Lying on the beach at one of the countless islands of Fiji, is a nice opportunity to look back on the New Zealand adventure and sum up everything important:

1. New Zealand, the ever green island:
   This is not completely true. Especially the South Island was quite disappointing in that point (but it has some other awesome things to see!). Additionaly (and that’s maybe because we’re a bit spoiled by the long travel) New Zealand has a very wide spectrum of beautiful landscapes and nature, but the very big highlights are quite rare. On the other hand, some of the best things we did were here, e.g. Mt. Cook, Abel Tasman and especially the Tongariro Crossing!
2. Kiwis are more relaxed than Aussies:
   That’s definitely true! Glen said at one of our first days, “If you’re more relaxed than a Kiwi, you would just sleep”. That’s obviously a bit rude, but there is a true core in that. We never saw a Kiwi to be stressed. They just take the situation as it is and work around it.
3. HelpX, Couchsurfing and Friendships
   In that point New Zealand was a bit disappointing. The only good friendships we made were with Sarah from the US, Karl and Claire from Wellington and Zsuzsi and Adam (but this was maybe the friendship which will last the most). Most of the time we were lucky with HelpX, but as there is usually quite an age difference good friendships are rare. Couchsurfing didn’t work very well, but HelpX even better. Unfortunately, it’s easy to feel used when doing HelpX, which highly depends on the host. One thing we definitely learned (and that would be a hint for everyone else as well) that it’s better to stay with Kiwis!
4. Driving and transportation
   We were used to the left side traffic so that wasn’t a problem anymore, but the roads in New Zealand are so much different to Australia. Almost no straight roads, always curves and up and down. It’s not uncommon to spend two hours on a trip of 100km if there are a lot of 15km/h curves on it. Additionally, that’s not only the passes, also on Highway 1! One big issue are Chinese on the road, especially around Queenstown as most of them are neither used to left side traffic nor to driving outside of cities and also the road signs are completely new for them. No wonder that 40% of all serious accidents are caused by foreigners and especially Chinese. But well, we survived 🙂
   The decision for buying a car was perfect. Including the flat tyre we spend 200$ for the car, which is much less then renting for 2.5 months. It was also much better than taking the busses, as many of the things we saw were off the tracks where the busses go. Although we often missed hitchhiking, it can be annoying by time if you get stuck on the road or in a city without transportation.
5. Potential to come back
   New Zealand is so much smaller than Australia, which made planning the route so much easier. Of course we didn’t see everything, but we were at most of the important locations. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the chance to do one of the Multi-Day-Walks by various reasons, why we would definitely come back one day to do some of them. Especially Abel Tasman, but also the walk on Stewart Island.

We were not very lucky when we were looking for hosts in Auckland, mostly because we were looking for couchsurfers and HelpX host with only 2 hours work. That was not very successful until Damika wrote us and invited us to stay with her. We directly mentioned that we only want to work for two hours without her providing food as we had to sell the car (which wasn’t sold when we got in contact with her) and additionally we wanted to have some time for sightseeing in Auckland. She accepted our offer and offered us to renovate the kitchen in a house close to the centre of Auckland she is going to sell. The first day it was till vacated, why she invited us to stay at her home around 30km south of Auckland.

We were a bit sceptical, because her profile (member since 2012 and no single reference) and the E-Mails (very confusing) was a bit weird. That’s why we told Zsuzsi and Adam (the Hungarian couple from Twizel) where we were going, just to make sure someone knows where we are if it would become strange. When we arrived at the house, however, all Zweifel were gone as we were very nice welcomed by Damika. Her husband came shortly after we arrived with a delicious Sri Lankan dinner! After nice conversations we went to bed and they took us to the house which we were supposed to renovate at the next morning. They even gave us some basic food, mostly vegetables and breakfast in order help us a bit. They also offered us to drop us off at the airport! Just very very nice. That’s what we thought…

Arrived at the house they showed us what to do and we directly told them that the work is ways too much for the estimated time of around 10 hours. They wanted us to fix the cupboards of the kitchen (sanding, new hooks and closings), painting the cupboards in two different colours and painting the walls in the kitchen and the living room (including window frames and skirtings)! As we did something similar in Kerikeri we knew how much time it takes (especially as we had to tape everything before) and that’s what we told them. They just said we should do as much as we can, so pretty easy going. That’s what we thought…

The next morning we finished all the painting, except two cupboards which had to be cleaned before but we had no vacuum cleaner. When we asked Damika for one, she promised us to bring one over after lunch. So we made a relaxed afternoon and actually wanted to go to the CBD, but we missed the bus and didn’t have enough cash for the next one, why we gave it a miss. We figured out an essential problem of the public transport in Auckland. While waiting around 20 busses were passing us but all of them were “Not in Service”. Very frustrating. Because it became late we did some shopping and organisational things before departing. Damika didn’t come at 1PM as promised, but when we came back at 5PM the vacuum cleaner was in the house. We already worked enough, but as they were so nice we wanted to finish the kitchen and cleaned the two missing cupboards in order to paint them the next morning. So we should have the following days off. Later Zsuzsi and Adam visited us for dinner and we talked until late in the night! As we had done all the work we wanted to meet the next afternoon again and say good bye proberly. That’s what we thought… (you might have recognized that something went completely wrong 🙂 )

The next day we visited Auckland (after we painted the two cupboards for around an hour). There is not that much to see there (which we expected), but at least the Wharf is pretty nice! We also did a part of the Coast to Coast Walkway along the Domain to Mt. Eden, where we met Zsuzsi and Adam. There we were introduced with their host Veryan. Half way up the mountain, Tobi received an SMS from Damika saying “We were in the house and you weren’t there again. Please call back”, what he directly did. Then the little shock. She said we didn’t do anything since they were there the last day (which was obviously wrong) and we didn’t do as much as they thought. She said she understand our situation to plan our next steps, so if we didn’t want to continue she is fine with that and she would bring us to a backpackers in the city. That was really a shock. It also destroyed the beautiful sunset on Mt. Eden for us, which we couldn’t really enjoy. As we had an appointment with a couchsurfer in the evening, we went back to Zsuzsi and Adams host in order to call Damika again and clear the situation. Of course, she didn’t understand and asked us to leave the house in the evening or at least the next morning. She even thought she would do us a favour, saying “That saves you another 60$ for the hostel”. Weird interpretation of good Karma…

In order to think about everything we met the couchsurfer for a good dinner at a Korean restaurant and asked her if we could stay a night at her apartment on the floor. Unfortunately her boyfriend didn’t accept, he better wanted us to stay with his father helping him in the garden, but this was quite far away from the airport and therefore was no real good alternative. That’s why we asked Zsuzsi and Adam to ask her host if we could stay our last night with her, what she fortunately accepted.

Damika wasn’t even brave enough to come for herself the next morning and send an agent to get the keys. Adam was so nice to pick us up with the car and so we met the third time in three days. Even though Adam had to leave, we had a very nice day and conversations with Zsuzsi painting some boards for the fence! After a nice walk with Frida the dog and more conversations with Veryan, the adventure New Zealand was already over and we flew to Fiji (with a three hours delay)…

Hafen von Auckland / Auckland Harbor

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Arrived at Jamies, we first met all his flatmates, which are apparently 4. All of them were super friendly and welcoming and Jamie invited us to go with some other friends to a bar in the town, what we accepted for sure! 🙂 There is nothing really special about the night life in Whangarei, but it provided us the opportunity to learn a bit more about Jamie and one of his flatmates, Adam.

The next day we visited the beaches and a lookout at Whangarei Heads. Especially the lookout was great, which is a 2 hours hike providing a fantastic view over the bay of Whangarei. We also saw the Ocean Beach with amazing sand dunes. Another nice evening (and kiwi typical roasted beef with vegetables) later, we drove to the Tutukaka Coast the next day. Probably the best beaches we saw in New Zealand, and with Whale Bay one of the officially Top 20 beaches in the world. Just look on the pictures. Some of the other beaches are Sandy Bay and Matapouri Bay.

There was again rain the next day, why we wanted to visit the museum and the caves of Whangarei. Unfortunately the museum was closed for maintenance (only this particular day) and the caves were flooded. Anyway, we saw the really beautiful Whangarei Falls! In addition we had a very important organisational appointment. There were some people interested in buying our car in Auckland, why we were quite optimistic to sell it for a good price. That day, however, three Germans gave as a call as they saw our ad on the notice board. The wanted to have a look on the car and were really interested and we negotiated with them a price of 1200$. Even better they transferred us the money in Euro, so we didn’t have to exchange all this cash! As they already had a bus ticket, we negotiated to meet the next day half way to Auckland in order to finalize the deal. Before we met them we visited the Waipu Caves, where we could see some glow-worms again. Fortunately this time without a tour and entry fees, so definitely the best cave we saw and definitely a highlight after the a bit disappointing tour in the Waitomo Caves.

When we met the Germans, we found out that they had a little problem with their bank account, as the card reader for Online Banking was locked. That‘s why we had to wait until 18:00 for the Bank in Germany to open and unlock the card reader. By the time we drove to Auckland close to our next hosts house, drunk a coffee, made all the paperwork for the car (the change of ownership is done at the Post in NZ 😉 ) and had a good conversation with them. Finally the bank opened and everything else was done within the next 30 minutes and we sold our car after 8000km driving while losing 200$. Quite good isn’t it?

They also drove us to our host with the car, but what weird things went on there is the last chapter of our New Zealand adventure…

Ausblick von Mt Manaia / on the top of Mt Manaia

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On our way from Coromandel to Kerikeri we made a stop in Auckland in order to put some advertisments for our car in some backpacker hostel, because we wanted to get rid of it by the time we fly out. After that we drove to Kerikeri in order to receive a very warm welcome of our host Veronica. Maybe the nicest welcome since we left Wellington.

After we had dinner including long conversation (and the first decent shower since Rotorua 😉 ) Veronica showed us what she wanted us to do the next day. She was in an exceptional situation as her son (or better to say her daughter in law) waited for her first child to arrive within the next days. The child was already delayed why the birth should be started the next Thursday at least. As we were here, we should sit the house in case the baby comes and feed the (blind) cat beside doing a bit renovation work as Veronicas other son (she has three) would marry soon. Sounded and also was very relaxed, just typical Kiwi.

After doing a few jobs in the garden, Veronica drove us to one of the peninsulas around Kerikeri after lunch. Almost everyone who lives there is somehow related to Veronica. Her family is just huge! We did a little walk to the top of the peninsula, where we got an amazing view over the Bay of Islands. Afterwards we visited Veronica’s grandmother, who is an unbelievable person. And yes, you read right, her grandmother, who is 99 years old. That meant that she was going to become great-great-grandmother when the baby arrived! Besides that, she has 26 great-grandchildren and who knows how many grandchildren. As said before, a huge family. We played a match Phase 10 and drove back to Veronica to plan our visit at Cape Reinga.

We booked a tour for the most northern point of the North Island, which started in Kaitaia. That was probably the first time that we were really impressed about a tour. Not only that it was only 50$ per person (which was quite cheap if you think that only fuel would have cost us at least 50$), it was also very good. We saw the largest man made Kauri forest, some beautiful beaches and bays and then finally the light tower. This point is 1452km beeline apart from Bluff, which means we now travelled the whole way between this two points!!! Afterwards we drove in our 4WD bus along the 90-Mile-Beach (which is actually only 67 miles long)! Back in Kaitaia it was almost sunset why we headed back along the coast and watched the sunset at one of the countless beaches along the way. Back in Kerikeri we saw that Veronica disappeared because the great-great-grandson was going to arrive.

So we the whole house for ourselves for the next 5 days and made ourselves at home. We planned a bit our route through the States, which wasn’t very far away and made some trips to Pahia (and the Pahia Falls), to the Hunderwasster-toilets and the Rainbow Falls in Kerikeri. Unfortunately the weather was again not very good, why we just relaxed most of the time (besides doing our jobs there)!

At Saturday we headed back on the way to Auckland to Whangarei. We took, however, the route along the West Coast of Northland and visited the Waipoua Forest. There are the two tallest Kauri trees in the world (see pictures). We took some more stops along the coast and at some freshwater lakes with sand beach, just to head back to the eastern coast to Whangarei in the evening. There we met our next couchsurfing host Jamie, but what happened there is another story…

Aussichtspunkt / lookout in Kerikeri

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Coromandel is an around 70km long peninsula not far away from Auckland. It’s famous for its beautiful beaches including two specialities, the Hot Water Beach (description follows) and the Cathedral Cove. However, it will probably stay in our minds mostly because of our host Anthony, but one step after the other.

We already found a HelpX host in Coromandel town on a campground, but they suddenly cancelled our stay because they had a look into their schedule, saying that they had the weekend off and wanted to go on holidays. That a business owner is not able to know that a bit earlier doesn’t go in our head, but it is as it was. So we had to find another host quite quickly and Anthony (or just Ant) accepted our request for three nights. He lives in Tairua at the east coast, not in the city itself but a bit apart from it and rural which wasn’t very new for us. When we finally found his house, we were stunned of the view. He actually lives on a hill with direct view on the ocean! But now something about Ant: he is a really nice, polite and relaxed guy who wants to live without the need of money. He has no electricity (only solar during the day) now hot shower, but a bath tub outside the house whose water is heated up with wood and additionally a compostable toilet. He also has a vegetable garden, chickens, ducks and goats and goes fishing and hunting. He quit the “system” and fights a war against the political system. One example for that: on the Coromandel Peninsula freedom camping is forbidden everywhere. That’s why he just bought a piece of land and marked it as ‘freedom camping’. In addition he fights for the rights of the Maoris, whose land was stolen by the European settlers. He quite often is in the court and he gets quite a few threats every here and then because some people don’t like what he does. One of his goals is to build a Maori church on his ground which is big enough for that as it is 48a. But that’s enough to Ant 🙂

Later we got in touch with his other HelpXers, Francois from Belgium, Kyle from South Africa and Faustine from France. After a yummy dinner with rice, vegetables and (self-hunted) sheep liver and kidney we made ourselves comfortable in front of the oven before we went to bed. As there were a lot of people in the house, we were supposed to stay in another part of the house which is kind of a garage but full with beds and futons. But as we turned off the light, the noises began. There were mice in our room! We didn’t see one and there were none in our bed but as you can imagine the night was not the most comfortable one…

As the sleep was not so good, we slept quite long and had breakfast together with Francois and Kyle. Ant was already away with Faustine, as he had an appointment with a doctor. After breakfast they showed us what Ant wanted us to do. We should produce Cob and finish an already started house. You don’t understand a single word? So we did! But we should find it out. Cob is a material, which was and is still used in Africa as it is easy and cheap to produce. It consists of earth, sand, water and straw. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Basically you mix everything together and walk over it barefoot for 15 to 60 minutes while constantly adding new straw. After a while the mass gets solid and flexible which makes it easy to use for building houses. That’s why we helped finishing the first and biggest of the houses, but Ant plans to build another 7 of them in order to rent them out for different kind of workshops.

After a small snack for lunch we drove once around the whole Coromandel Peninsula. We saw New Chums Beach, which is rated as one of the most beautiful beaches in the world by lonely planet for a reason. Additionally, we saw the nice sunset on the west coast over Auckland. Back on the property of Ant we told him the story with the mice why he instantly put rat poison in our room. Just super nice and helpful!

We also had our first bath under the stars and as there were no mice anymore, it should become a perfect next day. Unfortunately the weather didn’t do as it was supposed to. That’s why we produced some more Cob before we went to Hot Water Beach in time for low tide. The name is the program. At low tide, when the water goes back, it frees some spots with thermal activity and one can dig a hole for a hot pool! Pretty cool! Unfortunately we were a bit too late, why all the good spots were already filled with tourists. Anyway, the weirdest thing are some spots in the ocean where the sea water boils. Yes you heard right, boiling ocean. You walk through cold water until you reach a certain spot, where you can’t stand anymore because it’s just too hot. Totally sick! We also drove to Cathedral Cove, a beach with a beautiful sandstone formation which looks a bit like a cathedral and we also went to Cooks Beach.

In the evening we got in touch with Ant’s six year old daughter. We didn’t see such a tough 6 y.o. very often. Not only that she fed the chickens on her own, she also wanted to go possum hunting in the evening. So Ant took her with him and they came back with a rabbit. It will probably be served for dinner quite soon. We also saw how Ant removed the fur 🙂

The next morning, we did our luggage, but before we went on Ant wanted to show us an old gold mine. But then it happened, what we always hoped not to happen. As we took Francois and Kyle with us in the car, we were now four people in it and got stuck in Ants steep and muddy driveway. Fortunately Ant always has a solution for things like that. He just took is digger and pulled us out. As he got stuck with his truck as well he had to rescue it also… After this exciting experience, we drove to the gold mine and an old jail which were full of glow-worms and wetas. We also helped him with putting something on the truck before we drove up north to our next host in Kerikeri…

Sonnenaufgang vom Schlafzimmer / sunrise out of our sleeping room

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Happy that we finally could leave our hosts in Taupo but also a bit sad to say good bye to Lisa we made our way to Rotorua, the city which is in the centre of a highly active geothermal area (which is sometimes called “The Ring of Fire”. It is located on the edge between the Pacific and Australian plate which hit each other all the time). This is the reason why Taupo always smells like sulphur, that is to say mouldy eggs, YUMMY! But one step after the other…

The road to Rotorua is called the Thermal Explorer Highway, which is called like that for a reason. Along the highway one could stop every couple of km, just to see a boiling mud hole, see a hot spring or swim in a hot pool. We picked some of them out. First the Waiotapu Mud Pool, which is an ENORMOUS pool consisting of boiling and bubbling mud. So weird! Funny enough we met the Spanish couple from the Tongariro Crossing there. As if that wouldn’t have been weird enough, there is a boiling stream (Otamakokere Stream) just on the other side of the road. Yes, you heard right, a running hot stream which even boils at some points!

Arrived in Rotorua we first walked along Lake Rotorua which gives the city its second (not official though) name: The city of mouldy eggs. If you’re just close to this part of the lake, you instantly recognize the particular smell of mouldy eggs… Funny at the beginning, mainly when you walk along the lake comprising a few boiling mud holes, but if you smell mouldy eggs while buying groceries it becomes a bit disgusting…

As our hosts where on a spontaneous trip for the weekend they had a British helpx couple for housesitting. These two let us into the house and showed us everything. We didn’t talk too much with them, just because they went to their room after dinner. Anyway, we found out that they were staying with Harry and Kim in Dunedin before! Really funny how travel routes can cross each other. Both introduced us as well to the other two housemates, Muppet the poodle (mixed breed) and Molly the cat. The next day we visited Lake Rotorua and the Whakarewarewa (or just Redwood) Forest Park. This is the only place besides California, in which these famous Redwood trees can be found. Additionally, we visited water falls (Okere Falls) and natural fresh water springs (Hamurana Springs). In the evening we finally met our hosts, Kent and Carol. All of us agreed to a new HelpX deal which consisted of 2 hours work per day for just accommodation and providing our own food. Although a bit quiet, both were really kind and especially after the bad experience in Taupo, just INCREDIBLY relaxed. In fact, they have a couchsurfing background but felt a bit used during time. That’s why they decided to start HelpX and give HelpXers jobs in the house. They didn’t care about how long exactly we worked, they just wanted certain jobs to be done (in our case, carrying fire wood from one place to another, so really relaxed for 5 days…). The next day was completely rainy, why Tobi helped Kent building a new shelter for the fire wood and Kerstin helped preparing lunch and dinner. In the afternoon we just relaxed a bit and in the evening we got a delicious roast from Carol (at least we could chip in with some potatoes and a pumpkin ;-))

The following morning, we relocated a bit of the fire wood in order to walk once around the Blue Lake and enjoy the Green Lake afterwards. We are probably a bit spoiled but it didn’t blow us away… In the evening we prepared German dinner for Carol and Kent (Kässpatzen), they had the equipment we needed for preparing.

The next day, we drove to Waitomo Caves, for which we found a deal in the internet. The guide through the Footwhistle Cave (one of the Waitomo Caves) was ok for the price, but in total not really spectacular. We only could see a few glow worms as well as a few stalagmites and stalactites. But quite interesting was that we could try a typical Maori tea afterwards, the Kawakawa tea. The leaves of the bush are so to say a miraculous cure for Maoris. After that we drove to The Shire. Yes you listened correctly, we wanted to visit the movie set of The Shire in which “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” was made. Unfortunately, it was really cloudy so we decided to come back the next day. That was our last day in Rotorua and after they showed us their pictures of Machu Picchu in the evening (we definitely have to go there as well), we said goodbye to Carol and Kent the next morning. We quickly visited one of the Maori villages in Rotorua and drove to Hobbiton.

The visit of the movie set is quite expensive (75$, roughly 50€), but just breathtaking. You get a 2 hour guided tour through the movie set (with heaps of stories during filming, may they be true or just a complete fabrication), which is built with an unbelievable love for details. Of course it is really touristy and we were again lucky and had a Chinese travel group in the bus, but the first view is just breathtaking (one Chinese girl was almost about to collapse!!!). We were lucky and the sun shone almost the whole time. We would recommend to everyone wanting to do this tour, wait for the sun! The magic of this place consists of the colours of the lush green hills once the sun is shining. Otherwise it is just hills with coloured doors. Don’t understand us wrong, it is a beautiful place also without sun, but the real “WOW” experience just came up when the sun showed up behind the clouds.

After we enjoyed the „free“ beer in the “Green Dragon” (which is actually brewed especially for the movies! Oh, we almost forgot a fun fact: The party to Bilbos birthday is 5 minutes in the movie. However, the shooting took NINE evenings and all artists had to drink around 20 beers per night. In order to make them not too drunk they brewed a special beer with only 1% alcohol. The same beer, but full strength, is now sold in the pub), we drove to Tairua on the Coromandel peninsula to our next host Anthony, a completely crazy but lovely guy. Why? That’s another story…

Waiotapu Mud Pool

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Lake Taupo is the biggest lake of New Zealand. Taupo has the first commercial Skydiving provider New Zealand’s. There is the highest Bungy Jump of New Zealand. Taupo has volcanic hot springs, is location of one of the best scenes in “The Hobbit” trilogy and is only some km apart from the Tongariro National Park. Beside all this positive superlatives, we unfortunately have to mention a negative one as well. We had our very worst host since we started travelling (and we really hope it won’t get worse), but one thing after the other.

Before we arrived in Taupo, we had a quite unusual situation, as four hosts accepted our request, why we had to choose. We decided to go to Paul and Liz, originally from England due to some reasons. First, they travelled by themselves why there should be a lot of to talk about. Second, Liz breeds dogs (Ridgebacks) and therefore had the house full of dogs (11 of them). Third, their profile looked very good especially because they offered flexible working hours which was essential for us to do the Tongariro Crossing (a 6-8h hike) and they had a lot of very good references. Actually everything began quite well and Liz welcomed us at her kennel, where she takes care of dogs whose owners are on holiday and walked with us to the house. We have to mention that they own a quite pretty farm land a bit outside of Taupo. Once she showed us where we would sleep we got a bit disappointed. She told us before that we would sleep outside the house, which wouldn’t have been a problem at all, but that it would be a container with only provisory sanitary wasn’t in our minds (e.g. the toilet was just in the middle of the room without any kind of room separation…) Anyway, we should only sleep there so it should be fine, we thought… Shortly after that she told us that they didn’t want us to have breakfast with them and we should have our own in the container (that is to say without a table) because we would just bother them in the house in the morning. Not very nice, but ok…

After this quite disappointing introduction we were allowed to come with her in the house and got introduced to Lisa – the German Au-Pair from Stuttgart – who already started cooking dinner. The dinner, were we also got to know Paul, was apparently quite happy and we reconciled us a bit with the situation. Before Paul and Liz went to bed and Liz gave us a bag with supplements for our breakfast, we got another punch in the face. It was filled with the cheapest bred, cheapest corn-flakes, the cheapest marmalade and a bottle of milk. As we already saw their selection of muesli in the cupboard that was really annoying and we felt just used as cheap labourer. We soon went to – that is to say freezing cold, because Paul said there was no spare gas bottle for the heating – container just to realize that there was neither Wifi nor mobile reception in it, why we couldn’t do anything productive in the container…

You might have recognized that our first impression was not very good, why we seriously thought about calling one of the other hosts and leaving the next morning if one would accept. The main reason not to do that was probably that we wanted to give them a second chance and just got along very well with Lisa. We just should have done it… So we started working, which was planting 100 trees and was apparently quite funny (mainly because we could drive around with a quad). Liz made lunch and we had a very nice chat with her, which made us feel much better for the moment. In the afternoon, we visited some highlights of Taupo, e.g. the Huka Falls (which are supposed to be one of the Top 5 waterfalls of New Zealand referring to some internet voting, but we weren’t very impressed) and a honey tasting. We also visited the dam which is the movie location for “The Hobbit” where the dwarfs “surf” the river in the barrels (we even watched the flooding of the small gorge a second time from a better point of view, just because it was so cool). The dam gets opened 3-4 times every day transforming the little gorge into a powerful stream. Later we had delicious tea (for those of you who are not familiar with the British, that’s what they call dinner) and we again had a good chat with all in the house. However, this day we made a problematic mistake. After Lisa went to bed we stayed for another 30 minutes in the house, just to use wifi and look for some hosts in Coromandel. We don’t know if they saw on the surveillance cameras (no joke they had heaps of them) or if they just heard us. Anyway, the next day we were asked to leave the house after Lisa went to bed. HOW PARANOID IS THAT??? They gave as another reason to be annoyed of them every single day…

The next day we worked full (with a small interruption to do the “craters of the moon walk”, which almost led to an dispute in the afternoon :-/ ) in order to get the day off for the Tongariro Crossing. The next day we worked half day and drove to Napier in the afternoon. Napier is a city which is built in “Art Deco” style which is actually quite impressive. The very next day we drove to the Tongariro Crossing, or for those who don’t know the name, crossing Mordor!!!

That was actually the most positive extreme of these five days, and maybe the best thing we did in New Zealand so far. The Tongariro Alpine Crossing, which is said to be the best one-day walk of New Zealand and one of the most beautiful in the world for a good reason. Depending on your speed, route and mood, you walk on, over and between active volcanos for 6-10 hours. We chose the perfect day to do so, which is actually quite difficult as these mountains more or less create the climate of Taupo and clouds can appear within minutes (as we already experienced in Taranaki). The day before should have been fine as well, but luckily we found a Spanish guy we could share the driving with (the crossing is one-way and you need either one car at each end or book an expensive shuttle) and fortunately did the track on Friday. We had perfect weather for the whole track over the volcanos (the three main ones are Mt. Tongariro, Mt Ruapehu, Mt Ngauruhoe) and were able to take amazing pictures of the mountains and the lakes (Emerald Lakes and Blue Lake). Beside the one Spanish (from Barcelona), there was another Catalan couple walking with us. It was super funny to be five people and one of them was even a professional photographer (and therefore tramped with TWO heavy cameras), but hopefully we’ll receive some professional pictures of him 🙂 As already mentioned, this area is the movie location for Mordor in “The Lord of the Rings”. Exceptionally famous is the volcano with two names. The Maori name which is almost impossible to pronounce correctly (Mt. Ngauruhoe) and that’s why most Kiwis just call it Mt. Doom. Just have a look on the pictures and enjoy! 🙂

Somehow reconciled with Taupo, we slept the last night in our container (this night we even got a heater) and made our way to Rotorua the next day after having an English breakfast!

Lake Taupo

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Arrived in Startford, the hometown of our host Chris, we first informed us about potential walking tracks. The highlight of this area is Mt Taranaki (or Mt. Egmont for the locals) in the Taranaki National Park. It is with almost 2600m the highest of a range of volcanos, most of them still active. Statistically, Mt Egmont erupts every 250 years (the last time exactly 250 years ago, so keep your fingers crossed for us :-O ). It is quite famous, because it is the most perfect mountain of the world, besides Mt. Fukushima in Japan. Perfect means “as a child would draw a mountain” or in order to use a more scientific term, a perfect cone. It’s amazing, how close it is to this shape even though some hundred years ago an eruption at Fanthams Peek destroyed it a bit. However, having the right point of view, one will see the perfect shape. The more difficult part is to actually see it, because similar to Mt. Cook, many tourists never see it, as it’s always covered with clouds. We had, however, some hope to see it completely, because Claire (from Wellington) told us a myth about the mountain. You would always see it, if you have companion of someone who is a member of the Taranaki Tribe (a tribe of the Maoris). We had the hope that it is enough to know Karl (the husband of Claire) who has the right ancestors and additionally we were supposed to stay with a local.

Arrived at Chris (51) we were welcomed by his two sons who enjoyed their last weekend of school holidays. Chris is the owner of a dairy farm and that’s why he was busy with milking cows together with his German wwoofer Isabell when we arrived (for all of you who don’t know the term WWOOF = willing workers on organic farms. It’s quite similar to helpx, which is our favourite). Ones they were finished we got invited for dinner. This is quite unusual for couchsurfing, because we’re used to supply our own food (and we already bought something). Later, Chris explained us why. He is quite laid back and additionally he would be very pleased if we could help out with some milking (what he already mentioned in one of his messages). That’s why we got on the roster for milking for the next evening. We found that’s quite a fair deal, if you think that we had to work maybe 1 ½ hours in total and got two dinners in return 🙂 Of course we got more in touch with him and also Isabelle, exchanged some stories and made a plan for the next two days.

Since the weather wasn’t very good the next day, we drove to New Plymouth, the next bigger city in and around Taranaki. There are black sand beaches, and a bridge which frames Mt Egmont like a post card. Of course we made a picture of that (and we even got a group of Indians on the picture which made the shot even more perfect :-[ ]. Besides that, we visited the local museum in order to get some more detailed information about the geology of the mountain (which we proved at the beginning of the post, didn’t we?). Back in Stratford we were part of the milking team for this evening, which was a very fun experience (mostly because Chris was just super relaxed and funny). By the way, at the same morning a new Wwoofer, Sophie from France, arrived as Isabelle needed to leave the next morning.

The first two days, the mountain was actually always partly covered by clouds (we even got it to take a picture with ONLY the summit free of clouds!). You can call it prove of the myth, luck or just enough patience. We saw Mt. Egmont completely the third day and decided to climb the smaller peak (Fantham’s Peak), because the summit of Mt. Egmont was still covered with snow and not climbable without alpine equipment (we even saw some rescue helicopters during the day). We began walking in sunshine and cloudless sky, but after around an hour we suddenly were surrounded by clouds and fog. As it was supposed to be clear the whole day, we wanted to try our luck regardless and continued (the track to the summit is around 3 ½ hour). Unfortunately we weren’t lucky this time and we had to give it a miss only 300m below the peak. There is no track anymore, just gravel and a 45° climb with a sign every couple of hundred meters which shows you where to go. The clouds became so thick that we weren’t able to see further than 20m and we found it to dangerous and turned back. It was quite an adventure anyway and we would definitely recommend doing it!

We had another very nice evening with Chris and Sophie and said good bye the next morning in order to drive to Taupo taking the “Forgotten World Highway”. You find the name is quite strange? The same for us…We asked Chris if he knows the sense behind the name, and he just answered that the area is just almost lifeless and forgotten. Quite soon we figured out what he meant. The road is around 150km long, but there is nothing along it except some farms and two villages with maybe 100 citizens. The “highway” is even unsealed for 15km. It doesn’t sound very interesting, but it’s maybe the most beautiful road we took since we’re in New Zealand. The landscape is just as you would imagine New Zealand and finally in a bigger scale. Juicy green hills everywhere! The unsealed part goes through a gorge with native forest what made it even better. We stopped so often to take pictures or just to enjoy the view and it took us almost 4h to drive the 150km but it was definitely worth it! At the end of the highway short after the city of Taurangi there are again some hot pools. Bathing is only possible if you pay for it, but there is a nice walk around which was quite cool. Beside hot water there were also some boiling mud pools! Finally we drove the road along Lake Taupo to the city Taupo. What happened there, is part of the next post…

Das war der erste unvollständige Anblick / That was the first not completed view...

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After the hard good bye with Claire we made our way to the next stop of our journey, Wanganui. On the way we made some stops at some beaches along the coast and at the Queen-Charlotte Park. The highlight was supposed to be a black sand beach, but it figured out to be rather grey… In Wanganui we even found a couchsurfer for two nights, named David. It was quite a challenge to find the right house, but then we were welcomed by David’s neighbour Kane who told us that we’d have a whole house for ourselves rather than living at David’s house as expected. Obviously, David has a spare house with 5 bedrooms, which he offers to couchsurfers, but we were the only surfers at that time. After we picked a room, David came to say hello, too, and after a short chat he offered us to show us a bit around in Whanganui. Very cool 🙂 It was pretty cool to have the whole house for ourselves, but on the other hand a bit of a shame as we didn’t have the chance to really get in touch with our host.

The next day, we first drove to the Visitor Information in order to get a map for our day trip. We wanted to drive along the Whanganui River and stop at some important spots. It is possible to travel the whole Whanganui River with a kayak for 3-5 days, which is one of the Great Walks of New Zealand. Along the river one’ll find untouched nature and Maori villages, an old church called Jerusalem and an old water mill. Additionally, we were able to see the height of the river some thousand years ago while looking on some petrified oysters very high over the actual water level. At the end we made a short walk up a hill in order to get a good view over the river and other hills with a lot of sheep. Back in Wanganui we met David who started his tour with a quite famous glass blowing gallery where we were supposed to watch them blowing. Unfortunately they already finished working for the day, why we wanted to come back the next morning. Then the historic part of our tour started. David told us the story about the Maoris in Wanganui by pointing out some statues and monuments. Writing everything here would be a bit too much for the blog, but whoever is interested in it we’re happy to repeat everything during a private chat 🙂

The next morning we said good bye to David and Kane and drove to Taranaki. But before we left Wanganui we visited of course the glass blowing gallery, in order to watch them working. They were producing a big bowl while we were there, so we were able to see all of the process which took around 1 ½ hours. Afterwards we had a short look inside the local museum, which basically substantiated David’s story with some historic facts and then we headed to Taranaki, to our next couchsurfing host Chris, this time a farmer…

Whanganui River

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We already informed us about the highlights of Wellington on the ferry, why we directly drove to Claire once we (finally) got off the ferry. As already mentioned in the last post, we were quite excited about this unknown situation but the tension eased immediately within minutes. Not only that Claire baked some cookies for us and even invited us for tea (haha, we start thinking British 🙂 ) but also we were directly on the same wavelength. Even Karl welcomed us via Skype from Auckland in their wonderful house. Karl has his own business building action sport courts all over the world (why he is away for approximately 6 months every year). So we chatted with Claire having wine, bear and (Karl’s expensive :-O ) Whiskey, enjoyed the company of the two very communicative cats Bella and Harry (who actually has his name because of his red hair, like prince Harry 🙂 ) and got to know each other.

Claire is actually from Manchester and met Karl, a real Kiwi, during backpacking in Spain and went on an Africa trip afterwards. Since then they travelled together half of the world (Claire said they had their backpacks on for around 9 years). Of course she had a lot of cool stories to tell about that! It’s very hard to find the right words, but as already said, we just got along very well. It didn’t feel that we got to know each-other just hours before, but as if we would know each-other since years.

The next day was a bit nasty weather, so we decided to visit the museums of Wellington. Unfortunately, we had had to recognize that our left front tire didn’t survive the ride on the ferry, when we left the house. So we slowly drove to a mechanics with our completely flat tire who could at least put on the spare tire after he unsuccessfully tried to pump the flat one up again. With that we drove to Bridgestone a bit further down the road who inspected the tire and wanted to sell us a new one for 210$. Well, we found that quite a lot, why we just drove to the city centre to clear our head and figure out the possible options. We decided to make some phone calls the next morning to get some better offers. Anyway, we visited the old and new St. Pauls Cathedral, participated a guided tour through the Parliament, walked along the harbor and visited parts of the quite famous museum “Te Papa”. Wellington directly took our hearts! It’s not a huge city but it has its own flair and charm not many cities have to offer. After that Karl invited us for a dinner (he obviously wasn’t there but he offered to pay for us 🙂 ) and as the first restaurant was crowded we went to “Havanas”. The concept is quite interesting, because you order different small (but still quite expensive :-O ) dishes to share. We had beetroot salad with feta and walnuts, lamb with cherry chutney, prawns with chilli and herbs and a lot of other yummy things!

At our last full day in Wellington (unfortunately the last one, if we would have known that before we would have planned a bit more time) we got some new tires. After some phone calls, Tobi managed to get a new tire for 99$! While the car was at the mechanics we visited the parts of “Te Papa” we hadn’t seen so far and drove around the peninsula of Wellington afterwards and saw the Mt. Victoria lookout. This peninsula is a MUST-DO for all Lord of the Rings fans, because there are the world-famous “WETA” caves. They are one of the best artists for the production of weapons, masks and costumes but also for computer animation (e.g. Gollum). We saw some of their arts and watched a 30 minutes movie about the studios. There we found out that they did a lot of famous movies (e.g. Avatar, Planet of Apes, King Kong and so on). We also drove with the Cable Car (which is actually moved by cables) and walked a bit through the city. In the evening we cooked Kaesespaetzle for Claire, in order to say thank you 🙂

The next morning we visited the very nice Museum of Wellington City & Sea (which was voted as one of the Top50 museums worldwide) before we unfortunately had to say good bye to Claire. Definitely one of the hardest ones during our trip! Anyway, we might get the chance for a reunion. We’ll try to meet Karl somewhere on the North Island if he is around or maybe even on Fiji as he will be there when we are there as well. Additionally they plan a visit in Paris beginning of December (for what we gave Claire some hints for sure) and who knows maybe we go there for a short visit as well 🙂

Old St. Pauls

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