Category: Continent

Making the most of my surprise extra day in Wellington – even the weather is playing along, brightening up for an afternoon trip to the Botanical Garden. I even discovered something I hadn’t seen before: the old cemetery above Thorndon, between the gardens and the city centre, which makes for an interesting contrast. I’m so glad for this, it’s much nicer than leaving in the middle of a storm…

The last few days on the South Island were absolutely lovely. The daytrip to Abel Tasman National Park was great – first a boattrip to Torrent Bay, then walking back along the Abel Tasman trail for about 4-5 hours. I ended up in a group of four for most of it, with Janneke from Holland, Daria from Germany and Bruno from Brazil. Janneke was at the YHA with me, so after a day of the great (and beautiful) outdoors, we ended up in the sauna at the hostel. 🙂

In the morning I left for Picton, which turned out to be a short but eventful busride, as we had to stop several times for a passenger with diarrhoe. I wasn’t feeling too great either, because I had really bad cramps. Thanks to painkillers they were mostly gone by the time we reached Picton and I decided to see Bruno again before he left on the ferry to Wellington that day. After that I went for a nice little walk along the coast in the Victoria Domain. The evening I spent reading in the dorm room that I had to myself – during the 3 weeks of travel I think I read 16 books in total, thanks to bookswap shelves in all the hostels!

The ferry trip back to Wellington today was nice, the weather couldn’t be better and, while I couldn’t read once we were out on the open sea, I was able to sit on the sundeck and didn’t get seasick at all. We even saw two schools of dolphins in Malborough Sounds! And in Wellington Supryia and Rathy picked me up and I’ve been chilling at my old place of residence with Rathy, Jessica and Meredith. It is good to be back, but also rather strange because I’m no longer living here, just staying for a visit… Anyway, got lots of plans for the next week, obviously, meeting people and seeing places one more time. But first, here’s the last photos I took on the South Island, as always to be found in full on Flickr:

Managed to get the pictures from Franz Josef (only two, because of the abysmal weather) and Punakaiki (a lot, including two short films, because of the stunning coast) as well as some from the bus trips (Queenstown – Franz Josef – Punakaiki – Nelson) and the pictures I took today. As always all photos can be found on Flickr. (But boy, the internet is quite slow here and I only had an hour’s internet time, so apologies for the unfinishedness of the titles/comments/tags.)

Mainly I hung around town today (Starbucks! I hadn’t had my mint hot chocolate in over a week – and they promptly raised the prices… *g*), walked along the river and went to see ‘Mamma Mia’ in the cinema. Tomorrow I’ll go to Abel Tasman National Park, which should be good for more photos. 🙂

I spent the last three days here in Queenstown, which is pretty much New Zealand’s tourist capital. It feels almost like one of the Swiss resort towns, including the beautiful scenery – and the prices… I spent the first day wandering around the town and taking a gondola ride. Yesterday I went skiing in nearby Cadrona, big for kiwi standards but tiny for Europeans. Still, the weather was gorgeous and the snow good. Today I went on a Lord of the Rings location tour to Glenorchy at the end of Lake Waikatipu, which was very lovely as well. You can’t go much more beautiful than here, really…

I’ve also been quite the social butterfly, meeting up with people I’d met in Te Anau (Misato from the hostel and Charlotte and Miriam from the Doubtful Sound tour) as well as hanging out with people met here at the YHA (American sisters Ziba and Vija from my dorm room and Aussie Dave from the Cardrona tour).

As always, you can find more photos here on Flickr.

What I haven’t managed in 10 days of traveling yet is calling my parents. The next few days I’ll be in Franz Josef, staying with my friend Kevin, who’s a glacier guide there, then I’m heading further up the west coast, one of my favorite parts of New Zealand. We’ll see how the internet situation will be…

On Friday evening, after seeing a short scenic movie about Fiordland, I went to see the Glowworm Caves on the other side of Lake Te Anau. The caves were quite impressive, masses of water rushing through them, and the glowworms pretty – as long as you don’t look at them too closely, that is. 🙂 I’ve seen more glowworms in the Waitomo Caves in the North Island, but it was a very nice way to spend the evening.

The best bit, though, was that it started snowing just as we got back – and in the morning everything was white and lovely. It was the perfect day for the trip to Doubtful Sound, which turned out to be incredibly gorgeous! First a boat ride across Lake Manapouri, then an excursion down the powerstation there, before we rode a bus through the mountains and snowy forests to Doubtful. The cruise couldn’t have been any better – we even saw a school of dolphins at play. Simply an amazing day, and I ended it by watching a couple of movies in our dorm room with two German girls.

As the photo album here on the site doesn’t seem to work, you can see the rest of the pictures here on Flickr.

Today I’m taking it easy here in Te Anau – my bus to Queenstown only leaves at 5pm.