New Zealand: The deep South

In the deep south there are not that many cultural highlights, but the natural ones make up for that. In this sparsely populated area you can find beautiful beaches, meadows overflowing with flowers and truely awesome waterfalls.

Bluff is the southernmost city on the south Island

Further to the south, on Stewart Island, lies the town of Oban, population 390. This was the southernmost point of my travel and with nearly 47° S probably the southernmost point I will ever reach.

The best thing to do in the south is to encounter the wildlife. Never before did I come that close to Keas, seals and penguins. (Well, apart from the zoo, obviously)

New Zealand: Queenstown

If I would be interested in mad adrenalin-junkie kinds of things this would be my dream city. You have the opportunity for bungy-jumping, jetboating, skydiving and so on.
While I´m not into that kind of stuff, this city still has some things that make it stand out for me. The landscape it is located in looks absolutely awesome. You have everything here from a lake up to hills and mountains.

The local icons are Fergburger (much better than McDumb or BurgerShrink) and the World Bar, where cocktails are served in Teapots.

I couldn´t longer resist and took a LOTR tour in the vicinity of Queenstown. It was probably one of the better things I´ve done in NZ. I couldn´t connect the places we visited with film locations (of course the guide had the movie stills to prove that this actually were filming locations), but the tour would have been worth taking even if I wouldn´t have known any of the films. You may have a guess at the scenes by looking at the pictures. Besides LOTR, there were scenes from Narnia and Wolverine shot here, as well as many commercials.

Near Queenstown lies Arrowtown, an old goldmining place that has been restaurated to make it appealing to tourists. It´s really nice there and you can actually try to wash your own gold out of the river. The museum is stunning, considering that it´s located in that small a town. They even have archeological sites, digging up and rebuilding the old huts the miners were living in.

New Zealand: North and Westcoast of the South Island

The northern coast of the South Island has allegedly the most Sun-hours of the whole of New Zealand. While driving there you can see one vineyard after another on both sides of the road. After a little wine-tasting I can say that there´s some good stuff out there. I was especially pleased by the local Riesling. Normally a sort of grape known for a high amount of acid, the local ones here are much sweeter.

The highlight of the northern coast is of course the Abel Tasman National Park. Heaps of golden beaches, enclosed by native forest, little waterfalls near the walking tracks, absolutely lovely.

The Westcoast in contrast gets much more rain than the rest of the country and that was exactly what I experienced while travelling there. I was looking forward to do a glacier walk on the Franz-Josef, but it was raining all day. I did the walk nonetheless, but the experience was not exactly pleasant.

The Southern Alps are a stunning sight to be sure. Especially when the sun happens to shine every once in a while.

New Zealand: Wellington

Wellington is a really nice city. I especially enjoyed the visit at the Te Papa, where I spent nearly six hours. They present very diverse topics in an entertaining style. The most impressive object on display was of course the giant squid. Besides that they regularly have perfomances of different bands/groups there. In the museum´s café I ate the best double chocolate brownie ever. That brownie alone would be worth another visit.

Because of the many hills in/by the city, I got many opportunities to take a good view of the city. But boy, I wouldn´t have thought it to be that challenging to make my way to the top of Mount Vic by foot. For the visit to Mount Eden I took the cable car.

I took a tour of the parliament building. It´s very sad that I wasn´t allowed to take pictures in there, the interior looks really great. I felt like I was transported back into late 19th century. Equally interesting were the facts about New Zealands political system our guide told us. For example, every citizen who wants to speak to a board discussing a new law must be heard. That´s very unique. On the way out I saw children playing rugby on the lawn right in front of the parliament and no one drove them off. Sweet.

New Zealand: Auckland to Wellington

I´m really glad that I took exactly the bus company I did for getting around in NZ. Up to now there were only nice people on the bus, especially including the driver. Everyday there would be people getting on and off the bus, but a few of us stayed together for the whole trip to Wellington. At this time we were already so close with each other that we decided to celebrate our last evening together.





The tour itself was awesome. At first we visited the Coromandel, a first-class holiday spot with nice beaches and the well-known tourist attraction Cathedral Cove. Another highlight was the obligatory digging of a hot pool at Hot Water Beach. What made this unique was the fact that we did it in the middle of the night.



Another highlight for me was the night in the middle of the rainforest near Raglan. They built some huts there on a hillside. When you looked from the porch all you would see were the treetops and bushes. It felt like living in a green heaven.

When we arrived at the Tongariro national park the weather was so bad that we decided to chill in front of a cozy fire rather than go hiking. Luckily the weather changed somewhat so we were able to go on a short walk at least. the landscape up there looks awesome even when it´s cloudy. On a clear day it must be breathtaking.

The arrival in Wellington was way too early. I could have stayed with the bunch for quite some time. I sure hope that the next group I will be travelling with on the South Island will be as good as these guys.

P.S. Some pros and cons about living in NZ that I have figured out so far:

Pro
The people are way more relaxed
Awesome nature
Good local wines

Con
No real bread here
Everyone drives on the wrong side
Chlorinated tap water