Auckland, Thomas and the end of Kea Kauri

From Piha we drove to visit Thomas, a German in the fourties who we met at our first track in NZ. Back then he told us he was living in Auckland and invited us to come for a coffee or something.

He lives in Torbay, a suburb near the beach. He has been here already for 20 years, and he bought the house were he lives 11 years ago. It is a very nice one, 160 sq meters big and 10 min walk from the beach. Pretty cool place considering that is 20 min from the center of Auckland.

We went for a walk and crossed 3-4 beaches and little cliffs. Later he invited us for selfmade pizza and because it turned late, we slept also in his place.

Next day we drove to Takapuna, a well know surfing beach closer to town, and we stayed in the camping there. That point would be were we sold our van to a couple from Catalunya.

Jordi and Lydia drove all the way from Christchurch just to see our van. The same morning a Guy from Canada (Kostya) wanted to have it already!

After some negotiations they decided they wanted it, but not without having a weird discussion. They thought the van was going for 2300$ but it was actually 2300€. I knew, units are everything :)

Anyway, after visiting Devonport and mount Victoria, from which you can see Auckland from a very nice far bird view, we sold the van. Exactly for the same amount as we paid for it! That was cool.

Later, when we got to Auckland city (already homeless), we found out that some other travellers are struggling to get rid of their car/vans. Now is low season (winter), so the demand is pretty low. We were lucky (or smart), that our van was rather special. There are very few of them being 4WD,diesel, long wheel base and having not over 300 thousand km.

So, now we are sitting in the terrace of our hostel, and hoping that tomorrow won't rain, because then we could catch a ferry and do a all-day walking in the Rangitoto island. A only 600 years old volcanic island 20 minutes boat away from Auckland's harbour.

We are already looking forward for Fiji (Wednesday)...there we go!

Cheers,

Juanma.

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Back to Warkworth

We drove back to the Sandspit Camping, since we liked it very much the last time, and we could use the gaming room if the weather was not doing good. In fact, we played again a lot of pingpong, and saw the English Chronics of Narnia in the cinema room.

We stayed there two days, from which one of them, it bucketed down nonstop. But the next morning we were woken up by the sun rising out of the Pacific ocean and the paradise-like singing of the Tuis. We went for a walk to Mullet Point, in our 'tennis' shoes, since we thought a walk on grass should be easy. Wronnng! It was muddy as I never saw before, and our shoes were soon to be seen only brown. Happy us...

In Martins bay, we took a picture of that car on the beach. That easy you can bring your kayak to the sand, not bad eh?

Later we drive to Henk and Jeanette, they invited us to stay a couple of days at their home. It was Friday so we could spend some time together in the weekend. Their grandson Luca was also with them, he is only five years old but was really funny.

Saturday we went to the market at Matakana, really small but nice, and full of young people. Later we went for a walk to Tawaranui, again a "predator-proff" fenced peninsula, in which plenty of native fauna can live without the threat of introduced predators. The park has a 2.5 km long fence, and the two beaches are a surfers paradise, as well as having nice native bush walks. Lovely!

Later we ate some pie in a pottery cafe, and headed back home. At night we cooked a powerful tortilla de patatas to refuel.

Sunday was gonna be a clean and tidy up day, it was still sunny and we had to prepare and repack our accumulated stuff and clean the car. That took us the whole day. In the evening Henk coocked a really tasteful dinner and we played Rummykub and laughed with the stories that the couple were sharing with us. Was Fun!

Monday we drove to Piha beach, in the Waitakere Ranges. A nice surfing beach with a huge rock between both beaches, Lion's rock. A sacred Maōri place.

Plenty of the big starfish there, I went too close to take a picture, and the result was having to change my trousers, shoes and socks. The waves were massive.

The blue car in the picture is a very common car type in New Zealand. It is something between a pickup and an sports car. They call them Utes, and are, according to me, pretty ugly. Massive 5 liter V8 engines, what a waste of petrol.

On the way down we drove through the motorway, what a shock. We are not used to masses... coming back to Europe will be hard...

That was our last, out of the city experience in NZ.

Later more to come!

Cheers!

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relaxing and waiting for the sun to come....

We slept in Rarawa beach, in a DoC camping ground and the next day we drove down to Cable bay. Suddenly the weather was almost perfect and we took our camping chairs and colonized the beach for several ours. Daniela wrote tagebuch and I blogged until my battery was gone.

Later we drove further south looking for a camping to stay overnight. In the south island you can virtually stay almost everywhere, but this time in the north island we were told that it was not safe to do so, so we slept only in "authorized" places where you are normally never alone. We slept in Kerikeri, and played again pingpong to fight against the coldness, works pretty good!

Next day the weather was still lovely and we drove to Pahia, in the Bay of Islands. Finally we were again wearing swimming shorts!

I bought an Autocar magazine and read it all, with some nostalgia the article about the Ferrari FF. The "Adenauer" series production that we were working for in GETRAG.

We visited the famous public toilets from Kawakawa, designed by the Austrian artist Hundertwasser. Some pictures in the previous post...

Sometimes these things show how easy it is to make common things look nice or even art pieces.

Cheers!

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Whananaki and Uretiki

After a bit more driving, we endedu up in the DoC camp ground from Whananaki, right on a beautiful beach. We liked it so we stayed two nights there.

We saw how our neighbours went fishing with a Kajak, and surprisingly for us, gave us some fresh snapper fish for dinner! Mmm

Kiwis (the people) love to do things related with the sea. A lot of them have boats and almost all drive Pickups. We observed an ingenious way of fishing: with a long line being taken in deep sea just with a Kajak. Layer we heard they even send the fishing line to the sea with help of a Kite! Still waiting to see this...

We used again our tarp, which I think we have used it not a single time for the reason that we bought it for(shade).

In between, we drove by Whangarei to buy some food and later we drove to Uretiki, another DoC camp ground. There we saw again another Possum, this time a fat one. ahhh, are they ugly...

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ahipara... blokart!

Hi again, after some driving my mobile has some more battery to write even more...

From Trounson we drove to Ahipara, where the 90 miles beach starts. Guess why this beach is called like this?

I wanted to drive on that beach with our van, but some locals told us it wasn't a good idea because of the late rain and some quick sand areas. So we rented a quad an drove on it and around the dunes. But the coolest was that the guy from who we rented the quads had also blokarts to rent, and in such a long beach that is a lot of fun.

It is a pity that my grandfather does not live any longer, he would have loved this invention...

Anyway, after the fun, the man told us that if we had allwheeldrive it shouldn't be a problem to drive on the beach with the van, so... we did.

That was adrenalin, because you can drive on the beach with low tide, in high tide the sea comes almost to the dunes. That means if you get stucked and your mobile does not work, you can not get help and the car just sinks on the sand and under water...

But nothing happened, after driving more than 40 km we had enough and we took an 'exit' to a small town. That was cooool!

Salut!

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Waitomo caves and the hobbits

Hi folks,

Going north (in search of warm), we visited the world know Waitomo Caves. Limestone formations which are amazing nature spectacles. There are three cave systems but we saw only the glowworm cave and the long one. You walk for about 1:45 inside the earth, seing some glowworms and hearing a subterranean river which flows inside the cave. It even has a small waterfall that is very load when being inside. Some meters you have to walk them in completely pitch dark black. You see absolutely nothing and it is not allowed to lit anything because it disturbs the glowworms. Pictures were done all with the camera, so none this time. The glowworm cave har probably thousands of them, looking up was like seeing stars in a clear night. Very nice and romantic,since you see them while on a boat and in the most absolute silence. Something similar to "las cuevas del drac" en Mallorca o "Les coves de Sant Joan" de Vall d'uxo.

In the night that we spend in Waitomo we heard our first Kiwi bird, pretty load! We even took our lamos and went for a walk in the dark forest, withouht luck. Seems that to see a Kiwi in the wild is pretty dificult!

Next day, with a lot of rain, we drove again north towards Auckland, but we deviated a bit east and had a wonderful look at the hobbiton movie set of yhe Lord of the Rings. Really cool what we saw there, but they made us sign some papers that we could not say anything to anyone and we were also of course not allowed to post pics on the net. So wait for us to come...

Because the land were the hobbits 'lived' was a sheep farm, in the price if the ticket there was included a sheep shed show. Also not bad to see how, just a man, shed the whool of the whole sheep in less than 2 minutes... Curiosity: the world record hold of sheep shedding in one day is 800 !!

Count them all and for sure you get asleep!

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Pics from Wellington

Just near a McDonalds with free wifi, so I thought I could upload several pics now, but I think they have blocked picasa, and thats were the photos for the blog are hosted...so I have to use GSM data...grrr

The pics are from a -the way they call it- predator free sanctuary. Some years ago volunteers near Wellington started a project which consisted closing 1square mile of forest near the capital, using an advanced fence. Such a fence is able to stop most of the introduced predators to the New Zealand native birdlife. It is tall enough that no cats can jump over it, and so dense that rats, rabbits, possum and stoats can not enter it.

Inside you can have a better idea of how New Zealand looked (and sounded) before humans arrived. There are so many birds! We saw Tui, bellbirds, kaka, saddleback (picture),takahe(picture), hihi and even a Tuatara. They have some kiwi birds too, but since they are nocturnal we saw none. Weta, which is something like a giant grasshopper, was also to be seen.

Well, I have to catch up with two delayed weeks of blog. So I better hurry up and comment only on the nicest!

Cheers!

Jm

Cheers

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Picton, start and end of the south island

Picton is where you take the Ferry that links both Islands. On our way up, we passed through Blenheim and decided to take the curved gravel coastal road to Picton. It would offer nice views and at the end we picked the Tumbstone hostel to spend he night there, and watch the heavy rain while we were playing pool. The hostel was really nice and the staff (owners) really friendly. We played until late at night, since our ferry wouldn't depart until 11:30 am.

In the boat we met a couple of Kiwis from Gisborne, they were pretty nice and we exchanged our impressions and different ways of living in Europe and in here. The work market is not at its best in New Zealand, plenty of people go to Australia to work because the salaries are higher. Both daughters of this couple were working now in Australia. But they said they worked three days a week, and they were happy with it, not getting rich but with enough to live.

Well, 3 hours later we arrived to Wellington! But that will be the next post.

Cheers!

Jm

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Akaroa and Kaikoura

Hi people, Time to update! We wanted to go to Akaroa since it offers this kind of "swim with the dolphins" trips, and the time we tried in the north island we could not jump into the water because of the baby dolphins. This time, however we were luckier, a part from the 13degC water temperature of the ocean. We could have swimming around several Hector Dolphins, the smallest and rarest dolphin specie, it exists only in New Zealand and are relatively small. Sadly the water was quite milky, and we were completely unable to take any pictures. But it was nice to have this creatures passing around us! We drove a lot from Akaroa in direction of Kaikoura, also another town famous for its sea life. We slept three nights there, one in a DOC (Department of Conservation) Camping and two others wild camping on a beach full of Paua Shells! Realy nice shells which can be up to 80 years old. I am bringing some :), amazing colours. We decided it was worth to invest some $ and give a try to another marine life trip, this time we went to see Sperm Whales, and after several days of half-rain and grey sky we had a picture perfect day and we saw four whales. Up to 20 meter in lenght and with a tail measuring 6 meter across. Amazing animals, they come up to the surface to breath and then dive down to fish some octupus or squid. They can dive down to 3000meters and Kaikoura is a perfect place to see them, since it has a canyon system underwater. Near the shore, a canyon with a 1000m drop forms into the ocean, and curious flows makes its waters full of food that the whales love. We also saw some Shags, which can actually dive better than they fly, and after being submersed, put their wings to dry in the sun, see the picture in the next post. They look really funny. From there, we headed already towards Picton, the harbour which would bring us, via Ferry, back to the Wellington city of the north island. So, until the next post! Juanma.

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Peel forest and Christchurch

Hi family, colleagues and friends,
I am trying to catch up writing, we're already in the north island, and I still have a lot to write about the south.

From the Boulders we drove to Peel Forest, near Geraldine. There was another waterfall there and some forest tracks that we wanted to check out. The falls turned out to be again unimpressive, but we took a short walk called The Big tree, which as its names states, guides you to a +1000 year old, +30 m high tree, you feel very little next to that.

We slept somewhere there, and in the morning we headed towards Christchurch, the city which was brutally shaken by an earthquake in February this year. 170 people lost their life in the tragical day, and the city center is still closed, while workers are rebuilding it. We wanted to stay a couple of days but the rain and the fact that almost everything was closed made us continue going north towards Akaroa, our next stop.

So, see you in the next post!

Juanma.

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The boulders, pics

The amazing formations I wrote about before. The biggest on the beach is 3meter in diameter.

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Nugget point and Otago peninsula

Panoramic view from the nugget point and a seal lying around a beach in the Otago peninsula.

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Dunedin

Hi hi,

Looking at the pictures I just realised I have written the trip in the false order in the previous post. The boulders are after Dunedin and not before...

In Dunedin we slept in the Otago peninsula, near the albatross colony. In the morning we watched some royal albatross chicks, waiting for their parents to come back from the fishing sesion and feed them. Some interesting facts about albatrosses: they normally average 3 to 3.5 meters wingspan, weight about 8 Kg and can fly as far as 1000 km a day. The eggs are 0,5 kg but chicks can grow up to 12 kg... They can also live as long as humans and they live 80% of it out in the sea.

In the beach next to the cliffs, we spotted a blue penguin swimming. They are the smallest penguins in the world, being from 20 to 25 cm in height. Interesting wildlife!

In another corner of the peninsula, it is said that you can easily see sea lions, we didn't see any however fur seals resting.

In the city, the next morning we drove up to the steepest residential street in the world. 1st gear!

From there we headed to the boulders, now in the right chronological order :)

Tomorrow, the pics!

Juanma.

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Milford, finally the comments

Hi people,

It took several days to write after Milford, but we have been a bit cold (sick, and cold climate). I started taking antibiotics one day before the walk started, because my throat was hurting very much, the kind of pain I know it doesn't go away on its own. Unfortunately, this track works in a booking system, so we couldn't delay our walk. The track has such a demand, that you need to book several months in advance. Only 40 people are allowed to walk it per day, and they must stay in the provided huts. Camping with tents it's completely forbidden.

The track consists of four day (57km) walking across the Milford national park, and ends up in thr Milford Sound. Apparently, wrongly named as 'sound', the Milford Sound should be known as Milford Fiord, since the V shape of the mountain walls was formed by an ancient glacier. Some millions years ago, the oceans level increased, covering the valley with sea water. The geological explanation for the amazing scenery in Milford is that, the Indo-Australian plate meets the Pacific one below the Southern Alps, elevating mountains that were created well below the earth surface crust, containing rocks which are very hard. The glacier produced a strong erosion on this materials, but due to the extreme hardness of them, the gradient of the mountain remained very steep, sometimes almost vertical!

The hardness of the rocks also mean they are water tight, there is few soil available for water to drain when it rains, so any rainy days, amazing waterfalls appear everywhere.

It is this combination of steep and water that make this track also dangerous, in the brochure it is said that out of the four walking days you have to expect at least one with rain...well, we had two. Of the non-stop type...

But the rain was worth it, the firts two days we had only sun shine, and funny that we saw several dry waterfalls. They just looked like green lines going down the mountains, with no vegetation at all. So, it was good to have also some rain, it literally brouht he waterfalls alive!

The biggest ones, the Southern falls, with 580 meter of drop were massively tall, but seeing all the other going down everywhere was as amazing. I compare the sensation as if someone, up there in the mountains, had flushed a gigantic toilet, and the water was just coming down everywhere!

Milford is famous for its among the average yearly rainfall. It gets 8000 mm per year! That is, if I remember properly, more than ten times as much rain as Hamburg!

With those numbers in mind, little was our hope that in case of rain we would keep an inch dry... But because of our previous rain experience, we learned a bit, and under our jackets we were still 'a bit' dry. The shoes did a good job for the first two hours, thanks to a Juanma engineered trouser-water-deviating devices, made out of plastic bags :)

But after having to cross a couple of streams, and because of the non-stop rain, the shoes gave up, and we started walking on swimming pools...

Luckily we had all our stuff in the backpacks packed in plastic bags, because neither the backpack nor the backpack rain cover are waterproof. Here one of those things in life which are apparently a contradiction. Why is a backpack rain cover not waterproof? Man!

So, as we discovered this 'bug' already before, in Abel Tasman, we bought a 2.5$ plastic poncho from a Asian shop. It just worked! Better than the 100€ GORE blabla jacket.

A propós wet clothing, the only man with dry socks after the walk was a couple of Taiwanese that happened to do the walk on gum boots!

We got to know some locals, and curiously we met a couple of kiwis that we already knew from our Tongariro track walk, which we did almost two months ago in the northern island. The world is really small.

The kiwis told us, that you could tell whether a hiker was Kiwi or European depending on whether he/she would cross a stream avoiding to get wet or just walk through it.
The kiwis just walk on the water as if there was none, the Europeans after a while too ;)

Well, I think it is enough text for today, if I get the computer I will upload some more pics. The waterproof camera was a key components during the two days of wet-walk!

Cheers from Christchurch!

Jm

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Milford track...the pics

Comments coming tomorrow...

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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.

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Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers

Photos only, comments later

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Avalanche Track

Daniela informed herself about this very very steep track, and convinced me to do it. Good for that. We met a German girl so tried to walk this circuit track in four occasions and she could not because of bad weather.

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

Hola gente!

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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we, the artists!

Once in Nelson we attended a bone carving workshop, which had us occupied the whole day designing, drilling and polishing our art items.

We have made one each, so now your turn is to guess who did which. Let's see who of you know us better.

The pieces are carved on a piece of cow bone, but looks really like ivory (marfil, Elfenbein). The lower piece is a mixture of Maori symbols. The Maori were really mastering the bone and stone carving technic.

Daniela can be seen devouring a falafel piece, short before having a look at the 'real' ring, from "the lord of the rings". The designer lives in Nelson and we visited the shop.

The city has also one street which is said to be the oldest conserved from New Zealand. The picture with the classic car. I took this picture just for my mother, since she usually makes the type of question: and how are the houses there?

Next post, plenty of beach photos from Abel Tasman track!

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