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| Chapter 01: Auckland and Northland |
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| The first week we stayed in Auckland. For a few hours every day we attended a conference (see next chapter) and the rest of the day we discovered Auckland and Northland which is the area north of Auckland. The picture above shows one of our first impressions of New Zealand: Endless green lawns and cows :-) |
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Our first picture that we took in New Zealand: A daisy | Kaipara Harbour: A lonely boat | |
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New Zealand's national flag | Ninety Mile Beach: Located in the very north of New Zealand | |
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Ninety Mile Beach: Endlessly Beach and endlessly water. | I just felt free | |
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A shell and jellyfish at the Ninety Mile Beach | Not everything we discovered was alive | |
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Looks like a European bee? Actually it is! The ancestors of this bee were imported some when around 1839 in New Zealand | A real cowboy :-) | |
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An old rusty car. "Forgotten" by someone close to Auckland | It's pure fun to drive with a fast car through New Zealand's forests. Unfortunately police in New Zealand is watchful which resulted in two speeding fines for us, each 120 NZ$. Next time we will use a faster car, so they can't catch up with us ;-) | |
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It's true: New Zealand is green, green and green! | Cape Reinga shortly after sunset | |
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Auckland by night | For one second we thought about buying this car for our journey. Unfortunately it had no engine any more. | |
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One of the locals we met :-) | ||
| Chapter 02: Conference |
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| Though Auckland is the biggest city in New Zealand it is not the capital. However, it definitely has some capital flair and is a great city for going out and... holding conferences. For one week we stayed in the Stamford Plaza and attended the International Civil Aviation Conference The city of Auckland was founded around 1840, some hundred years after the original inhabitants of New Zealand (the Maori) discovered that place. |
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The conference room | The International Civil Aviation Conference | |
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A great view... | ... and finest wines... | |
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... during a dinner with attendees of the conference | In a nice atmosphere... | |
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... we had excellent food. Really delicious! | After dinner we returned to Auckland | |
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The Skytower: 328m high and the tallest building in the southern hemisphere. It’s worth a visit! | ||
| Chapter 03: Coromandel Region |
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| After the conference Johanne, a friend from Germany, arrived. Now we were in a threesome and ready to start our roundtrip through New Zealand. The first part of our journey led us through the Coromandel Region. The Coromandel Region is a rugged, densely forested peninsula. One of the main attractions is the Hot Water Beach. There you can take a hot bath in a natural spa. |
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That could be Germany: Lawn, cows, pines and in the background some hills. | Even the animals function in the same way as in Germany ;-) | |
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Shelly Beach | A lonely fisherman | |
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It was not all the time that warm that we could sleep in a tent and wear shorts and T-shirts. Accordingly to some locals this summer was the coldest ever since weather details are recorded | Coromandel Harbour | |
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Some curious cows | Have you ever seen a blue starfish? We hadn't! | |
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This picture is not edited. The colours were really bizarre | Huge lemons | |
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A new day and we continued our trip | In New Zealand you find some really strange and funny letter boxes. Sometimes you don't know if it is a letter box or a doghouse | |
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Hot Water Beach: We dug a hole and after a while hot water came out of the ground. Then we could take a hot bath while it was raining | Huge and tasty strawberries as provisions | |
| Chapter 04: Bay of Plenty, Rotorua |
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| The Bay of Plenty is blessed with a good climate and fine beaches. Roturoa is part of that area and famous for its geysers, hot springs, mud pools and strange shimmering lakes. So far everything we had seen was really, really nice. But this area was just amazing and so different from everything we had seen before. |
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A white swan in dark water | After driving for 5 hours by car (sun was shining all the time) we were not quite sure if the yoghurt was still eatable. So, someone had to try... | |
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A geysers with a several meter high fountain | Even 50 meters away the plants became wet due to the geyser | |
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A snake? No, it's a lizard. | Some moss on a tree. The moss is yellow/orange due to a lot of iron and sulphur in the ground | |
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A Maori sculpture | Johanne, our friend from Germany. Not exactly as tall as the sculpture but almost ;-) | |
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A mystic river with a strange colour (not really apparent on the photo) | A lake in the Roturoa national park | |
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The plants in the Roturoa national park had wonderful colours | This lake is full of sulfur and very hot as well | |
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A hot mud pool... | ... where gas caused little "explosions" all the time. | |
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A black swan, very typical for New Zealand | A flower | |
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It took some time until we were used to drive on the "wrong" side of the road | The sign shows a "Kiwi", New Zealand's national animal | |
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A shy duck neither moving nor making noise. But we realised and photographed it anyway :-) | A water lily | |
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We stayed in a little bungalow close to a river and enjoyed the sunset | ||
| Chapter 05: Upper Hut, Wellington |
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| On our way to Wellington we passed the Upper Hut region. To be honest, in that area is not too much that is worth a visit. At least not in comparison to all the other wonderful areas New Zealand offers. However, in Wellington we went on a ship and enjoyed the trip on the fairy to the South Island of New Zealand. |
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On our way to Wellington we passed some high mountains. | As almost everywhere in New Zealand other people were rare. Only cows witnessed that we exceeded the speed limit again :-) | |
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At noon we arrived in Napier, one of the world's best examples of an Art Deco city | Some palms in Napier. Twice as high as the street lamps | |
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Some shy deer, running away from us | One not too shy rabbit, not running away from us | |
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You should never forget your plastic dishes on a hot plate! It took literally hours to clean it | On the ship to Picton which is at the very north of New Zealand's South Island | |
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Those waves... | ... were a little bit higher than expected! | |
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The ship from Wellington to Picton was called Wellington | ||
| Chapter 06: Motueka |
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| After arriving in Picton we drove west to Motueka. The picture above shows Nelson, close to Picton where we arrived with the ferry from Wellington. Motuka has a population of about 6,000 people and is neither a particularly nice nor an ugly town. It is a good place for a stopover before going to the Abel Tasman National Park (see next section). The way to the park is very curvy. According to most travel guides and most opinions, the South Island of New Zealand is even more beautiful than the North Island. We were exited if it was true... |
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Deep blue water in front of the South Island's coast | In the front: Johanne. In the back: green hills. Not too different from the North Island, we thought... | |
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...but just a few minutes later the atmosphere was becoming much more mystique. You should click on the photo to enlarge it and see the deep dark green and the turquoise water | An veteran car in Picton | |
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First we had lunch... | ... with a sparrow watching us all the time. | |
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Then we headed west... | ... and we got another impression of New Zealand's beauty in the south. | |
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This picture was taken in Nelson which is on the way to Motueka | Just when we arrived in Motueka sun came out | |
| Chapter 07: Christmas in Takaka |
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| Over Christmas we stayed for a few days in Takaka. Takaka is the centre for the beautiful Golden Bay area and close to the Abel Tasman National Park (see also chapter 12). In Takaka a lot of hippies are living and it is a very nice and cosy town. We stayed in a really gorgeous caravan. This caravan was an old truck renovated to live in it. |
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Johanne with a helmet... | ... before we were entering a cave | |
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Two little insects | Johanne in our accommodation, a renovated truck | |
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And again Johanne, looking out of the window | An incredible Green and densely forest | |
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Here we are: three happy people travelling through New Zealand | This picture was taken close to the truck we lived in | |
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By car we drove to the Golden Bay with "golden" sand | Here it is: The truck we lived in for some days. A real "Hippie-Truck" as our landlord said | |
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The truck had a build-in oven | Christmas, a warm fire, we were in New Zealand... could live be better? :-) | |
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Christmas evening and we saw a wonderful sunset. | Did I mention that we lived in a truck? ;-) | |
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Fresh salad as starter, salmon with potatoes and vegetables as main course and apple strudel as desert: That is a Christmas dinner! | Preparing the food | |
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Happy Christmas!!! :-) | Next day, Christmas celebration in another hostel | |
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All together we... | ... went to Cape Farewell and Farewell Spit at the very north of the South Island | |
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Click on the image to have a closer look at this ... "thing" | We still don't know what animal this was | |
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Those birds are no swans | A hermit crab | |
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Two starfishes on a shell | This bull looks friendly, doesn't it? After I took this picture I went a little closer. Two seconds later I was just running. Guess who was behind me...! | |
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A lonesome sheep | The sand was really, really finely granulated | |
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A sleeping sea lion | A cancer looking directly into our camera | |
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Two butterflies making love on a flower | The panorama was just breathtaking | |
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A dried up plant | Johanne, eating some Nutella, her favourite meal | |
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Not only I favour pine apple over Nutella | Some young and very curious cows. It was funny, when we clapped our hands, they were running away but always returned a moment later. | |
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Josh from the United States. He was in New Zealand since five month, sleeping all the time in his car as he told | And again: A cow | |
| Chapter 08: Franz Josef Glacier |
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| We headed south along the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. We stayed for some days around the Franz Josef Glacier. The Franz Josef Glacier and the close by Fox Glacier are unique in the world. Nowhere else at this latitude have glaciers advanced so close to the sea. It was just amazing. We walked on a mountain made of ice but sun was shining and it was a very pleasant temperature. On our way to the glacier we visited the Mirror-Lake. See the picture above to see why the lake was called like that. |
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We started early in the morning from Takaka | In Greymouth we saw this lovely veteran car | |
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We thought lamas would only live in Peru. But we were wrong, obviously | Close to the Franz Josef Glacier a river with crystal clear water | |
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A forest, so densely you could hardly walked through it | The mirror-lake is as the name say really like a mirror | |
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Some plants in the mirror-lake | Some more plants | |
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The mountains around the Franz Josef Glacier | It was getting late, ... | |
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... so we were returning to our hostel | On the next day we climbed the Franz Josef Glacier | |
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Ice was melting in the sun | If we hadn't been careful we might had fallen into this cleft | |
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Equipped with an ice axe climbing was no problem | Jeff, our tour leader | |
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This coke was cold. Ice cold :-) | Bela playing with our camera | |
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Here we are: Maybe not the most stylish outfit but effective | We were in the middle of the clouds. Just wonderful :-) | |
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These mountains are surrounding the Franz Josef Glacier | ||
| Chapter 09: Te Anau and Milford Sound |
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| Milford Sound with its population of 170 people is in the very south of New Zealand's South Island and one of the most remote places. The next town is Te Anau, 120km away, and even Te Anau is a pretty small town. Nevertheless Milford Sound is a famous tourist destination and when you see the following pictures you will know why. But there is a downside and that are 5.5m rainfall per year. Beside that Milford Sound is the home of the sandflies and sandflies are really a pain in the back. They are small, they are everywhere, you don't hear them, and... they bite! |
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Clouds are always very close to the ground in Milford Sound | Wonderful grassland with flowers all around | |
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There is only one street to Milford Sound and that is quite busy | You should have seen this in reality. Waterfalls coming from everywhere down the rocks, snow all around and clouds so close you could almost touch them | |
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These little waterfalls were almost everywhere | During a boat tour we saw some seals | |
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Still on the boat we passed a quite high waterfall | A river in the forest | |
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Mosses on a stone | No, that's not a sandfly. Sandflies are much smaller, to small to photograph them | |
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A tree almost without any leaves. Enlarge the image to see that clouds were really everywhere | On the way to back to our hostel | |
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Some really brave guys :-) | Due to all the rain all the plants were full of mosses... | |
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... really full of it! | Just a nice picture - nothing to tell about :-) | |
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Can you see what this is? In the middle of the picture? Hm...? | It's a dead sheep, probably drown in this huge "puddle" | |
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The first and only train we saw in New Zealand | ||
| Chapter 10: Dunedin |
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| Above you see one of our most fantastic pictures taken (at least in my opinion). A few kilometres away from Dunedin we stopped and took this pictures. In Dunedin we stayed a couple of days and celebrated new year's eve. The area around Dunedin is really fantastic. Despite the wonderful landscape you can enjoy watching albatrosses and penguins and with little luck you may enjoy observing some sea lions. Dunedin btw. is one of the biggest cities in New Zealand with a population of about 100,000. A friend of us had studied in Dunedin one year ago, so we got some very good hints which pubs are worth a visit :-) |
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A few miles before Dunedin | Have a close look. Do you recognise the joke? | |
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A string, covered by plastic and tied to a metal jamb. Can that really be an electric fence? The "Kiwis" must think tourists are stupid ;-) | We were lucky. A sea lion and it didn't care that we came quite close. | |
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Very steep this cliff... | ... probably some sheep fall down from time to time | |
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A few hours and sun would be vanished | A small island close to Dunedin | |
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A sea gull greedy to get some of my popcorn | Our friend Johanne tried to catch the sun ;-) | |
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A young penguin shortly after it jumped out of the water | Happy New Year!!! | |
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Unfortunately there was not much firework in Dunedin... | ... and 15 minutes after midnight the band stopped playing. However, 2005 had been a great year for us and chances were, 2006 would become even better :-) | |
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This street is supposed to be the steepest road in New Zealand (38°). Actually our Toyota really had some problems driving up and down the street :-) | Well, I will not reveal who won this game ;-) | |
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Really annoying those flies | Consuming alcohol in public is prohibited in New Zealand. So we had to drink water most of the time | |
| Chapter 11: Christchurch |
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| Christchurch (population 331,400) is often described as the most English of New Zealand's cities. Punts glide down the river and a grand Anglican cathedral dominates the city square. It was the city were Johanne would left us. She had to return to Germany. My friend and I still had 10 days left before we had to leave New Zealand. |
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Don't ask for the name of this animal. It was almost as big as a horse, as stubborn as a mule and as dainty as deer | Oh yes, and it ate all the time like a cow :-) | |
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Close to Christchurch there is a beach with strange round stones. | Some of the smaller stones were shattered | |
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Seeing the world from a different point of view :-) | Weather changed quick in New Zealand. 20 Minutes ago there were many clouds | |
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Do you see the spider? | The cathedral in Christchurch | |
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Inside the cathedral | The cathedral is 63m high | |
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Wonderful windows... | ... in the cathedral. | |
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A canoe tour | Some ducks we met during the canoe tour | |
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Though it was not very hot, the sun was shining quite often | A duck in a park, looking for food | |
| Chapter 12: Abel Tasman National Park |
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| When Johanne left us in Christchurch we had ten days left to get back to Auckland. Since Christchurch is in the south of the South Island and Auckland is in the north of the North Island we had to think about quite carefully where to stop on the way back. The Abel Tasman National Park was one place where we stoped and it was worth it. Have a look at the following pictures and you will know why! |
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Good that my friend and I both had already some horse riding lessons in Germany. So we easily could enjoy the horse riding trip through the Abel Tasman Park | This is one part of Golden Bay | |
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We did some hiking in this area | Looks a bit like "Nessie" from Loch Ness :-) | |
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Looking for the gold :-) | During our hiking trip we met Michael from Italy. Michael was in New Zealand since three month and would stay some more | |
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Enlarge this picture. Then you will see all the bees. The beach was really full of them | The same beach as on the picture before. But 1.5 hours later and from a different point of view | |
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Usually hiking tracks in New Zealand are well equipped with signs, so probability to get lost is low | Michael never used buses or trains and never paid money for hostels. He always did hitchhiking and slept wherever he had to | |
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We spend the night in the tent | Mystic, isn't it? | |
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No comment :-) | Next day. We continued the hike | |
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One of the uncountable beaches | The last picture we took in the Abel Tasman National Park. Then we headed north | |
| Chapter 13: Paragliding |
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| On the way to Picton where we wanted to take the ferry to the North Island we saw a sign: Paragliding. Weather was great and so we took this great opportunity to feel like a bird. We just hoped that there would be another ferry on the next day. |
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We got fully equipped and then... | ... we had to wait. It took almost three hours until wind was fine for starting | |
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Before we could start some more experienced guys started | WOW I was flying, I really did! | |
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If this helmed had really protected me if I fell down? | Wind was coming from the sea, creating some up wind. Theoretically one could fly forever and never come down as long as the wind keeps going | |
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Accordingly to my instructor some people fly hundred miles with a paraglider | You have a great view when you are a bird | |
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I wished it would never end. Unfortunately it did. But I can tell you, that was an one-time experience!!! | ||
| Chapter 14: Picton and Wellington |
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| We arrived in Picton late and had to stay there overnight to take the next day's ferry to Wellington on the North Island. |
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The hostel where we stayed was run by professional jugglers and fire eaters. As you see they gave us a demonstration of their skills | On the next morning we took the ferry to Wellington | |
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Some New Zealanders really put effort in their houses | Inside a Maori house | |
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A car in a museum | Poor sheep. They skidded from one side to the other every time the driver was taking a curve | |
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Naked sheep | Probably only a matter of time until these sheep would look like their fellows on the left picture | |
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Enlarge the picture to see two escaped sheep in the middle of the road. We tried to catch one of them but sheep can run really fast! | I have never seen so fantastic clouds as I did in New Zealand | |
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Look at the window. It was time to clean them | Three days and a few hundred kilometres left. Before we returned to Auckland we decided to make a stopover in the Tongariro National Park... | |
| Chapter 15: Tongariro National Park |
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| Most people favour the New Zealand's South Island over the North Island. Basically they are right. The South Island offers so many natural wonders and "must go" places. Nevertheless, in my opinion the most beautiful place to go is in the middle of the North Island: Tongariro National Park. Tongariro National Park was New Zealand's first official National Park, established in 1887. And you can bet that there is a reason to make this area a national park. Take a look at the pictures and you will need no more explanations. Tongariro National Park was our last stop before we headed north to Auckland and left New Zealand. I am glad that we visited the Tongariro National Park in the end. It was the culmination of the journey. |
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Though it was summer, temperatures were low. In the hostel we had a nice and hot chimney | Next day, early in the morning, we started the one day hiking trip | |
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Accordingly to Lonely Planet the Tongariro Crossing is New Zealand's finest one day walk and it's hard for me to imagine that Lonely Planet is wrong and there might be something more beautiful in New Zealand | The day before there was some rain. Today sun was shining | |
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There is not... | ... too much to tell... | |
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... about these pictures... | ... except: ... | |
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... "Enjoy watching the pictures!!!" :-) | -- | |
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-- | After 8.5 hours we returned to our hostel and truly deserved this pizza :-) | |
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