Tour through New Zealand
Friday, 26. September 2008, 05:51:05
Evening flight to Christchurch. Watching the All Blacks game (they won against Australia, woohoo!)
Getting the car in the morning and off we go:
- Dunedin
- Catlins and the most Southern Point of the South Island (well, was not accessible at that moment, a hint for future extreme points! at least there were some fun gravel roads!!)
- Invercargill
- Te Anau
- Queenstown (suddenly, skiers and snowboarders all over the place, very unexpected)
- Wanaka (still some snowboarders, but less crowded)
- over the Haast Pass to Haast
- Greymouth (even less crowded, completly dead after 7 pm (I arrived at about 6.30!, so not much to do there)
- Waiatu (ok, there I knew that it won't be crowded, a former goldmine- now ghost town)
- back over the Alps (the southern ones!!) to Kaikoura (not much more people than in Greymouth or Waiatu)
- Through the Wine-Regions of the Marlborough Sound (exactly on the other side of the World of the Bordeaux region) to
- Nelson (some more people there because it was Rugby evening, this time Auckland, and they too won (woohoo again!!). This is where the (THE) Ring was really forged (Jens Hansen Jewellery, the rumour of the Fires of Mt. Doom are all wrong!)
- to Picton and the Inter Island Ferry to
- Wellington, the windy city. It really lived up to its reputation. Te Papa, the National Museum
- Napier, after a earthquake completely rebuilt in ArtDeco.
- East Cape (inaccessible!)
- Whakatane
- Rotorua (very smelly, because of the active Volcanoes there)
- Taupo, on the shore of a gigantic crater lake
- Round the Tongariro National Park (very cloudy, foggy, misty that day, so no Mt. Doom (or Ngauruhoe) for me! also the other Volcanoes were not visible, and also the road further than 30 m))
- back to Taupo, playing a round of Golf, not at Wairakei (in the Top100 list of the World, but at Taupo Golf Club)
- to Auckland
- North to Kawakawa (Hundertwasser lived there his final years and left a toilet)
- Waitangi (where the famous treaty was signed)
- Cape Reinga, the most Northwestern Point, where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific come together, close is the North Cape, which is inaccessible
- now back in Auckland after just over 6000 km in 12 days (a little bit too much driving, but it was worth it)
As always: photos will follow (someday!)
Getting the car in the morning and off we go:
- Dunedin
- Catlins and the most Southern Point of the South Island (well, was not accessible at that moment, a hint for future extreme points! at least there were some fun gravel roads!!)
- Invercargill
- Te Anau
- Queenstown (suddenly, skiers and snowboarders all over the place, very unexpected)
- Wanaka (still some snowboarders, but less crowded)
- over the Haast Pass to Haast
- Greymouth (even less crowded, completly dead after 7 pm (I arrived at about 6.30!, so not much to do there)
- Waiatu (ok, there I knew that it won't be crowded, a former goldmine- now ghost town)
- back over the Alps (the southern ones!!) to Kaikoura (not much more people than in Greymouth or Waiatu)
- Through the Wine-Regions of the Marlborough Sound (exactly on the other side of the World of the Bordeaux region) to
- Nelson (some more people there because it was Rugby evening, this time Auckland, and they too won (woohoo again!!). This is where the (THE) Ring was really forged (Jens Hansen Jewellery, the rumour of the Fires of Mt. Doom are all wrong!)
- to Picton and the Inter Island Ferry to
- Wellington, the windy city. It really lived up to its reputation. Te Papa, the National Museum
- Napier, after a earthquake completely rebuilt in ArtDeco.
- East Cape (inaccessible!)
- Whakatane
- Rotorua (very smelly, because of the active Volcanoes there)
- Taupo, on the shore of a gigantic crater lake
- Round the Tongariro National Park (very cloudy, foggy, misty that day, so no Mt. Doom (or Ngauruhoe) for me! also the other Volcanoes were not visible, and also the road further than 30 m))
- back to Taupo, playing a round of Golf, not at Wairakei (in the Top100 list of the World, but at Taupo Golf Club)
- to Auckland
- North to Kawakawa (Hundertwasser lived there his final years and left a toilet)
- Waitangi (where the famous treaty was signed)
- Cape Reinga, the most Northwestern Point, where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific come together, close is the North Cape, which is inaccessible
- now back in Auckland after just over 6000 km in 12 days (a little bit too much driving, but it was worth it)
As always: photos will follow (someday!)
WIDGETIZE