It’s Xmassing much…

The sun is burning with some 25 degrees, the fridge is filled with ice cold beer and the BBQ is doin a full time job…
I’m spending xmas in Wanaka with Cookies family. The house gets a new paint shop and the next days will be spent behind a boat wakeboarding, waterskiing etc or just on one of the two jetskis that are waiting in the garage. But there are all the xmas decorations in the street, so it must be xmas time, but it feels totally wrong to me… No freezing, no cold, no snow that melts away a day before xmas and no hot wine (Gluehwein) and the sun shining from the early morning till late in the evening.
Anyway, I wish everyone a happy xmas and good start into the new year that I’ll see in Wellington.

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South Island Madness

After my stopover in Wellington I finally managed to cruise down to the south island by night time. Still unsure about where to go, I spent my first two nights at a beach close to Blennheim, trying to recover my ankle and just enjoy the beach and good weather a little… Until I met Jon, surfer, climber etc, so we drove around the coast and looked for some waves… (un)fortunately we didn’t find any (good for my ankle, bad for my soul…), but went snorkeling and stuff like that.
Since my warrant of fitness (german TÃœV) was due, I had checked and repaired my car in Blennheim, where the guy who repaired my exhaust invited me to a wakeboarding session behind his boat. I promised to pay him a visit on my way back when my ankle is fit again and decided to go around the South Island anti clockwise.
I missed out on some perfect kitesessions, wind and temperatures were just amazing… so I had to do some sport to distract myself from not being able to kite… kayaking through Abel Tasman national park seemed like the perfect choice for my ankle, but since these buggers don’t rent out kajaks for solo use, I had to find a mate… Havin asked all kayak rentals and a Japanese guy who cycled through NZ and didn’t understand any English, I was almost giving up, until I met a nice dude from my campground who was cooking right next to me – a medicine student from Hamburg… we kayaked through 1m waves through Abel Tasman (where the water is normally flat as a mirror), spent a night up there and walked all the way back… Since he was just hitchhiking through NZ and we kind of had the same style and motivation for traveling, we sticked together since then… We looked at some 200kg fur seals (Pelzrobben) who were chillin at the beach and some amazing beaches up north.

Our track led us along the West Coast down south…
One must-do on the west coast is definitely the fox river caves – through a steep valley with a river and rain forest, one climbs up some steep rocks up to a lonesome limestone cave – no entry fee, flashlight is a must-have and you must not be afraid of narrow holes you have to crouch through – what you get is a beautiful limestone cave that you can discover all on your own. When you come out the green of the forest almost hurts in your eyes.
The Franz Josef glacier, one of the main attractions of NZ, was quite disappointing, since you could barely see it… and still it’s crowded with tourists, helicopters flying above it and busloads of people being carried to the bottom of it.
So we tried to escape the rainy gray west coast as fast as possible, hoping that the clouds can’t pass the mountain ranges.
And so it was, being at wanaka, a warm wind was coming down from the mountains, and after having repaired my two kites, I took the one for a ride on a mountain lake… Probably the first real lake, that I’ve been kiting on – no itchy water in the eyes and heaps of spectators watching me, but quite gusty wind… But anyhow my first kitesession on the south island… with rainclouds hangin around the rocks but always sunshine on the lake and in wanaka…
Our (that’s Nico, the medicine student, and I) roadtrip went further on to Queenstown, the city where adrenaline is sold in all kind of forms – most famous: bungy jumping (with the first commercial bungy company and the highest bungy from some 150m off a parasail).
Well, we decided to not get too much into that very expensive adrenaline rush business and (just) rented some bad-as downhill mountainbikes. Mean machines with massive dampers and no possibility to go uphill with them for a longer time (coz the dampers eat all your energy).
So we pushed our bikes all the 500m up the hill and had some mean downhill biking with funparks and some minor crashes… But with those bikes one can manage even 30cm stair-step-like root tracks with a speed that you almost shit your pants…

Next big spot on the map is fiordland – probably a bit like Scandinavia, but included in the all-in-one-country New Zealand. Massive mountains that grow directly out of the sea, big waterfalls… and tons of tourists… Being on the Milford Sound (the most famous and most spectacular fiord), you see boats with up to 400 visitors cruising around like on a water highway, and even the air is populated by heaps of planes and helicopters… Not really the idyllic nature you came to see here, but it was still impressive and worth a visit… We did one of the early cruise tours with just 10 people on our boat and free coffee.

To experience fiordland, we decided to go kajaking 2 days on lake Manapouri, a Sandflies paradise (Sandflies are nasty little beasts that want your blood and leave you with some mosquito-like bites). But it was exactly as you would imagine fiordland – steep mountains right next to you, sometimes really stormy (as through the hurricane passage), sometimes water calm as a mirror. And rain in the western arms of the lake, and sun above us
And we felt pretty lonely out there and saw just very few cruising boats in a very far distance.
So all in all the much better choice, especially since you can’t rent a kayak on Milford sound unless you book a guided tour, which is much more expensive for just a single day.

I should finish now, since I spent half a day in the internet cafe. The journey went on through the south (some people call it the arsehole of the world… in some parts I agree, but some parts are just too amazing!)
But that stuff you is for the next entry…

I hope you enjoyed reading and pics:

North Island – from Auckland to Wellington

Wellington

South Island: North – West – Middle – South

By the way, if anyone’s asking why I look so stupid – it’s the
Mo… For those who want to know why, it’s MOvember – aehm, it was MOvember, I forgot a bit about the time… sorry…

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Superstars and super cities (or how plans change)

I talked about getting a ferry the next morning, but everything turned out a little different.
Having left Auckland at around 6ish in the evening, I’ve been driving for six hours down south to finally get to a city where I could park my car directly at the beach and wait for the sun to wake me up the next morning.
A ugly as city called Wanganui, but it turned out to be a good decision to stay there. The black sand on the beach got hotter and hotter, and similarly the wind got stronger and stronger, so I got lured out to a nice kitesession with a sweet as kitesurfboard I borrowed from a friend.
After kiting and a bit of shopping I finally left this ugly city… at 4 in the afternoon, heading down to Wellington, the capital of NZ. Hearing at least 20 times that Beckham is in Wellington having a game going on there that weekend, I already prepared to face some crying and yelling girlies.
The plan: find an internet cafe, book the ferry the next morning, and finally be down south.
The truth: cruising into the city, until finally ending up on the waterfront, where a beautiful skatepark perfectly integrated into the urban style called me to get onto my board and cruise a bit around (I even saw some Beckham groupies at a hotel and a big convoy leaving from it). I already felt in love with this city… until a guy playing basketball dropped his ball directly in front of my skateboard – thereby forcing me to pick up the ball and throw it towards the basket. I haven’t played since ages, but I was always keen as. So I played with him… and talked to him… and found out, that he was a civil engineer from the University of Auckland, having an idea to be patented, where he needs an electrical engineer for – Mechatronic students as the all purpose engineers are thereby also a good alternative. So we talked about his idea, he invited me to stay in his flat, where a spare room was available and it was directly in the lively, lovely city centre – something that’s completely missing in Auckland. You see dudes with skateboards everywhere throughout the city, street musicians play all time long and it’s just a damn cool atmosphere throughout the whole city.
Staying in a bad as flat directly in the Cuba Street in the city centre with 7 flatmates I was not able to leave as planned, and the busting nightlife kept me in Wellington.
The next day I went with my new flatmates to a beach, trying to find some frutti di mare. But the water was just too cold, so I just got a little snack-size fish. But two Maori guys came just down from the beach, having two big bags with lots of big fish and shells in there – they had picked up a bit too many Paua shells, so they just gave me three of them (each around 1kg).
Later on we went for a skatesession, where I tried to drop into a pool. I bailed, hyperextending my ankle (again), but it should be sweet in a couple of days. But a BBQ and a couple of beers helped me to get over it.
So now, since the weekend is almost over, I’m really planning to catch a ferry and head down south somewhere.

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