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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: 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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… ...

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 ...

After we came back from our Abel Tasman trip we planned five more days at the north coast in order to visit some beaches (Kaiteriteri,…), take a boat trip along the Pelorus Sound and do parts of the Queen Charlotte Track before we take the ferry to Wellington. Additionally we wanted to try to sell ...

One box of cracker and another crazy pass through the mountains later, we were almost back at the west coast. In fact only around 100km beeline apart of the Oparara Bassin, at the west of the north coast of the south island (sorry, I couldn’t resist putting 3 cardinal direction in one sentence 🙂 ), ...

After we arrived in Nelson we relaxed a bit just because we had a bit time and not too much on the schedule. We wanted to do the Abel Tasman Coastal Track, Golden Bay (both around 2 hours north-west) and some of the beaches and sounds around Picton before we would take the ferry to ...

We planned two stops between Hokitika and Nelson. One of them was the Kahurangi National Park, which is famous for its untouched rain forest and the Oparara Bassin. The second one was Kaikoura at the east coast. So the way went north along the west coast with three short stopovers, namely the Pancake Rocks (which looks ...

When we arrived in Hokitika, dusk already started and as our GPS had some problems finding the address, our search for our next host was a bit longer. After finding the number of the house and knocking at the door of the beautiful house, nothing happened, so we made our way back to the car ...

The Copland Track was a warm suggestion of Irene and Pier (let’s remember, that were the two Italians we celebrated Christmas with in Sydney). After a seven hour long walk one reaches a hut which is directly next to natural hot pools. That sounded promising for us why we started our first multi-day hike. At ...

We arrived at the mentioned motel in Fox Glacier Township around late afternoon. Township is a not very appropriate definition, as it mainly consists of Motels, Hotels, Backpackers and providers for tours on the glaciers. But to be honest, there is not much more to do there anyway. We were welcomed by our British flatmates ...

There is a little town between Queenstown and Milford Sound called Te Anau which is also the start of another Great Walk, the Kepler Track which leads along the Lake Manapouri. Again, we walked a little part of the walk, just enough to see the lake. The good thing about the Great Walks is, that ...

After only two hours of driving we arrived in Queenstown and all prejudice we had were immediately approved. It’s an incredible beautiful spot directly at Lake Wakatipu, but unfortunately full of tourists. Full is even slightly understated as 2 million tourists push through the city with only 19,000 citizens every year (5,500 per day). 65% ...

Although it was quite late (3pm) or maybe that’s why, we went on really well. A first driver brought us a bit further out of the city to get a better spot for hitchhiking. We also got quite fast our second driver. This time a woman, who would have picked us up also at our ...

It figured out to be quite easy to find a lift from the Moeraki Boulders to Dunedin, this time a German couple from Stuttgart who were visiting New Zealand for three weeks. They drove us directly to the town centre and as hitchhiking worked so well this time, we were 3 hours too early for ...

So we were standing at the street again waiting for someone to pick us up. Our first lift brought us to Omarama. The second one was a Kiwi, who made several stops during his drive, because apparently he had fun in being our tourist guide. So we could see the biggest earth dam of the ...

Quite spontaneously we found a HelpX host in Twizel, this time on a camp ground. We didn’t get a lot of information in advance, just that we were accommodated in a campervan and that we had to start working on Monday (because our boss was away for the weekend) and all this even though we ...

After the arrival in Christchurch the security checks passed by quite fast this time, but most likely because it was 5am. So well, after we were security checked, telling them what kind of food we imported and showed our lately cleaned tracking boots (New Zealand is quite free of pests and tries to stay like ...