Wellington, see you north island

I was telling Daniela today while walking the Abel Tasman Coast track that I would always associate Wellington with a thick and yummy Tortilla Española. When we stay in campings or hostels with kitchen we like to cook some more elaborated dishes. So Wellington was tortilla! Well, and Crepes and an Eye Beef Steak mmm...

We went some shopping to increase our Winter clothes stock, that we surely will need in the south island. They were on sale and outdoor things are far cheaper than in Europe. We bought some thick fleece sweaters and even another travel bag, suitcase style to carry back to Germany the stuff we continuously collect.

We visited Te Papa museum, that was a museum how they should be. It had a huge part which was free to see, containing a lot about Maori history and also Flora,Fauna and geologic sciences from New Zealand. It had a part for kids, very interactive in which it was taught how to lower the carbon footprint and kids could developed already their green side.

Impressive was a giant squid showed in the museum, the real animal was there conserved in formal. The exemplar was, if I rember properly, 4.6meters!! The eyes were the size of soccer balls, had three hearts and rotating sharp endings in the tentacles. Really a monster...

We went also to the cinema and saw the impacting "127 hours". Next day was Theater day, we saw some alternative show regarding the cultural shock within Maori and Somalis. Wellington welcomed some years ago several thousands of Somali refugees, and according to the artists, NZ still hasn't been able to really integrate non of them.

In oder to make use of "the city" facilities we also changed the muffler of our Van, which was a bit 'rotten'.

The city is a nice little capital. Less than half a million inhabitants. Surrounded by sea and forests, but at the same time with several skyscrapers around. The only bad thing was the constant strong winds, a bit uncomfortable. Even with that, I keep a very friendly picture of it.

We took a Ferry, for about 3 hours that would bring us and our Van to Picton, the next harbour in the south island.

Like the locals say: Cheers mates!

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Palmerston North, Levin and Kiwis!

We had to go to Palmerston North because of our universal charger blew of just before the Rafting. This "Unipal" Universal Charger replaced the cheap one that was stolen in Rotorua. We got another one, which blew up after one hour. Later I was told that Sony batteries have a chip pin (apart from -,+) which none of the universal chargers have, and may result in overheating. Bad luck...

Anyway, we headed south and found a lonely freedom camping place in which we stayed alone, and for free! Next day I wanted to visit a nice bird park in which Kiwis (the birds) could be seen. We saw the half of one, because it had an egg and was on top of it(must for 2months). But man, this birds are big! It looked like a big hun! What we saw that was even more impressive, were some eels being fed. Those animals are also huge, and they were not captive. They could come directly from the sea.

They had some Tuataras too, which are literally living fossils. These reptiles show almost no evolution for the last 200 million years. They were about 60-80 cm long and really looks like prehistoric crocodiles ...

That night we slept near Levin, right on the beach. I could scare sculls, and Daniela took plenty of pictures from the beautiful dawn. Later at 3am I would get a call from my mum warning me about the quake in Japan. We were maybe some 10m away from the beach so we started the engine and drove in the middle of somewhere, where my offline Google terrain maps showed above the 100m level line.

Next day we read on the net that New Zealand had only water warning,but not any big alert. Anyway is better to be on the safe side, when we were in Thailand in the Ko Phi-Phi island we saw in YouTube what happened there in the tsunami from 2006, so we knew had bad could be...

Next day we were heading to Wellington!

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Minguinui 2day walk

Hi my people, we already arrived to the south island, and I have told myself it is time to bring the blog completely up to date.
The picture with the horses was taken where we were sleeping, looked like there was some wild horses around which added charm to the little waterfall we had there. After staying one night there, next day we started a 16+18km walk which came with a surprise. We found, 3 hours after the start, a big ground slip that was cutting the way, we had to bypass it by crossing the river. That was a bit scary but we didn't want to walk back.
Later that night, when we arrived to the hut, we met a Kiwi (not the fruit, not the bird but a citizen of New Zealand) and Astrid, a German girl from Cologne whose parents live in Dülmen too. Coincidences of life...

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Writing back...1

Hello People! Writing something after a big blogging pause. Actually writing this post for the second time, after one staff member on a Telecom "broke" my mobile phone two days ago, and I had to reset to factory settings it, losing plenty of stuff. Anyway...

Even though Daniela has informed some of you already about our car acquisition and other updates, I will write again for those of you non German speakers.

Once we arrived to Auckland, it took us four days to get our current "allrunner". She, is named "Kea Kauri", remembering a native new zealand bird and also endemic rainforest trees "Kauri", which can grow up to 30 meter high and measure 6 meters in diameter.

Even on those four days, in what it looks loke very european city, we had some New Zealand only experiences... First of all, and quite funny, on the way to Glen Eden to see for the first time the car, we took the train, which, by the way, was exceptionally clean. In every wagon, still diesel powered, there was at least two conductors, selling tickets and "controlling". The wagon we were at, was extremely noisy, so I decided to go to the next one, expecting to find more not so loud. I told Daniela to wait for me, and since I was on the other wagon I turned around, decided to go back and pick Daniela, since this wagon was much quieter. In front of me was one of the conductors, probably the biggest and ugliest of all of them, asking seriously 'What are you looking for here?'. I did not know very much what to answer, just a simple 'a quieter wagon?' She was really upset and pointed to a sign above the door I have just trespased, which was saying "no passing through. Staff only". I told her I have never been in any country/train in which you are not allowed to change wagons, she just replied 'Welcome to New Zealand'. She said she would go to pick my "wife", and they both came to my wagon in the next train stop. First indication about how much overprotective they are in this country...

Another nice story, we went to withdraw some money to pay our Van, funny though, that for the 4000$ we needed, the ATM only gave 20$notes, so look at the bed...

The other picture about the 'backpacker' karma, was in the stairs of the hostel where we were staying in Auckland, I've just found it really funny.

Well, those were mainly our first days without wheels. Then we decided to buy the van, which we found in internet "www.trademe.co.nz" and was almost exactly what we were looking for:

Long wheel base, not so many Kms, Manual, Diesel and AWD (all wheel drive, or how they call it here 4WD-four wheel drive). We wanted high roof, but they just didn't exist at the moment on the market. For my German Cologne-based bulli freak-friends, who like to know the inside: it's a Nissan Homy DX '93 2.7D, with 218.000kms, 85PS and hehe,... AWD non-seamless disconnect.

AWD it's here recomendable, it can rain a lot and we have been already driving gravel roads for longer than 40kms, some moments requiring 1st gear...

The Van belonged to an English guy, and anybody that has been to Ireland or the UK will know the devotion with which the British adore carpets...
They are however not the best suited for a campervan flooring, so we decided we would "upgrade" it to a PVC based one, removing the motor-oil-colored previous carpet.

The pictures with the new result are on the camera, so we'll show them later.

In the next post, the pictures!

Cheers.

J&D

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