Mount Maunganui

Spending the last day of my trip at the beach.

Te-puia

Wai-o-tapu

The smelly town of Rotorua

Lake Taupo

It's huuuuge!

Huka falls

A big river squeezed into a 10m gorge.

Mordor (Tongariro alpine crossing)

Tongariro

Wellington at sunset

Marlborough sounds

In the ferry back to the North island.

Whale

Lake Tenake

Mt. Cook

Tasman glacier

Southland and the Catlins

After Wanaka I went to Queenstown which is the birthplace of bungee jumping and generally the capital of adrenalin activities like sky diving, paragliding, jet boating or downhill biking. I couldn't resist and I book a tandem paragliding flight which was really awesome! Queenstown is also the party-town of New Zealand but this is not why I came here so on the next day I moved on to Te Anau. This was the starting point for my trip to Milford Sound. I booked a trip with a two hour boat ride through the fiord but I was not very lucky with the weather this time. It was extremely windy and rainy most of the time.

On Saturday i drove to the Catlins - the very south of the South Island. I saw the petrified forest at Curio bay and I was very lucky to spot some yellow-eyed penguins at the Nugget point!

On Sunday I stopped in Dunedin where I made bird-watching boat ride and visited the Speight's brewery.

Nugget Point

South Islands west coast

The last few days were rather busy, traveling can be really hard work if you have no time to lose.

On Sunday I drove south mostly along the west coast. My first stop was at a seal colony near Westport where I could observe several seals enjoying the sunny weather on the rocks and swimming in the sea. My second stop for the day was at the pancake rocks, a very unusual formation of thin rock layers. In the evening I arrived in the tourist town near the Franz Josef glacier.

On Monday I had a closer look at the Franz Josef glacier and the Fox glacier. These are the only two glacier in the world that end in the rain forest. Unfortunately it is not possible to actually walk on the glacier without a professional guide. Normal visitors can only get up to 200m from the face of the glacier but the view is still spectacular.

From the Fox glacier it was a long ride to Wanaka with many amazing sites along the route - the Haast pass, Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea.

On Tuesday I decided to climb the Roy Peak which is a mountain next to Wanaka. The carpark for this track is at 350m and the the summit is at 1578m and it takes about 5-6 hours for the entire track. The view from the top was definitely worth the effort! After the hike I went to the Puzzling World amusement park and spent an hour in their amazing 3D maze.

Sheep

There are really more sheep than people here.

The legendary Queenstown Fernburger

Just before take off

Paragliding near Queenstown.

Lake Wakatipu

Seen from the hill above Queenstown.

Peak Roy

Lake Wanaka as seen from Peak Roy (1578).

Hawea lake

Fox glacier

Only 30min walk from rain forest.

Franz Josef glacier

Motueka valley highway

First days on the South Island

On Thursday morning I went to the Museum of City and Sea in Wellington. It has a large exhibition about the history of the city and the Cook Strait which separates the two islands of New Zealand. The section dedicated to ships that sank in the strait was the perfect preparation for afternoon task: the ferry to the South Island. Just when I wanted to go to the ferry terminal I got a message that the departure will be delayed by 2 hours. This was really bad news because after arriving at the South Island I planned to rent a car and drive to Motueka where I had booked a hostel. The delay meant that I would have to do most of the driving after dark and not during daylight. In the end everything went well and I arrived in Motueka in my new Nissan Tiida at around 10PM.

On the next day I was ready for my first proper hiking trip at the Abel Tasman national park - one of the Great Walks in New Zealand. The tricky part about this track is that it goes along the shore and you have to plan your trip according to the tides because some sections can only be passed during low tide.

I took one of the water taxis from the car park to Torrent bay and from there I walked through breathtaking scenery for about 7 hours until Awaroa bay. I spent the night at one of the DOC huts. These are a great alternative to camping because you get a shelter, a matrass and drinking water. On the next day I continued further north to the next water taxi pick-up spot. During the boat ride back I was really lucky to see several seals (or sea lions, it's really hard to tell them apart).

I uploaded some of the photos to the web album (upper right corner).

Kaiteriteri

Rainy Wellington

Even though New Zealand is no longer a British colony you can still see the British influence everywhere. Cars drive on the wrong side of the road, there is the queen on the dollar bills an in Wellington they even have proper English weather.

My plan for Wednesday was to go to the Rimutaka forest park and try to spot an actual live kiwi bird. I took an early train from Wellington to Waterloo and then a bus to Wainuimotaka (every other place here starts with Wai... which means water in Maori). After about one hour and half way to Mt. McKerrow it started to rain. First it was just a light drizzle but the higher I was the worse the rain got. After one and a half hour of hiking I decided to turn around and head back to Wellington. And of course I have not seen any kiwis or any other interesting birds that are supposed to live in that area.

In the afternoon I went to the Te Papa museum where I learned a lot about New Zealand's nature and history.

Downtown Wellington

Looks almost like in Europe.

So far so good

Finally I have some time to write about my first experiences on this beautiful island.

First of all the jet lag was worse than expected. This combined with the fact that I didn't get much sleep in the plane made my first day in Auckland very strange. I was extremely sleepy and extremely awake at the same time. Fortunately after a few days my body adjusted to the time change. I just hope it won't be that bad when I go back to Europe.

Because of bad weather reports I abandoned my original plan to go to Coromandel and instead headed south. For a few days I was traveling with a nice Polish girl I met on my flight to Auckland who had rented a car. After leaving Auckland we went to the famous glow-worm caves. The light emitted by the worms is as strong as the brightest stars on a clear dark night. The light show is very impressive because at some places there are several hundred worm per square meter. It not really possible to take photos because it's a) forbidden and b) too dim even for my camera :-(

After the caves we went south along the west coast. We stopped at a beach with volcanic black sand. It feels like "normal" sand except it's black. The water was (as expected) very cold so we didn't go swimming. In the evening we arrived at our hostel in New Plymouth where we met an interesting 81 year old Maori woman who used to teach martial arts and is now backpacking across the country.

On Tuesday we drove along the Surfer highway and stopped at the beach in Opunake. The waves were really impressive but we haven't seen a single surfer there because the season hasn't really started yet. In the afternoon we drove to Mount Taranaki which is a huge volcano (not active) in the middle of flat land. Unfortunately the top of the mountain was covered in clouds so we never really saw it whole. At the mountain we did a short hike to the Dawson waterfalls. After that we went to Wellington which we reached in the evening.

Dawson falls

Finally in Auckland

The flight from Shanghai to Auckland with Air New Zealand was  ok but definitely not as comfortable as previous flight with Lufthansa. It was again totally full with mostly Chinese tourists.

The immigration process in Auckland took some time because of the strict quarantine rules. They even checked my hiking boots to make sure there are no dangerous parts of foreign plants on them.

Extra legroom in Lufthansa A380

A380

This huge thing will take me to Shanghai.

Wien-Frankfurt

The first leg of my flight was ok. I'm in the business lounge in Frankfurt airport waiting for my next flight. The nice lady at the checkin counter in Wien told me that my flight from Frankfurt to Shanghai will be completely full. But because I'm a frequent customer they offered me a different seat that is not directly bookable to normal customers. It is supposed to have a bit more room and it should be in a section of the plane without small children. We'll see...