Photos only. Comments comming later :)
Thursday, March 31, 2011
we, the artists!
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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South island. Marlborough Sounds.
Daniela is writting her 'tagebuch' (diary), so do I with my digital version.
Once we got to the south islands we had some strong rain. We used again the tarp to be able to 'expand' ourselves out of the limits of the van. We had one day of nothing to do, which is sometimes also nice, especially after several days in Wellington.
We were impressed by the grandiose sounds (fjords,fiordos) from the region. To make an idea, here 50km in straight line contain about 340km of coast.
We wanted to train ourselves a bit with the backpacks fully loaded, so we did the Nydia track, for which we had to pack the tent and all the cooking gear. On the way to the camp we visited "pipi beach", in which we could find more sea-stars than actual 'pipi's (Shelves). But we stayed alone... The water temperature of the sea is already Spanish forbidding, but I managed to do a quick jump in/out to refresh since the sun was really strong. The views from the track were also really nice, and we had several fan-tails following us. It is the bird that you see in the picture with the palm tree. Really curious birds!
As you can see in the pics, there were some obstacles in the middle of the path. Looked like it is not very famous, and we had to jump over and under numerous trees which were completely crossed to us.
From there we drove towards Nelson, the bigger city in the region.
Cheers! Till next update!
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Wednesday, March 30, 2011
last pics from North Island
The ferry we took with our Van on the deck. The grey one at the right.
And me having a breakfast coffee directly on the sand (in Levin).
Next post will be South island!
Cheers, JM.
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Monday, March 28, 2011
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!
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!
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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