Blogs from Canterbury Plains, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 5

After staying with Paul and Joanne we stayed with Jason's friend 'Jon' and his family in the St Lucia area of Brisbane. This gave us more of an Australian city life experience and also some pool time! Jons girlfriends mother Helen very kindly took us up the Sunshine coast north of Brisbane. This is where we got to visit Steve Irwins Australia Zoo. This is a fantastic zoo and I got to stroke and cuddle wombats! We later went onto visit Caloundra where Helen lives and the Eumundi Markets. This is an excellent craft market where you can get miniature pancakes as well. We spent Australia Day (Jan 26th) in Brisbane watching the fireworks along the river. A few days later we flew off to Christchurch, New Zealand for the start of our three week tour ... read more

Here we are again, in an internet cafe in Christchurch. We leave tomorrow for Thailand at 3:00pm from Auckland and arrive in Bangkok, Thailand at 10:00pm, after a 12 hour flight. Somewhere in there we travel back in time five hours. After our arrival, we have to navigate our way through a huge city with no order in the way its streets and street numbers are assigned and find some road named Khao San to find a place to sleep. The adventure continues...In Thailand by the time this happens it may not be much later than midnight, pretty late, however being accustomed to New Zealand time, this is sometime aroung 5:00am. But I guess we're still young and since our fly by the seat of our pants attitude has led us this far, why not see ... read more

We left Kaikoura just as their annual Seafest began, and tourists started flooding into the city. We drove about two and a half hours to the beautiful city of Christchurch, and spent a few hours wandering around the city center. We explored the botanic garden, and punted down the Avon River in this very English inspired city. It was a very different (and welcome) boating experience from the day before. Calm, quiet, no swells, and no buckets needed. From Christchurch, we took the summit road over the mountains surrounding the city, all the way out to Banks Peninsula. Brian's knuckles were white as a sheet when we arrived at the Le Bons Bay Backpackers, our accomodations for the next two days. The roads were full of amazing, "absurdly beautiful" vistas, hairpin turns and steep climbs and ... read more

Prichod na NZ (28.8.2005) Po prilete na Novy Zealand som si musel vyzut topanky a zobrali mi ich do oddelenia “Department of Food and Agriculture” kde mi ich dokonale vycistili a dezinfikovali, zevraj na nich mohli byt nebezpecne europske mikroorganizmy. Musel som sice 10 minut cakat v ponozkach, ale aj tak - diky za ocistenie ! To iste spravili s nasim stanom, fakt skvele sluzby hned takto po prichode.. V Aucklande sme vybehli von z letiskovej haly v paperovych bundach a s nasadenymi mackami a cakanmi pripraveni na Novo-Zealandsku zimu.. Aky bol ale nas uzas ked bolo vonku asi 25 stupnov a ludia chodili v trickach a sandaloch.. Nase obavy o nezvycajnej zime sa potvrdili cestou z Aucklandu do Christchurchu ked sme z lietadla videli ze snehova pokryvka je na horach dost sporadicka.. zacali sme mat ... read more

Guten Tag, alle zusammen! Bungee jumpen, wandern, Fallschirm springen...das alles kann man auch in Deutschland machen. Was in Deutschland nicht geht (zumindest nicht unter freiem Himmel - vielen Dank Neusser Skihalle!!!) ist skifahren im August... :-) Am Sonntag morgen um halb acht haben sich drei mutige Abenteurer - Air Henrik, The Englishman James und Sascha Knoxville - auf den Weg gemacht um eine der letzten Bastionen des Schreckens und der Abenteuerlust zu bezwingen. Zugegebenermaßen, Mt. Hutt ist ein süßer kleiner Hügel im Vergleich zu den Alpen (grad mal 2000m hoch) aber dafür ist er auch nur 90m min Fahrt von Christchurch entfernt...ha! An diesem Sonntag hatten wir Glück, es lag tatsächlich ein wenig Schnee. Das ist nicht unbedingt selbstverständlich, letztes Jahr um diese Ziet hatten die hier 2m, dieses Jahr rühmen sie sich stolz mit 30cm...naja, ... read more