New Zealand part 6 - The North island

Wellington

Yeah so Wellington has a fantastic location in a naturally protected bay that is almost like a lake and is surrounded by beautiful mountains. Nothing to complain about there. But the city itself, well I guess boring is a good word. Imagine a mid size swedish city with the typical 60's concrete colossus and you're quite close. The fact is you don't go to NZ for the cities at all. It's the nature.

Having that said there actually are some newer and more cool buildings, especially the museum of New Zealand that is quite spectacular both on the inside and outside and really worth a visit.
During our two days in Welllington we also visited the Zoo, mainly to get a glimpse of the famous Kiwi bird, but it also turned out to be a nice little zoo in general. That day was also warm and sunny which was totally opposite to the day we came when it was 13 degrees and raining. Again weather reminded of Swedish summer!

Art Deco in Napier

Next stop was Napier, a smaller town on the east coast most renowned for a long beach and for having been destroyed by an earthquake in 1931 and rebuilt in a special art deco style. Yeah sounds more exciting than it was and the memory that lasts most in my mind is the absolute excellent thai restaurant that we visited.

Smelling water hole in Rotorua

Now it was time for Rotorua, maybe the largest tourist attraction on the north island. Rotorua is known for its hot springs and strong sulfur smell. I thought it was quite cool with all the boiling water and mud holes but Annika just couldn't stand the smell so we had to leave early next morning and headed off to Hobbiton.

New tenants in Bilbo's house

Hobbiton has become a gigantic tourist attraction, or trap some people would say. You can not get there on your own but have to go on guided tours that cost a fortune. However we actually thought it was worth it. It's cool to see the scenery for such famous movies and it is a very beautiful spot. It was also interesting to hear stories and anecdotes from the recordings. For example the doors to the hobbit cabins have various sizes so that the actors standing in front of them shall appear at different sizes.
There is also a huge man made oak in the area where all the leafs had to be painted individually twice to get the right colour. Peter Jackson wasn't happy enough first time.

We spent our last night in Auckland, the biggest city in NZ. Auckland has grown by 20% a year the last decades and many of those are "islanders" from Fiji, Samoa, Cook islands etc. Also many brits and other europeans have immigrated so there certainly is an international mix of people. Unfortunately a bit too many of them are living on the streets. We visited the famous sky tower which together with the big Westhaven marina with all sail boats are the most exciting things you do in Auckland

Auckland. Westhaven marina from the Sky Tower

Another Hobbit hole

Huka falls outside Taupo

So in general, what's New Zealand like? Well for us now living in Australia it's a bit like coming home to Europe. Weather and nature is similar. Most things you can see in NZ you can also experience in Europe. You have the fjords in Norway, the moorelands in UK, the agricultural flat landscape in Denmark, the lakes in Sweden etc. Still it's a nice country with friendly people and easy to find your ways around.If you want the nature experience the south island is where you should spend your time.

I know what you're now thinking. If I'm planning to go down under and don't have time for both Aussie and NZ, which should I pick?
Well, it's like choosing between Örebro and Stockholm. NZ is a great country and well worth a couple of weeks time but Australia has so much more to offer and is so much more different from home.

Selfie or Mauri art?

Cheers

New Zealand part 5 - finishing off the south island

From Franz Josef and the glacier country the journey continued north. As mentioned earlier this is quite remote areas and you don't see too many villages or spectacular nature attractions except for that the the see views in some spots offers quite a nice scenery.

Western coastline

Typical NZ roadside

One thing that is spectacular though all over New Zealand is all the ferns that grow along the road sides. Actually New Zealand's official country symbol is a silver fern and in 2015 there was a referendum to also change the NZ flag to a new one incorporating the silver fern instead of the british flag. Unfortunately, my opinion, the proposal lost

Could have been the new NZ flag

Pancake rocks

Our next stop was in Panukaiki or pancake rocks as they are called in daily speak. Some strange rock formations that was well worth a visit.
In Panukaiki we stayed in a rainforest resort that was something different to any other accommodation we've ever used. It was literally small individually designed cabins scattered in an area of lush forest. It felt like living in a tree house with leaves just a meter outside the windows. Quite spectacular and really cool. The backside however was that it was very damp and smelled mould. Definitely worth a one night stay though.

Found it!

Trying to locate our cabin in the forest

After a cafe pancake (of course!) breakfast we continued to Nelson which turned out to be a quite big city in the north east region. Not too much to see or do around but we stayed two nights and chilled.
On the way we stopped to have a look at the wild seal colony at Tauranga Bay.

Cute friend from Tauranga Bay

Nelson

On the way out from Nelson we stopped at a skywire atraction. It was a steel wire stretched between two mountains, 1600m long and as most 150m above ground. You travel in a 4-chair carriage and start freewheeling at about 85 km/h and then a motor takes you the last bit to the end. After that you're going backwards exactly the same way and speed.

Getting ready for the ride. Jackets and funny caps were borrowed

What it felt like? Imagine going very fast in a ski lift. Quite cool.(And also cold in the speed wind)

We were thinking Picton from where the ferry to north island goes was next door to Nelson bur it actually takes 2 hours to drive there. We chose the scenic way and that was worth the little extra effort with windy roads as you get beautiful views of Marlborough sounds. This area is also known as the best wine district of NZ producing really nice white whines, we fell in love with the Shingle Peak chardonnay. However Sauvignon Balnc is their signature grape.

Leaving south island

The ferry to Wellington takes 3,5 hours and this day was really windy so the journey was quite unpleasant with hard winds from the side. It felt like the boat was leaning 10 degrees the entire way.
eventually we ended upo in what has to be one of the worlds best protected natural harbours, Wellington. No doubt why they decided to place the city there. Time now for adventures on the north island.

Cheers

New Zealand part 4 - the glacier explorers

The explorer with the Franz Josef glacier as backdrop. Not easy to see, I know

Leaving Wanaka we went west towards the sea driving through cold rain forests. Well that might not be the correct name but since it's on the hill side leading down to the coast it rains a lot and since most of us imagine a rain forest as something warm I just want to tell that this is very lush and dense vegetation without being hot and steaming. Along the way there were plenty of waterfalls and we followed a beautiful river for a fair bit.

The mid west side of the south island is a quite remote area and not many people live here. Only a few farms along the road and almost no towns at all. The main attraction here are the glaciers especially Fox and Franz Josef. The unique thing with these two is that they end up only a couple of km's from the coast and only on a few hundred meters of height so they are very accessible. Or maybe I should say they were. The sad thing now is that only in the last 3-5 years the mouth of both these glaciers have moved several hundred meters upstream probably due to global warming.

This means you can no longer enter any of them by foot, you need a helicopter. So that's what people do. "it's sad they're melting but put me in a fucking petrol stinking helicopter so I can see them before they're totally gone"  hmmm

Until now we had been very lucky with the weather but this day it was raining cats and dogs. Hmm wonder if anyone outside Sweden has ever heard that expression. It was in the English schoolbook when I was a kid and all Swedes in my generation know this proverb but I've never heard any native English speaker use it. If any natives reading this please leave a comment!

The first glacier if you come from north is Fox. After a few kilometers on a small road though the forest we find the parking. It was now raining really heavily so we decided it's not a good idea to do the walk so we decided to continue to Franz Josef hoping for the rain to stop and at least check in to our hotel first. So we did and speaking to the motel owner we realised there was really not anything else to do than the glacier so we decided to defy the rain and go there anyway.
I was quite pissed off about the weather when we got there because it destroyed something I've really been looking forward to but things took an unexpected twist.
What an experience it was! Yes we got wet as drenched rats but what a scenery. We walked up a valley, actually the river that constitutes the end of the glacier and there was literally water pouring down everywhere along the hillsides. Hundreds of waterfalls and almost no other people around. It was so beautiful and we felt so small, one of my biggest nature experiences ever! It took us 45 mins to reach the glacier or rather the end of the walk. You're not allowed to go further and actually it's really not possible if you don't want to risk your life. As said a couple of years ago the ice would now have been at our feet but now it was maybe 300m away and because of the rain we didn't see much of it, only the contours. In the end that didn't matter that much, the nature experience was great anyway.
This was new years eve and on the way back we totally soaked found a chinese take away where we bought or new years dinner and had it in the motel room :)

Cheers

Waterfalls everywhere

Beautiful

The path to the Franz Josef

The west coast main road

New Zealand part 3 - Fjordlands

From Queenstown the next natural main tourist attraction is Fjordlands.

This is a huge national park covering the south western area of the south island. Within Fjordlands Milford sounds is the most popular attraction. It is a part of the ocean winding between high steep mountains to the little village of Milford. You can reach it with one day trips from Queenstown but then you have to spend like 6 hours in each direction driving or by bus. We had our base in the beautiful town Te Anau located on the bank of the big Te Anau lake.  From there we joined a tour bus to Milford Sounds. The drive in itself is about two hours but we did many stops at beautiful attractions along the way that we would have missed if we drove ourselfves so it was definitely worth it. We also had a very experienced and funny guide. So in the end it was a full day trip with lot of amazing nature to see. To the right you see one of the big waterfalls gushing into the sound.
Only thing is that if you have been to Norway and seen the Norwegian fjords New Zealand is actually still a light version. Still well worth the trip though.
Outside Te Anau there is also a big cave with glow worms that we of course visited. A cool experience starting with a boat ride over the lake and then walking narrow paths some hundred meters into the cave where small boats took in total darkness took us to the glow worms. A must do if you're in the area.





So what more is there to say about Te Anau? Yes they have a pie shop with really good pies. I had the venison pie and that was actually the first meat pie that I have really enjoyed!

After two nights in Te Anau it was time to head north again and next stop was in beautiful Wanaka. Wanaka was like Queenstown crowded with backpackers. It seemed to be a partytown this time of year whereas it definitely is a ski resort in the winter. You could tell from the shops.

Main restaurant street, Wanaka

After Wanaka the trip continued to the Glaziers on the west coasts. More about that in next post.

Cheers

Lake Te Anau

Lake Wanaka (The water is really cold brrr)

Lumsden eventually became the most southern spot where we put down our feet

The famous seals living in Milford Sound

The Kea birds are not shy

In Te Anau even a parking lot can be beautiful

One of many streams on the way to Milford

Another nice spot in the Fjordlands

New Zealand part 2

So the next day we drove south on our way to Queenstown and the Fiordlands. On the way we paid a visit to a town called Timaru which was quite nice with a beautiful beach with thebig softly rounded black stones that are so common on the south island.

After Timaru we headed off toward the farm stay were we have envisaged to sleep with the sheep. We knocked on the door, no reply. Eventually we found the owner in the garden and made sure we were at the right place. Yes you are but I haven't accepted any bookings for tonight, I have family here over christmas. We showed our printed confirmation and she got very embarrassed. "Ohh I'm really sorry I'll have to shuffle the people around and make up a room for you.
We didn't feel really comfortable stepping into their xmas festivities so decided to try to find something else which we knew would be a challenge at this time of year. We were lucky and got the last little cabin at the camping site in Geraldine. So in the end everything turned out well and we got the opportunity to try some holiday camp life as well.

Next morning the trip went on to Queenstown, the adventure capital of NZ. On the way we passed a couple of beautiful lakes, Tekapu and Putaki, both with the turquoise water that is so specific to NZ.

They say it's because of minerals that comes down with the water from the mountains.

In Queenstown you can do a lot of various activities like skydiving, white water rafting, jetboating in the rivers and of course bungy jumping. Here you find the bridge where it all started or at least became popular, Kawarau bridge. (The native people on the pacific island Vanuatu is said to be the ones that were first).

I've never seen so many backpackers gathered in one spot as in Queenstown. They were literally everywhere and I wonder what the residents would live from if it wasn't for the tourist. Anyway a beautiful town located at the side of big lake, a must to visit if you go to the south island.

Ah you wonder if I did the bungy?? No, none of us did but I plagued the others in the car when leaving by mumbling: I should have... I will never get this chance again...

Looking down from Kawarau bridge

 Cheers

New Zealand part 1

A must when you spend some time in Australia is of course to go to New Zealand. Since you need some time, at least two weeks I would say, we decided to do it during the Christmas/ New year leave. This is also a good time since it's the middle of the summer and NZ is much cooler than Australia.
as you probably know NZ consist of two islands and we decided to fly in to Christchurch on the the South island to then 15 days later fly home from Auckland on the North island.

This time is a popular travel period so to save costs we flew out on Xmas day which is not that popular bud didn't really matter to us. It turned out to have some drawbacks. The flight went well but when we arrived the staffing at the border control was obviously minimised due to the holidays so to get through took like forever. Once there we got the rental car pretty swiftly and stred driving towards Christchurch city. We immediately discovered that everything was closed, also the bigger supermarkets. Also the restaurants that we passed were all closed. Well, we thought the motel can probaly direct us somewhere to find something to eat. Haha when we came to the motel the reception was locked and there was just a sign saying "Krusenvik room 1".
Anyway after cruising around for a while we eventually found a turkish restaurant that was open. Not cheap but really good food for a hungry family. Thanks Topkapi!

So what was the first impression of NZ. Actually it was a bit like coming home! The air was light and easy to breath. There were birches in the parks and along the roads. The birds were singing instead of screaming like in Aussie and it was of course much cooler, around 20 degrees.
It's said that Christchurch was once a pretty and beautiful little city. The big earthquake in 2011 changed everything. Many of the buildings were destroyed and most of them are still not rebuilt. Unfortunately it seems that it was the ugly buildings that withstood the quake the best. To be honest there is not too much to see or do in Christchurch unless you are particularly interested in cities destroyed by quakes. The botanical garden though was a jewel.
We stayed one night in Christchurch. The next morning the supermarkets were open again so we could go out and buy some breakfast before heading of south to the next planned stay. A night at a small farm outside a village called Geraldine was in the itinerary.
However things didn't turn out as expected...

Cheers

Entering Christchurch. Hmmm

The big cathedral in the centre of the city. The tower was destroyed by the quake

 

There are many ruins like this

Hydrangeas in the botanical garden

Tranquil atmosphere in the botanical garden