Jet-lag

A couple of days after our return and the body is slowly getting back to normal. Ania probably had the worst jet-lag looking like a bit wasted in the evenings. We'll post a new zelaland special with pictures in the weekend.

Home

It's a funny thing leaving Auckland at 23.00 in the evening and arriving to LA after a 12h flight the same day 9h before you left, go figure. Anyway now we are on the train to Malmö after a loooong journey that wasn't as painful as one might expect but it feels good to be back. We'll make a summary of our experiences in a couple of days.

Monday - The island

On our final day we took a ferry to an Island outside Auckland called Waiheke. The sun was strong until we arrived when a few drops of water fell on our heads. Luckily it was over in 10 minutes and then we enjoyed swimming in the pacific on two different beaches. We tied it all up with a nice dinner in the city before heading to the airport.

Now we have 30+ hours of travelling in front of us before again setting foot in good ol' (cold) Sweden.

Sunday - Back in the sun

Arriving to sunny Auckland felt really great. 23 degrees and great weather was needed. After a little hassle with our hotel we checked in to a fantastic room with ocean view from the 19th floor at the Quadrant. We went for a long walk in the evening and eventually found an excellent Italian restaurant where we had dinner.

Tomorrow is the final day in Kiwi country and we'll make the most of it, no matter what the weather will be.

Saturday - Reaching for the clouds

For sure it was raining when we woke up but we would not let a little storm stop us. We started the climb up mt Ben Lomond from Queenstown and after a couple of hours we reached the clouds. When visibility declined and the wind was too heavy we returned becuase it was no real point going further when we still would see nothing but we still got a quite heafty excercise.

After a late lunch we checked in to a really good hotel for the final night on the South Island. We are on the 9th floor with a fantastic view of the bay. We are finishing the day with a meal at the best fish restaurant in Queenstown, called Fishbone.

Tomorrow we are on an early flight back to Auckland for hopefully a little warmer weather.

Friday - KIWI

Because rain killed our hiking plans we headed through wine country towards Queenstown. We stopped at beautiful Gibston Valley Winery for a tasting of mainly Pinot grapes but also a Riesling. Then we popped by the old gold town Arrowtown for a tea/coffee and a look at famous NZ photographer Craig Pottons gallery.

We realized it would be difficult to find a place to stay in QT and a few calls around confirmed our fears, but by a chance we found a nice place of the road 5 k from the city.

In the afternoon we got our first long awaited spot of Kiwi birds at Kiwi Birdlife Park, they look like superfast big meatballs. :) We finished the day with a nice meal at an Indian place before heading back to our room. Weather will probably be crappy tomorrow as well but we have hope.

Friday morning - Rain

We just woke up and it's absolutely pouring down. Luckily we knew this was comming so we slept indoors tonight. The plan was to hike a mountain called Roys Peak but if there are only clouds to see it makes less sense. There are many vineyards in the area so perhaps we'll make a wine day out of it.

Thursday - A plane

When we packed the tent together this morning ice chips fell off, confirming that it was a pretty cold night. Since our camp was deep in the wild and we had decided to get out today we hitched a ride with a little 5-seater plane back to the car park. YES a plane, for about €40 both of us got a private plane ride out from the mountains, amazing. It's because the plane drops of tourists who hikes for 2h and then get a jetboat back and instead of going back empty they pick up trampers heading back.

Before the pickup we spent an hour just laying in the sun looking at mountains. We then returned to Wanaka where we had lunch at an organic restaurant and chilled most of the day. Now we are about to prepare some nice lamb for supper and looking forward to a good night sleep.

Tomorrow there will be no more sun but rain, rain and rain. But we have good gear for that.

Wednesday - 11 h

Today we did one of the most intence walks we have tried. 900-1500-750-1150-750 m climbs and 20+km, were the first climb and going down was with full packs. Normally people do these in two days, but we woke up really early and had done the first rough one by 13 so we just went ahead and took the other one as well.

The day was fantastic and at 1150 m we took a swim in a mountain lake surrounded by sun, mountains and snow. At 19 we reached camp after having walked for almost 11 h, we were pretty toast but very happy.

Tuesday - 20+ km

Today we hiked the first part of the Gillespie trail. Over 20 k with full packs made us quite tired but it was an amazing day and the weather was fantastic. We have set camp in a beatutiful small valley at about 900 m.

Tomorrow we will start with a 600 m VERY steap climb that will be a killer.

Monday - 6 years!

Today we celebrate 6 years of relationship and 1 year since proposal. We started this sunny day with a 6k run down to Monroe Beach where penguines where supposed to nest. The beach was all empty but still the Tasman Sea looked amazing in the morning. Otherwise we have checked out some waterfalls and planned our long hike tomorrow. We will be doing a quite heavy hike called Gillespie track in Mount Aspring National Park so expect no blog updates until thursday the latest becuase with 99% certainty there is no cell range there. Tonight we'll treat ourselves to a nice restaurang in the city of Wanaka.

Sunday - Hot 'n cold

Today we hiked a trail called Roberts track in Franz Josef galcier. This is btw where the "lighting of the beacons" scene from LOTR was shot. After a couple of hours of fairly heavy hiking in the woods we got up to a great view of the glacier. Weather was a bit cloudy but not too bad for hiking. To heal our worn feet we then went to a Glacier thermal spa. As we are sitting in the 38 degree pool(outside ofcourse) it starts to pour down rain. That must have been one of the best places on earth at the time, an amazing experience. Ofcourse one needs to get up eventually, thus suddenly making it a much less enjoyable place to be. When we left Franz Josef it was raining heavily so we found a really nice little motel to stay at overnight.

Saturday - Sun

Today we hiked/climbed an inland trail at Arthurs pass with a shaky summit of about 2000 (we started somewhere around 7-800). We had beautiful clear weather all day so even if it was a bit straining at times our spirit was high and the scenery was just awesome. We then drove west until we hit the Tasmanian sea and now we just had a fantastic salmon dinner down at a beautiful lake.

As usual no connection in the evening so this will post to late.

Friday - Seals

It took a couple of hours to straighten out our little car accident before we could continue south. It was rainy/cloudy all day and as we where driving along the Pacific ocean gasping at how amazing the sea can be we stopped along the road and suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a friendly seal colony. They are awesome creatures those seals!

It's a funny thing driving south and the climate's getting colder. It's about 10 degrees colder now than in the north and the days are a couple of hours longer.

Tomorrow we'll probably do another long hike called Avalanche Peak in a place called Arthur's Pass. Though it all comes down to the weather, but we have high hopes. We heard that the weather has been awesome up until our arrival, go figure.

Thursday - Rain & rocks

Today was mainly a transportation day getting from the north island to the south. On a good day this stretch of road and ferry ride can offer some magnificent scenery, but it was pouring down all day so we got none of that.

We are renting our car from Avis but they operate two separate fleets on the two island so we had to get a new one on arrival to Pickton (south island). Because of really heavy rain a lot of debree had found it's way on the roads so after about 10 min use of our new car a big rock on the motorway tore loose quite a large piece of plastic shielding from under the car and now it's making funny sounds. We'll find a dealer tomorrow to have a look at it. From a prior incident in Scotland we have learned to max out on insurance so we should be 100% covered and that's good anyway.

We ended the day in a restaurant with a good meal with good local wine (we are in wine country now).

Wednesday

It was still raining in the morning but we had already decided that today we where going to hike a 20k trail in Tongariro called the alpine crossing. Btw is Tongariro home to mt Doom and several other locations from Lord of the Rings.

We thought this trail would be a good 1st for us in NZ and we actually have to say we kicked some serious bootay up on that mountain and when it was blowing/raining hard at 2000 m we were probably the only ones still smiling (if you have done Norway in 4 degrees a little NZ breeze is nothing). Sadly though it was a cloudy day so the best parts had very low visability.

We reached the end at 700 m a good 2 h before schedule but because the start and finish where at two different places we had to wait for the bus. After 1 h we decided to hike back the last bit 7 k to the car so we were a bit tender after that to be honest.

During that 7 k roadhike the sun was also super strong so we both got quite burned making us ripe tender tomatoes. We had some seriously good lamb for supper and tomorrow we are heading down to Wellington.

Thermal bath

Because on no cell coverage on Tuesday we could not send the text so here it is, another for Wednesday will be arriving shortly.

We had set the alarm to 6am but since not even the sun had stepped out of bed at that time we gave it another 30min. Just after breakfast it started to rain again and kept on doing so during large parts of the day. We headed of to a geothermal area where we saw some really cool green ponds, boiling mud, a almost boiling waterfall and a geiser eruption (I was not intimidated).

After a little drive we had lunch at a very nice hotel and thereafter took a bath in a thermal mineral pool (about 40 degrees). All in all we have had a superb day.

Right now the weather is really sucky but if it clears up the plan for tomorrow is a beautiful 20k hike around Mount Doom (Lord of the ring).

Geiser

The birds (with feathers) are quite pushy here and during supper we attracted quite a crowd of ducks. It was pouring down all night and because it's not that cold outside it got very humid in the tent. Anyhow it has pretty much stopped raining this morning but that apparently mean nothing here. Yesterday went from sunshine to rain in notime. Now we are of to check out a geiser.

Glowworms

We left auckland after a good nights sleep, the jet lag actually has not been as bad as one might expect from pushing 12h in such a short period. We drove south a few hours to a place called Waitomo where we visited a fantastic cave with thousands of small glowworms.

After a good lunch we drove east and ended up in a kind of zoo called rainbow springs. They had some cool creatures but when we went to check out what we came there for, KIWIS, it turned out they are nocturnal and were fast asleep (we should maybe do a little more research next time) so all we saw was a fluffy ball that did not react at all. Picture: Kiwi.

Now we have set camp just south of a place called Rotorua which is an area with lots of hot springs and we'll probably check out a few tomorrow. Btw it just started to rain so now things are back to normal again.

Auckland

We arrived about 7.30 in the morning and even though we felt like old carrots it was amazing to step out into the New Zealand summer. The sun in Auckland turned out quite strong and since we both were lacking anything resembling a base-tan we soon went from old carrots to bright and red carrots. We are spending the first night in a little hotel owned by a really nice chap who let us have our room already before 11 (though it was quite clear he was already a tad tipped at that time). We hade some supreme fish in the evening and now we are hoping the jet lag will be merciful.

A rock

Due to some technical difficulties we have not been able to post since leaving motherland. Apparently both in US and NZ sonofon has no deal for package data, at least not with vodafone that I am currently using. Hopefully we can solve this but in the meantime Jane (brother Niclas's girlfriend, posting as "Felicitas") has stepped up to the plate and will be posting mms/sms's from us. Lots of cred to Jane, she is a rock. :)

Boarning flight nz001

Just about to get on the plane

Checked in

a couple of nervous minutes when the people in the check in where convinced that a visa was needed for ania, but now we are through and soon on our way to uk

Pretty cash

NZ money are very soft.

up and away

only 39h to departure now.. :)

KIWI

Here we go again

On friday the 6th we are off on another crazy journey and this time the goal is hobbitland on the other side of the planet.