Blogs from South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 2

Last thursday Ina and I spent our first full day together at Franz Josef Glacier. We arrived around 11:30am and emediatly started the 5½h return hike up to Roberts point to get a good look at the glacier. In the beginnig we had perfect hiking weather: Not to warm and a bit cloudy, but not rainy. 15 minutes in ut first started raining, but according to weather reports it should stop again soon so we were still optimistic. Turns out the weather report was wrong and we spend all but 30min of the 6h it took us to get up and back down walking through rain. Walking is a generous term in this case, most of the time you had to climb over rocks and waterfalls. Once we reached the top, we couldn't even enjoy the ... read more

Well turns out I did in fact not keep you updated, so this might be a long one. I stayed with Ella's family for 11 days, which I spent painting in the mornig, going on long walked on the beach in the afternoon and playing cardgames with my hostfamily or facetiming friends and family back home in the evening. On october 3rd I moved in to my next helpx stay, which I'v been staying with for the last two weeks. Sharon and Nigel live on a smal farm surrounded by a bunch of green hills 30min out of motueka. They have three horses. Taking care of those is my main job here. Besides that I feed the chickens, help moving cows from one padock to another and do cleaning and gardening chores. Most of the day ... read more

NZ – Sydön Kia Ora, Upp tidigt igen – men eftersom redan påklädd så gick det undan. Halva handspritsflaskan rök på desinficering av hotelltoa men annars flöt det på. Kvällen före hade jag handlat lite frukost och mat att klara en lång resdag. Idag skulle jag först ta en skyttel-buss till färjan som skulle över till Picton på Sydön och därifrån med buss ner till Christchurch. Hotellet, eller övernattningsplatsen, låg precis bredvid stationen där shuttle bus skulle gå. Nu låg busshållplatsen precis bredvid spåret och tåget jag åkte igår som nu förbereddes för avfärd tillbaka upp mot Auckland. En numera obligatorisk kram från en på alla vis rejäl train manager och sedan iväg mot färjan. Ombord på en hyggligt modern Ro/pax färja med riktigt fräscha passagerarutrymmen. Färjan över Cook Strait tar c.a 3,5 timmar och vilken ... read more

Oamaru to Nelson and homeward bound Our hotel in Oamaru turned out to be a lovely Victorian white stone building that echoed the town’s historical importance. We sat in 2 leather high-backed winged chairs by the fire and felt very grand. Oamaru was an important port in days of yore and was the centre of the world’s provision of frozen lamb….until the railway made the journey to Picton and then Wellington shorter than by sea and the importance of Oamaru dwindled. It's now deemed to be the home of steampunk and we have yet to discover what that actually means. Quite a lot of odd murals and statues and figures dressed in black, but we’re still none the wiser. We travelled northwards along the pacific road to Christchurch, where we visited the botanic gardens and revisited ... read more

Back to Queenstown and onto our final adventure of the trip Our first foray into Queenstown was brief and very loud. Unfortunately we had to return in order to catch the bus to Tekapo. We decided to try another hostel (after our St Patrick’s day experience of Nomads) and for some reason that Jan cannot explain, we ended up in a hostel called Jucy Snooze, which had all the disadvantages of Nomads but multiplied by 10. It was a truly horrible place...a kitchen the size of a cubicle, with nowhere to sit and eat and very little space to cook. A “chill out room” 4 floors above, that was absolutely freezing and was set up for a drinking game that we didn’t want to play. Our room was right by a fire door that banged shut ... read more