Beautiful New Zealand – Sweet as

Hallöle Menschen,

Ich habe in den letzten Wochen einfach so viele tolle Sachen erlebt, dass es fast unmöglich ist alle zu archivieren! Trotzdem will ich versuchen ein bisschen zu berichten….und dieses Mal in Englisch! Alle nicht Englisch sprechenden, seht es mir nach, vielleicht reichen ja auch die Bilder. Ansonsten bin ich natürlich auch gern bereit alles zu übersetzen…;)

Last time I have been reporting/ updating my blog we have been to Greymouth 20 days ago. Sitting in an internet café and just happy to get some internet after a week of travelling independently with our rented camper van. It was an awesome time…we were just sleeping wherever we wanted (almost, cause it happened anyhow that we couldn’t sleep on every carpark that came across --- free wilderness camping is NOT allowed in NZ, most of the time, we tried to find a marked free camping area)

At the west coast of the south island of NZ there are no free camping areas… anyway… We were continuing going south by always looking for unbelievable and highly livable areas! There was only one big hitch that made live hard and uncomfortable: SANDFLIES These creepy little flies bite you wherever they are getting some holy blood out of your body! Even worse than mosquitos….I reckon!

Anyway…following the western coastline gave us a feeling of pure happiness! Seeing thousands of beaches, forest parks, waterfalls, lagoon’s, (gold) walking tracks is like living in paradise! And I guess it wasn’t too far from there…

We met 3 great girls who were travelling south as well and we stayed in 4 places together and had looooots of fun! There was one night, that could have been winding up with some bloody problems but in the end it didn’t…the thing was: we were going to look for a place to sleep this night near Wanaka. Of course we didn’t want to pay so we were cruising to find a place…out of town next to Lake Wanaka. Because of having this awesome map from the rental agency we found lots of areas which are actually used as resting areas… we took a look there but unfortunately we couldn’t stay because of signs saying that it is forbidden. In the end we found a pretty good one! Next to a campsite in the forest! 

                 

As you might see, we had crazy fun whilst dancing and drinking some beers…At midnight the owner of the campsite which was only 2 min driving from our "camp" came over and said that we had to leave this place! Hmm, everyone’s drank some alcohol…in the end I drove us back to Wanaka and we stayed on the streets. Lucky beggars!!

We passed lots of small cities and villages as Hokitika, Haast, Okarito always tried to find a nice location to sleep. I just want to show you some randomly chosen sleeping sites/ where we woke up in the morning: 

and also food doesn’t have to be bad while camping: 

Especially the fox glacier with the hiking tracks and the awesome view was just amazing! 

What a pity that the weather wasn’t as good as the days before! 
By the way that was a bit funny…

One of my highlights was definitely the Catlins which are famous for its nature and breathtaking landscape…in this area is the most southern point of the new zealandian south island (Slope point).

Yap the weather was shit and it rained like april….you never know what you’ll get! But it was getting better…

There were lots of other beaches and waterfalls…  

Another highlight was to see dolphins, penguin and sea lions…it felt so unreal! Animals you probably just know from the zoo!

The last big thing in the Catlins is known as the nugget point. Looks not spectacular from far away but is just getting magnificent when you’re once there!  Everything’s caught by erosion and formation under and in the water. 

When we finished the Catlins we drove to Dunedin. It was one of the nicest cities in NZ in my opinion. Two great gothic churches, a huge museum and art gallery and just nice buildings like the train station that is used for touristic reasons only. There, I experienced via facebook that I became an uncle two weeks earlier than estimated! It was fantastic! 

Dunedin also has great suburbs called Otago Peninsula  where we got stucked with our Van…but nice Kiwi’s helped us getting out of the mug! In the end we enjoyed the nice view from Sandfly Beach!

Finally we were back in Christchurch 

and 19 days of travelling the south coast in our own way were over! We experienced NZ in probably the best and uncomplicated way. We saw a lot!

After one night in the hostel we took the bus to Blenheim. We had been to Blenheim before with the Camper. It is famous for finding jobs really easy e.g.in a vineyard someone told us. After arriving I gave my best finding work in the hostel or somewhere else, but there were some bloody problems with the contractors and also the vineyards were too packed with people. The next thing is that I just got a tourist visa instead of a working/ holiday visa. So it was pretty hard and turned out not to be possible within the short time I have left in NZ. We got to know some nice people in the hostel in Blenheim who were up to Nelson. I also wanted to go there to try my luck in finding a job there! Philipp and I split up because he needed to be back to Wellington for his flight to Australia as well!

So I travelled with a new group of 5 people…all of them were Germans (too many germans!!!). When we got there it was clear pretty fast that we wanna go to the Abel Tasman national park! We decided to go kayaking, then sleeping on a house boat and hike back on the next day to where we came from! The tour was amazing; especially the houseboat part was wonderful! 

We also went to the Cleopatras Pool with a natural slide…

Now I am back to Nelson on my way back to Christchurch to get my flight to Sydney on Wednesday. Almost two months of travelling NZ is going to be over and this time was just unforgettable. I got a great impression of what it means to life here and how different live can be!

Next time when you are going to read the Blog I will be in Australia again! I hope you enjoyed reading and I will fly back to Germany at mid-February.

Greeeeets