Kia ora

...to all my friends and fans of our travel blog.

This time we will report about our first two weeks at the end of the world – New Zealand.
After a very comfortable flight with LAN and after relaxing 9 hours of sleep we arrived in Auckland on March 5th at 4:30am. After two months of serious communication problems we were glad to be back in an English speaking country, although the Kiwis (New Zealanders) have their own way to use the language. Beside a bunch of very funny phrases  such a “sweet as” or “good ey” they generally pronounce every e as an i but don’t like it, when foreigners do that too because it is wrong!?!
 Auckland, also called the city of sails, is the largest city in kiwi kingdom where more than a third of all kiwis live. I have to admit that we immediately fell in love with this beautiful city.

Built on the back of over 40 volcanoes, Auckland is probably the greenest city we’ve ever seen. After the exhaustive road trip in Chile we decided to switch back one gear and start our exploration of the end of the world slowly. We bought a couple of things which got torn on the way or which had to be replaced urgently, went into the movie theatre a few times and…had a lot of sushi. Due to the fact that Auckland is the biggest Polynesian hub in the world, Asian restaurant are on every, really every corner and offer incredible delicious food for a very good price. Sushi is here the fast food and cheaper and better than I had it anywhere in the world before. Since our arrival we have sushi 2-3 times a day – this is birthday, Easter, Christmas and NYE together every day.

My favourite: Soy coat with spicy rice

Moreover, Kiwis live very healthy and even in the supermarket u get all kind of salad creations, smoothies with kiwifruit and self service muesli. And...for breakfast the Kiwis eat toast topped with Vegemite or Marmite which both are very salty creams that look like chocolate. Actually, Marmite is real Kiwi and Vegemite is Aussi.

Lovely salty cream! U should eat eggs to it...

First we explored the harbor in our new vibrams (finger shoes), which are very comfortable after you got used to them, followed by museums and parks.

 

Going up the sky tower, with 330m the highest building in the southern hemisphere, was definitely one of the highlights although we didn’t dare to do the bungy jump. From up there u have an incredible 360° view over the entire city and we counted about 20 of the numerous green volcanoes.

View from the Sky-Tower!

We concluded the day with a short hike up Mt Eden (also a volcano) close to our hostel, sitting on a park bench and enjoying this peaceful and magical area.

Mt. Eden.

After spending 5 days in Auckland we met with Patrick, our kiwi couchsurfer we hosted three years ago, at the airport and flew to Wellington, New Zealands capital city.

View over Wellington.

Although significantly smaller than Auckland, Wellington offers a lot of things to do. On the first evening we were invited to a BBQ at friends of Patrick and got to know a bunch of friendly kiwis and had sheep sausages. On Sunday Patrick took us to the Weirarapa, an area north east of Wellington, where he grew up. At this point we understood why people say, that New Zealand starts after you left Auckland.

Patrick and Mike near Carterton.

  

No matter where you look it is green. Everything is covered by juicy grass and a variety of bushes, flowers and palm trees. The kiwis are very respectful to their environment and try to maintain their green treasure with a lot of effort. Hence it is no wonder that you can drink directly from the river and hardly find trash lying around.

The only really surprising thing in New Zealand is that there are no dangerous animals, no snakes, and none of all the other animals that usually live under such ideal conditions. One reason might be jungle itself which seems to have a life on its own. After passing another set of hanging bridges, Mike came a little bit too close to one of the trees and got captured.

After saving me for so many times now it was my turn to save my hero!

After saving my hero from the fury claws of the forest, we went to Patrick’s parents who run, what a surprise, a sheep farm and had dinner. We had awesome sheep meat with sweet potatoes, pumpkin and delicious gravy.
Back in Wellington we went to Somes Island, a tiny island in the harbor. This little paradise is the home of various birds including the little blue penguin, sheeps of course and one of the largest insects in the world – the weta.

Giant weta’s can reach a weight up to 70g and the size of your hand. Because they a nocturnal animals and usually hard to find, the park rangers built “weta motels”, where they like to sleep and hence are easy to observe. On the following picture you can see tree wetas, which are one of the smaller species.

The day after Patrick showed us the Botanic garden of Wellington. At this time of the year u can listen there to a lot of free concerts while relaxing on the lawn. I decided that it’s time again to do a short workout and abused the children playground for my purposes.

On March 17th we started our road trip around the North Island of New Zealand which will be the topic of our next entry. With these nice pictures, we, and our kinky mascot say good bye for this time and we’ll be back soon with a new adventurous report from the end of the world.

Kisses

Jiny & Mike