rebuilt again.

In the afternoon, we drove to Kaikoura, along an again very scenic road with forested hills and steep cliffs right by the sea. I also drove through a small tunnel for the first time ever since I was here.

After checking into our campground, we walked along the road at the city center, which was mainly just a stretch of restaurants. It was very touristy. After some deliberation we had fish and chips at a place that boasted to have the best fish and chips on the South Island. The were not really wrong either. They were really good.

In the evening, we had a relaxing hot tub back at the camp site.

Today was the day I had looked forward to the most, since I had arrived in New Zealand. I know this sounds pretty silly, but it’s true. Today, we had the Dolphin Encounter Tour. It was probably the best conditions we could have hoped for. The water was flat, the weather was gorgeous and the dolphins were actually pretty close to shore.

After getting our gear and an introduction video, we drove out with the boat and were then going into the water. There were so many dolphins here. The pod literally consisted of at least over a hundred dolphins and they swam all around you. They were really playful, too. Some of them would circle around you and then you’d have to turn with them to keep up. They would do that for minutes on end. Sometimes I would dive down and then I would have 5 or 6 of them around me, following me and swimming all around me. It was incredible! And they came close, so close that I could have touched them, which of course I didn’t.

There were also these small crayfish in the water. Most would just paddle by, but sometimes some would come close to you and actually rest on your hand or anywhere else on your body. It was kind of cute.

All in all it was a brilliant experience and I loved every minute of it. We had two swims of over half an hour with them and even though I felt cold and tired by the end, I was never so at peace with myself.

After we had returned to shore, we had some lunch at cafe under the scrutinizing gaze of some very aggressive seagulls.

Then we moved on. It was our goal to get to the ferry at Picton tonight. The ferry was not far away, about one and a half hours, but we didn’t want to miss it. I soon realized, however, that I was far too tired to drive. The morning experience, especially the cold water, had exhausted me, so we drove to a picnic area and I slept for a while.

We did get to the Picton ferry on good time and even had a small noodle soup dinner on the parking spot where we had to wait.

We had stayed at the YHA in Wellington again, but this time we unfortunately didn’t linger, even though the weather was nice and the city tried its best to keep me there, with its windy allure.

We drove over Napier, this time, just because I wanted to see what it was like. It was… nothing special. The city has a few nice streets with interesting 30s architecture and a good looking ocean promenade, plus a small core with some shops.

After a good meal at the local Macca’s and a nice little chat with one of the shop owners about the horrible New Zealand farming practices, which ruins all the rivers, we moved on.

Since it’s just the logical thing to do, we drove to Taupo again and stayed at the YHA this time. It was an interesting, loud place, with lots of music and very “backpacker” people. Meaning: interesting albeit a bit hipstery.

We pretty much drove straight to Auckland today. I asked Luke whether he wanted to go to Waitomo, but he was too tired. I had forgotten to organize a parking space with the YHA, so we put the car on a space at the end of Queen Street, not too far away, bu we had to walk uphill quite a bit to get there.

In the afternoon, we took a stroll around the city and I had the first bubble tea of my life. Then, we went to see “The Hunt for the Wilderpeople” at the Metro building, which was a fun film.

The first order of the day was to wash the car and bring it back to the Spaceships base. When we were at the Caltex station carwash, the key finally broke completely, which made it pretty hard and stressful to turn on the car. Finally, we used the key to the car’s trunk as a lever and it worked somehow (we No. 8 wired it, as Kiwis would probably say).

Apart from that, giving the car back went down pretty much without a hitch. We took the bus back to the city center and then just hung around at the hostel, until Luke had to leave. :(

I had planned to hang around at the hostel all day, but then I read on a black board at the hostel that it was Japan Day today and there were a lot of stalls and cultural events at the wharf. So I went down there, to have some cool Japanese food and check out Japanese arts and crafts as well as listen to shakuhatchi and other musical performances.

It was a lot of fun and got me thinking. So, I decided to go to Japan with Luke this summer, instead of going back to Australia.

This was the last KiwiExperience bus tour that I was gonna take any time soon. On this last leg of my trip, I went northward towards the Bay of Islands and a town called Paihia.

Our first stop was a quick sightseeing area in Whangarei, where we could take pictures of some nice waterfalls close by. The landscape is pretty amazing here. The grass is so green that it almost looks like it’s fluorescent and we drove through these rolling hills, topped with small outcroppings of trees and forests. I really enjoyed that.

Paihia was the town where the infamous treaty of Waitangi had been signed. This document is still highly controversial. On the one hand, it set the rules for Maori and pakeha (white people) on how to live together. It is, by all accounts, the first constitution of New Zealand. On the other hand, Maori got a differently formulated contract from this deal than the British. The dispute was mainly on how the land was settled. Maori believed that they were loaning the land to the European settlers, the Europeans ruled that they would own land once it is settled by them. Needless to say that this lead to a whole bunch of trust issues and conflicts that resonate through to this day.

I decided to do what I always do: walk around. I was joined by a Finnish guy called Sami and we walked from the city center to the Waitangi museum. The museum was a bit too expensive for us, so we decided to do a nice little rain forest walk instead, to a spot where we had a good overview over Paihia.

I found out that I shared my hotel room with a bunch of really nice guys. I had a good conversation with a Danish called Kornelius about European immigration politics and we watched the new Star Trek movie on television together (which I don’t like, but meh, can’t win em all).

We drove to cape Reinga, the very northern tip of mainland NZ where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific. On the bus we picked up a guy from Wellington who only came with us to get to the cape with his bike and then ride down to Wellington in 10 days.

We first stopped in Mangonui for some coffee. Then we did something that I haven’t done before: we left the road and drove the bus along 90 Mile beach. The bus drove on the sand. We had to do this at low tide, because at some point we had to drive around a rocky line, that ran all the way across the beach, jutting into the ocean, and our driver had to drive the bus right into the ocean to circumvent it. It was quite the thrill ride and we were almost swept away by an incoming wave.

We stopped somewhere midway on the beach for some nice photos and then moved further inland to a big sand dune on the Te Paki stream to go sandboarding. It was the first time I did that. After you get used to the long walk up the dune, it’s actually kind of fun.

We stopped at a nice beach on the way for lunch.

Our final stop for today was the famous Cape Reinga, where at least some Maori believe, the spirits of the dead go from New Zealand to the mystical land of Hawaiki. It was a rather interesting place. There was a portal with nature sounds and traditional Maori instrument sounds at the start of the path to the shore. There was also a nice lighthouse. It did feel kind of like the end of the world. Also, you could actually see the place where the two oceans meet, see the waves breaking into each other (even though I was told it was just a sandbank).

On the way back, we went to the Ancient Kauri Kingdom and walked through a Kauri forest. Similar to the Huon pine, Kauri are really old, really big trees that almost got extinct with logging. These days it is forbidden to log Kauri at all. It was quite a good walk, and I even got to hug a Kauri, which is said to be good luck. After a stop at the gift shop, we went back to the hostel.

Sami and I did the bay of islands cruise in the morning. It was pretty good. We saw a pod of bottlenose dolphins.

We also went through a big hole, or tunnel, in one of the rocks, which was pretty exciting, since it looked like the boat was about to be knocked into the wall. But we got through alright.

The cruise also included a peaceful island walk.

The cruise dropped us off at Russel, a small town on a peninsula close to Paihia and I explored it for some time.

It was nice and relaxing, but not very big, so I soon took the ferry back to the hostel.