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Saturday, April 23, 2011
Queenstown, the adrenaline capital?
Well, anyway:
We have spent four days in Queenstown, but if you like crazy sports and adrenaline rushes, and have some money, you could probably spend a month there. You can do sooooo many things...
We both wanted to do paragliding, so we did. And lucky from us, that night the first snows of the season felt, transforming the landscape into something in between autumn and winter. The pictures are on e again in the other camera, so we'll show them later. We have to save some stories and pictures to show you when we come back...
It was really cool, you could fell yourself a little bit like an eagle. Flying with no engines, completely noiseless is an indescribable feeling. Pity that it lasts not so long, in about 10 minutes we did the 700 m elevation difference. 100 % recommended!
Another day we took a short walk up to where the gondola brings you. The views over the town are spectacular, Queenstown is enclosed in a really nice location. On the way up, we saw some crazy mountain bikers racing downhill, and later taking the gondola up again with the bike!
There is no holidays with an old van in which I do not have to 'basteln/cacharrear' a little bit. Using the fact that we were in 'town' and not in the pampa, I changed a couple of minor things to our Kea Kauri. We want to keep it fit, since we will sell it at the beginning of June.
We stayed in a Backpackers hostel with nice views of the lake. The last day we rented also a couple of bikes for half a day and rode around the lake, it remembered us of some Swiss lakes. It was very windy, too much for my throat...
A propo lake, lakes are numerous in New Zealand, and normally also massive. Wait for our next post about the world famous Milford track, there are plenty of waterfalls and a 35 km lake.
Regards,
JM
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Monday, April 18, 2011
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Heading to Queenstown
Hi people,
On our way to Queenstown, autumn surprised us, with plenty of nice colors on the forests. Here you can see also some impossible blue pools, fed by river coming from the glaciars.
In the South Island, there are some "intimidating" biting insects. They are called Sandflies and makes in some locations your life virtually impossible. Please have a read at the pictures uploaded. They look like flies, but are a bit smaller, and are also slow in their fly. BUT, their bite itches a lot, and lasts for almost a week! They are active during the day, so that mosquitos can take the night turn...
Well, anyway because they are so poor fliers, if you continue moving, they can not follow you. So hiking is perfect to avoid them! In our last walk, I couldn't let the opportunity pass to take a picture of the plant name, I am sure it has a different name in Spain!!
Cheers!
On our way to Queenstown, autumn surprised us, with plenty of nice colors on the forests. Here you can see also some impossible blue pools, fed by river coming from the glaciars.
In the South Island, there are some "intimidating" biting insects. They are called Sandflies and makes in some locations your life virtually impossible. Please have a read at the pictures uploaded. They look like flies, but are a bit smaller, and are also slow in their fly. BUT, their bite itches a lot, and lasts for almost a week! They are active during the day, so that mosquitos can take the night turn...
Well, anyway because they are so poor fliers, if you continue moving, they can not follow you. So hiking is perfect to avoid them! In our last walk, I couldn't let the opportunity pass to take a picture of the plant name, I am sure it has a different name in Spain!!
Cheers!
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Fox and Franz-Josef Glaciers, comments
HI again!
Now the text:
We drove to Hokitika, a little town in our way that, at least, had a fuel station and a library with internet. A part from a stunning beach full of timber brought by the strong currents of the Alps rivers.
Here in the Southern Island, especially in the west coast, its difficult to find 'normal' towns at all. You find signs of the type :next fuel station in 90 km.
After sleeping in a DOC (Department of Conservation) camping ground in a lake (4 free). We were still tired from Arthur's Pass track, so we spent a couple of hours watching a movie : "Oceans". Really cool images, amazing that nowadays technology allow cameras to record videos under deep water, at night with just the moonlight. A movie to see if you still haven't, it's similar to "Earth".
After that we drove to Franz Josef, a little village next to a huge Glacier which has as special, that can be seen at so low altitudes as 250 m.
We walked up and had a look at it, later slept in another Camping with Spa (mmm, que Bo). We met a couple from Spain who still 'beat' us, they are travelling for a year!
Next day, more glacier! We drove to Fox, and decided that just looking at it from the bottom is not enough, so we took a helicopter that brought us right on top of it, about in the middle of its lenght. Really deep blue ice formed up there, also an unforgettable experience to walk with crampons overy 100m of ice. We even found a little under-ice passage, indescribable! I would upload the video, but in Ne Zealand is stupidly difficult to find a fast WLAN with a lot of allowed traffic.
In Fox, we walked around the lake Matheson, famous for its reflexions of mount Cook (highest mountain with 3.754 m), but the weather didn't gave us the opportunity. Around the Lake Daniela saw this impossibly blue fungi. Colors are not photoshoped! Natural blue!
We slept in Gillespies beach campground, incredible the amount of wood on this coasts. Really nice one, full of interesting stones.
The rivers are here sometimes light blue (turquoise) or kind of white/grey, because of the Alps melting snow. Look really strange and they remember me those of Switzerland and the German Alps.
Cheers ! Until next post!
JM & Daniela.
Now the text:
We drove to Hokitika, a little town in our way that, at least, had a fuel station and a library with internet. A part from a stunning beach full of timber brought by the strong currents of the Alps rivers.
Here in the Southern Island, especially in the west coast, its difficult to find 'normal' towns at all. You find signs of the type :next fuel station in 90 km.
After sleeping in a DOC (Department of Conservation) camping ground in a lake (4 free). We were still tired from Arthur's Pass track, so we spent a couple of hours watching a movie : "Oceans". Really cool images, amazing that nowadays technology allow cameras to record videos under deep water, at night with just the moonlight. A movie to see if you still haven't, it's similar to "Earth".
After that we drove to Franz Josef, a little village next to a huge Glacier which has as special, that can be seen at so low altitudes as 250 m.
We walked up and had a look at it, later slept in another Camping with Spa (mmm, que Bo). We met a couple from Spain who still 'beat' us, they are travelling for a year!
Next day, more glacier! We drove to Fox, and decided that just looking at it from the bottom is not enough, so we took a helicopter that brought us right on top of it, about in the middle of its lenght. Really deep blue ice formed up there, also an unforgettable experience to walk with crampons overy 100m of ice. We even found a little under-ice passage, indescribable! I would upload the video, but in Ne Zealand is stupidly difficult to find a fast WLAN with a lot of allowed traffic.
In Fox, we walked around the lake Matheson, famous for its reflexions of mount Cook (highest mountain with 3.754 m), but the weather didn't gave us the opportunity. Around the Lake Daniela saw this impossibly blue fungi. Colors are not photoshoped! Natural blue!
We slept in Gillespies beach campground, incredible the amount of wood on this coasts. Really nice one, full of interesting stones.
The rivers are here sometimes light blue (turquoise) or kind of white/grey, because of the Alps melting snow. Look really strange and they remember me those of Switzerland and the German Alps.
Cheers ! Until next post!
JM & Daniela.
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Sunday, April 10, 2011
Avalanche Track
We were lucky this time, and after driving up mountain roads (2nd gear...) the weather was nice. BUT, two days ago they had a lot of snow, and the ranger suggested that we shouldn't take the Avalanche way up, since it was too dangerous, aand take the Scott's track instead (both ways). After reaching the top, and seeing that the conditions weren't as bad, we decided to go down the Avalanche path. As of today, two days later, Daniela is still walking strange, and me too, to some extend, due to the muscles hurting...
But nice that we went up, 1100 m of walking/climbing, for a total of 6 hours. We saw on the summit a Kea! The only Alpine parrot bird that exist. Really curious and intelligent bird, and also cool to see them wild in their natural habitat, and with such nice views of the Alps on snow.
It was time to get used to snow, since the next stop was to be Franz-Josef Glacier.
Regards from the other side of the planet!
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Swing bridge and Pancake Rocks
While heading south to the glacials, we crossed this swing bridge in the buller gorge, Daniela loves them and this one is the longest in New Zealand, measuring 110 meter long.
After that we went to see the famous Pancake Rocks formations. The ones you saw on the videos. Unbelievable with how much force the ocean is hitting them, and how the waves produce those water jets in the so known "blow holes".
From there we drove to Greymouth, were we stayed two days the nicest Backpackers hostel. You could use for free the bikes and the kayaks from them, which of course we did. The Backpackers even had hot water bottles to use, funny.
From there we headed to Arthur's Pass...
Cheers
JM.
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Saturday, April 9, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
golden bay
Hi people,
Since I know some people do not have time enough (or lust) to read my comments, and they prefer to watch pictures, I upload the next bunch of them. It is raining outside, so we jumped into a public library and used the free bandwith!
Pictures from Golden Bay, all in picasaweb (so, pretty good quality). Click on the picture to get to the album!
Instead of writting another novel, I will try to resume what we did since Abel Tasman track. We spent almost all of the week in Golden Bay.
We drove to Motueka and from there to Takaka, where we saw several interesting things.
- A Rock Laberynt
- We took a Kayak for four hours in Tata beach
- We took an icelandic horse ride on the Takaka beach for 2 hours
- An amazing cave (Rawhiti)
- The clearest water springs of the world (Waikoropupu Springs)
- The most beautiful beach I have ever seen, at Wharariki beach
- The Farewel Spit
- The Harwoods Hole (a 370m natural hole!)
And for sure something I am forgetting...
Saludos and Gruessen!
This picture is from Harwoods Hole, BUT I DID NOT TAKE IT. Searched from Google.
Since I know some people do not have time enough (or lust) to read my comments, and they prefer to watch pictures, I upload the next bunch of them. It is raining outside, so we jumped into a public library and used the free bandwith!
Pictures from Golden Bay, all in picasaweb (so, pretty good quality). Click on the picture to get to the album!
Instead of writting another novel, I will try to resume what we did since Abel Tasman track. We spent almost all of the week in Golden Bay.
We drove to Motueka and from there to Takaka, where we saw several interesting things.
- A Rock Laberynt
- We took a Kayak for four hours in Tata beach
- We took an icelandic horse ride on the Takaka beach for 2 hours
- An amazing cave (Rawhiti)
- The clearest water springs of the world (Waikoropupu Springs)
- The most beautiful beach I have ever seen, at Wharariki beach
- The Farewel Spit
- The Harwoods Hole (a 370m natural hole!)
And for sure something I am forgetting...
Saludos and Gruessen!
This picture is from Harwoods Hole, BUT I DID NOT TAKE IT. Searched from Google.
Rafting in New Zealand
Click on them to go to picasaweb and view them all
Hey people, promised some pics from the Rafting Experience :) here they are!
Regards,
Juanma.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Abel Tasman, the comments
This track is one of the most well known in New Zealand, and internationally famous. It goes all along the coast, from the east part of Golden Bay (already figured out why is called so, with help of the pictures? ) until almost the northern part of the south island.
We decided to walk the 50 km in four days, having our overnights in our tent, across the several campsites provided. As it is not a circuit track, we booked a water taxi (a fast boat) to sail back to where our van was awaiting us. We heard on the weather forecast that one day was expected rain, so we got prepared...
The walk is rated as easy, because of how many people walk it, the path is in very well condition. No trees crossed whatsoever. In peak season, we read that an average of 250 people walk this track daily.Uyy...
But we were lucky, and in the campsite (Te Pukatea) we stayed on our first beach-night, we were 7 in total. That night we were glad we bought such a good tent. It rained the whole night, the type of rain which you feel it can not rain all the time like that strong, but it did...
The tent was a real bargain for what it is. If you are living in Germany and you need a good, 2person, rain resistant and light(2kg) tent you may want to search Amazon.de for "Salewa Ultima 2". They were selling them for half the price.
Anyway, the next morning it stopped raining, and the pause was just enough to dry the tent a bit, then it started a soft rain.
The colors of the sand at the beach are spectacular, being formed from granite stones, it has a orange color that contrast with the green and blue from the sea in a very beautiful way. Also good is to see such beaches almost completely empty, since the only access to them is walking the track.
The 2nd night we would sleep in a long beach(Onetahuti), and we stayed alone! There was nobody else, we couldn't believe it. In the afternoon we walked to the rocks at the end of the beach and Daniela found a massive starfish, it was probably as big as a steering wheel! It hadd ten legs and was the start of our strange animals list that we would see during the walk.
After dawn, Daniela got scared after hearing a strange noise coming from the bushes behind us, after all we were alone, with no mobile phone coverage and no closer that 1 hour by foot to other camps. We directed our torch beams to the noise and we saw two red eyes observing us. It was a Possum, later two more would come. New Zealand is full of them, they are a non native specie that was introduced in thee country and now it not only has become a pest, but also threats the bird native species.
That night rained again, but we did not care since the camping ground had a shelter to get dry, and the tent has proven to be reliable.
Next morning we had to walk a couple of tidal crossings, that is that in the walking track there is some part of it which you can only pass when the tide is low (Ebbe, marea baja). So we had it programmed and that meaned we have to start walking not later than 9am.
At about 10am it started to rain heavily, we could make a pause and wait for the rain to pass because of the tidal crossings. By 10.30, our GORE-TEX stuff said goodbye. Whether shoes or raincoats, it didn't make any difference, we were very wet. So wet that for the tidal crossing we did not take our shoes off, with water almost to the knees.
Anyway, the views were astonishing. And after three ours we arrived to Totaranui and the sun was shining, so we dried almost everything. By the way, why a backpack rain-cover is nother waterproof I don't understand, neither mine nor Daniela's did stop the water entering to our rucksacks...
Next day we walked to the "separation point" rocks, for 5hours return. We were told there was a fur seal(seehund, morsas) colony that we could view. At the beginning Daniela was a bit deceived because we saw none, but looking carefully revealed them swimming and lying in the rocks just next to us. They had some puppies too, they have such big eyes, it reminded me about tennis balls.
The fourth strange animal to see was the Weka, a flightless native bird, which is as big as a chicken. And it runs, and how fast!
Later on the water taxi we saw our last animal for this track, while next to the shore we could clearly see a stingray next to us. Really exciting to see so many exotic wild animals .
Uf, this post was long, but it was worth to remember!
Cheers and until next post!
Juanma & Daniela.
We decided to walk the 50 km in four days, having our overnights in our tent, across the several campsites provided. As it is not a circuit track, we booked a water taxi (a fast boat) to sail back to where our van was awaiting us. We heard on the weather forecast that one day was expected rain, so we got prepared...
The walk is rated as easy, because of how many people walk it, the path is in very well condition. No trees crossed whatsoever. In peak season, we read that an average of 250 people walk this track daily.Uyy...
But we were lucky, and in the campsite (Te Pukatea) we stayed on our first beach-night, we were 7 in total. That night we were glad we bought such a good tent. It rained the whole night, the type of rain which you feel it can not rain all the time like that strong, but it did...
The tent was a real bargain for what it is. If you are living in Germany and you need a good, 2person, rain resistant and light(2kg) tent you may want to search Amazon.de for "Salewa Ultima 2". They were selling them for half the price.
Anyway, the next morning it stopped raining, and the pause was just enough to dry the tent a bit, then it started a soft rain.
The colors of the sand at the beach are spectacular, being formed from granite stones, it has a orange color that contrast with the green and blue from the sea in a very beautiful way. Also good is to see such beaches almost completely empty, since the only access to them is walking the track.
The 2nd night we would sleep in a long beach(Onetahuti), and we stayed alone! There was nobody else, we couldn't believe it. In the afternoon we walked to the rocks at the end of the beach and Daniela found a massive starfish, it was probably as big as a steering wheel! It hadd ten legs and was the start of our strange animals list that we would see during the walk.
After dawn, Daniela got scared after hearing a strange noise coming from the bushes behind us, after all we were alone, with no mobile phone coverage and no closer that 1 hour by foot to other camps. We directed our torch beams to the noise and we saw two red eyes observing us. It was a Possum, later two more would come. New Zealand is full of them, they are a non native specie that was introduced in thee country and now it not only has become a pest, but also threats the bird native species.
That night rained again, but we did not care since the camping ground had a shelter to get dry, and the tent has proven to be reliable.
Next morning we had to walk a couple of tidal crossings, that is that in the walking track there is some part of it which you can only pass when the tide is low (Ebbe, marea baja). So we had it programmed and that meaned we have to start walking not later than 9am.
At about 10am it started to rain heavily, we could make a pause and wait for the rain to pass because of the tidal crossings. By 10.30, our GORE-TEX stuff said goodbye. Whether shoes or raincoats, it didn't make any difference, we were very wet. So wet that for the tidal crossing we did not take our shoes off, with water almost to the knees.
Anyway, the views were astonishing. And after three ours we arrived to Totaranui and the sun was shining, so we dried almost everything. By the way, why a backpack rain-cover is nother waterproof I don't understand, neither mine nor Daniela's did stop the water entering to our rucksacks...
Next day we walked to the "separation point" rocks, for 5hours return. We were told there was a fur seal(seehund, morsas) colony that we could view. At the beginning Daniela was a bit deceived because we saw none, but looking carefully revealed them swimming and lying in the rocks just next to us. They had some puppies too, they have such big eyes, it reminded me about tennis balls.
The fourth strange animal to see was the Weka, a flightless native bird, which is as big as a chicken. And it runs, and how fast!
Later on the water taxi we saw our last animal for this track, while next to the shore we could clearly see a stingray next to us. Really exciting to see so many exotic wild animals .
Uf, this post was long, but it was worth to remember!
Cheers and until next post!
Juanma & Daniela.
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