Picturetime

After seven weeks we are leaving New Zealand today and I would like to show you some pictures of the North Island. We spend some time on beautiful beaches,
Than we went underground in some old gold mine. But 200 years ago they did not leave any gold for us ;(

Of course there are lots of hot springs everywhere and a few impressive geysers

But a "high"light was our attemt to climb Mount Dome from "Lord of the Rings", where we ended up at windspeeds of 50-80 km/h and pouring rain:

But there are other volcanos around which are even higher and more impressive as Ruapehoe

and Mout Taranaki. At the top:

and from the bottum.

We will fly from Auckland to Singapore tonight and will enjoy a beautilfull view from a nice hotel over the habor. Looking forward to see you all again at home!

Sunshine

Sonnenschein! Okay, ich muss zugeben, dass wir schon seit einigen Tagen Sonne haben und man eigentlich sagen kann, dass wir waehrend unserer Zeit hier in NZ 50% Regen und Sonne hatten. Also recht fair.
Right now we are next to Auckland. We went today on an island called Tiritiri Matangi Island and enjoyed watching wonderfull rare birds. Next Tuesday at 1:10h we will try to catch our plane to go to Singapore and afterwards heading back to Zurich arriving there at 23h in Baden hopefully.
Just a week left ...still we are excited to meet you all at home at -10Degree Celsius, show you our thousands of pictures and talk a lot...
Here a short overview, what we have done so far:
At the Southern Island we went from Nelson (after the Abel Tasman Great Walk) to Picton. There we were invited by a nice Kiwi sailor to join a Regatta at the Marlborough Sounds. Awesome. Ingo just lost his hat during a "Halse". But his head is fine. On Christmas we stayed in Wellington. Afterwards we headed to New Plymouth to spend wonderful 4 days hiking around the Mt Taranaki (a vulcano also called Mt Egmont). Afterwards we joined a tour and hiked up the Mt Ruapehue to the Crater Lake by sunshine (Tongariro National Park). It seems that Kiwis do not hike down they slide down. Was really fun in the snow. Unfortunately the weather for the Tongariro Crossing (there you pass Mt Doom from Lord of the Rings) was really bad. We hiked the Tongariro crossing at 50-80km/h wind speed, clouds, rain and no stunning views. Nevertheless it was really exciting especially when other people turned around. ;-)
In Taupo we enjoyed swimming in the hot springs recommended by Thomas and in Rotorua it is really worth it to spent 40 Dollars for Te Puia. There I saw my geyser and Ingo his kiwis (real ones I mean birds). In Coromandel we enjoyed the sunny beach at the Cathedral cave where you can jump from a rock, swim in the ocean and afterwards taking a shower at a small waterfall.
Okay and now we will head north to see the huge Kauri Trees. I have to leave you now. Have to get some food before heading to the Auckland Observatory.

Kia Ora

We wish you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS! Ours is almost done! We mean at least the evening of the 24th of December. Right now we are at the YHA in Wellington. Tja, but no BBQ at the beach. Guess what: It is raining. But okay for us. At least it feels like at home. We wish you all the best and enjoy the holidays. Cheers Silke and Ingo

Question?

Falls hier mal ein Biologe vorbeikommen sollte. Was genau ist der Unterschied zwischen Robben, Seeloewen und Seehunden. Die liegen hier alle am Strand und auf den Felsen rumm. Mal stinken sie total und mal sind sie gross und mal kleiner. Robbe scheint ein Ueberbegriff fuer alle zu sein. Ja, ich weiss Papa, Du hast mir das frueher alles vorgelesen, aber das ist jetzt schon fast 30 Jahre her ... Cheers, Ingo

Picturetime !

There are still a few promissed pictures missing. For example the ass of the rhino that we saw in the dschungle of Nepal:
But we are in New Zealand. There you have a nice green country with white little dots that prove to be sheep. There are 40 million of them, while there are 4 million people living here and something like 3-4 million people come to visit New Zealand each year.

Ower roadtrip continued through green/white hills to mountains, where you can go hiking of course.



But NZ does not only only have mountains, there is also lots of rain forrest. And this forrest has the nice feature that it is raining there (as it is supposed to do).

We were told that it rains only two days in a row. Which means that every third day you can have really impressive views of the "stunning" landscape:



Ahja and I almost fotgot the ocean. Silke at the (almost) southern most point of the island:


You can see Albatrosses flying in that region:

Sorry, for lots of typos. But no worries, it's late and the computer is cheap right now.

No worries!

Back to the computer. Sorry that we are not writing so often in our blog anymore as we did in Nepal. There are so many things to do! Let me think what we have done the last two weeks. We drove from Christchurch to Arthurs Pass, did the Avalanche Peak Trail (WONDERFUL weather and view) drove through Methven to Oamaru met the Blue Pinguins at 22h in the evening and the Yellow Eyed in the morning at 6h. From Oamaru we had quite a bit of rain on the way to Dunedin (by the way please try to pronounce it...in german...DANIEDEN). In Dunedin we went to the Chocolate Factory (Cadbury). Sorry for the Swiss I never had the chance to visit Spruengli, but I will definetly do that when I am back....you get a lot of chocolate at least here... We actually stayed not in Dunedin but on the Otago Penninsula at the Mc Farmers Backpackers. Really nice place and you can right go to see the Albatross Colony. Heading south we saw millions of sheeps more than cows and dead possums on the street. The Catlins (right in the south) are wonderful too and there are not so many tourist.....but rain. We did not stay long in the Catlins and went as well through Invercargill and Dipton (sorry Thomas, we missed to visit your friends unfortunately), passed through Queenstown (there your start to feel old with all the young people looking for adventures: skydiving, paracliding etc....by the way just take a bus from Kathmandu to Pokhara, that is more than an adventure and your adrenalin level stays high for quite a while) stayed in Wanaka for a night and went to Lake Manapouri. Now imagine sunshine in Milford Sound, having breakfast on the cruise in the morning and then in the afternoon a 5hour tramp (for free) through rainforest, between mountains, climb next to a waterfall, then to a lake and reach (walking through snow) the Gertrud Saddle from which you can see the Milford Sound. AWESOME! Okay back in Manapouri we drove north to Haast and did the Welcome Flat Tramp (7hours to the Welcome Hut through rainforest). After the hike you can put yourself into the hot springs (really hot, not only nepalese hot) which is quite muddy of course. Really cool especially if you have the springs for your own. Nice Hut by the way, but guess what: RAIN again! So we hiked back took the car visited the Fox and the Franz Josef Glaciers and headed north to Charleston. Beautiful route if you have fair weather (what we did ;-)). The backpacker where we stayed was great as well. Solar powered, toilet working like a compost and everything so quiet and clean. Okay forget about the bushrat (not a jungle chicken as in Nepal) which was trying to get inside the wood on the roof. No really, if you are ever in Charleston go to the Beaconstone Backpackers. Ah, I almost forgot that we went to the Christmas Parade in Westport. Just imagine carneval in Oberdiebach ;-). It was just very small and a real Kiwi thing. Right now we are in Nelson and prepare our Abel Tasman Walk which will start overtomorrow. That is all for today. Hey we wish you all a wonderful 3. Advent.

Rain Rain Rain

Also das ist ja schon lustig. In E-Mails wuenschen alle viel Spass bei Sommer-Sonne-Sonnenschein. Aber hier ist davon nichts zu sehen. Es regnet und das soll die naechsten Tage noch so bleiben. Aber ich hoffe mal, dass das den Pinguinen und Seeloewen egal ist, die wir die naechsten Tage sehen wollen. Gruesse aus Oamaru!