Going extreme in New Zealand

Oceania » New Zealand
April 20th 2008

Published: May 9th 2008

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Helena83

Lake Pukaki

What can I say more than BEAUTIFUL!

I don't really know how to start this blog, so I'll just start writing and see what comes out of it. We started our adventure in Christchurch by getting the car we had rented. Luckily it was sunday and there wasn't many other cars on the streets. Because the problem wasn't only that I was driving (which you all know can be a bit dangerous), I was driving on the wrong side of the road!! I tought it would be the scariest thing I've ever done, but pretty soon I realized that for the first time in my life I had an advantage of not knowing the difference between left and right. Once I got started, I didn't see any difference from what I was used too...

Anyway, we couchsurfed one night at Matt and Sams place and the next day we hit the road. After 10 minutes of driving we missed a crossing where we were supposed to turn and ended up driving "the long way". Not a good start, but I blame everthing on my map reader (you can never guess who that was). Like always, we didn't have a plan on where we wanted to go and

The scenery

we had no clue about the distances in NZ. Matt told us that the road down to Queenstown is very beautiful and we should be able to make the trip in about 6 hours. A good daytrip. So we followed his tip and drow down south. After driving a couple of hours we saw a hich hiker next to the road. First we passed him and then we remembered that we had promised ourselves to pick up every hiker we see as long as they don't look like murderers. We turned the car and picked up Brian from Irland who wanted to go to Mt. Cook. We had the greatest time ever in NZ so far! THE SCENERY and NATURE was just wonderful and I had never imagined that just driving around could be so much fun. We stopped many times and the six hour journey ended up taking around 10 hours. A couple of the highlights this day was when I bought my hat and sharf (it was autum and got pretty cold down south), lake Pukaki, having lunch at viewpoint Mt. Cook and much more. A very good start for our road trip in NZ.

Next day

On the road

This picture is interestin because there is a car. That was a rare sight on the southern isalnd

our goal was to drive up to Franz Josef glacier. That was quite a long drive too and we started at 7.30 in the morning. From Queenstown we headed to Wanaka and ended up taking a narrow road over the mountains. That was amazing! At worst we couldn't see more than a couple of meter ahead of us, the clouds were just too thick. We had breakfast in Wanaka sitting in our car looking out on on the lake in the town. Here I decided that if there is one place my mother has to see, it is New Zealand and I am not going to stop talking about it before she agrees to make a new roadtrip with me. My plan is now to take her there when she turns 60 and I turn 30.

NZ is undescribable! THE SCENERY is more beautiful than I ever could imagine and what makes it even better is that you don't have make an effort to find the beautiful spots. You don't even have to read your guidebook because everywhere you drive there is signs telling you what you can see when you make a turn to left or right in

On our way to Wanaka

This is when we could see nothing. And it was so cool!

a couple of hundered meters. In the beginning we stopped at every viewpoint until we realized that there just is too many of them.

The funny thing is that every once in a while you suddenly realized that you could aswell be in Lappland with all the hills and short trees around you. Or when you drive trough a forrest you could easily be anywhere in Finland. When you see the montains you start thinking of Norway and every now and then there is a huge valley where there is a lot of cows and sheep and agriculture and you think, this could be Scandinavia any day. Now both Anna and I are convinced that NZ should be moved up to Scandinavia where it belongs. The Kiwis most have done something terrible in the past when their country was put so far away from everything.

But back to our roadtrip. We saw the ocean for the first time in NZ on our way up to Franz Josef. The weather was beautiful and as far as you could see there was this amazing turquoise water. We stopped for lunch and even if the sand flies where eating us alive

Franz Josef glasier

It is impressive, I have to admit that.

we sat there, listening and looking at the ocean.

We arrived in Franz Josef in the afternoon and made a trip to the viewpoint from where you could see the glacier. Everyone we met told us we missed out a lot when we didn't take a glacier tour to walk on the ice. We tried to explain that we are from Finland and we have seen snow and ice many times and what we are trying to do at the moment is avod everything like that. Apparently it isn't the same as seeing snow, but to be honest I have a hard time beliving somone from UK or AUS who probably thinks that frost is snow. We've seen a lot of snow and we like it, but we don't want to "pay us sick" to se more. Franz Josef was cool but the next day we continued to Abel Tasman, the national park in the northern part on South Island.

In Abel Tasman we stayed two nights. We had heard that it is beautiful and the best thing to do there is to do some kayaking, which we did. Anna and I hate taking tours, so we ended

This is me..

and my new look. Check in the hat and the sharf.

doing "freedom kayaking" for a day. Once again it was beautiful, even if it felt like kayaking on a lake in Finland exept for the salty water. One thing that is not easy to find in a lake in Finland (even if it is possible) is 20 seals lying on some cliffs on an island. We did and they where hillarious. Sadly we couldn't take any pictures, so you just have to imagine small seals (around 1 meter) playing in the water and resting in the sun.

After driving like madmans for a couple of days we where really exhausted and we new we had to rest before we reatched Wellington and Mr New Zealand (our new friend we met in Thailand). We "parked" our kayak on an empty beach and fell asleap on the sand. It wasn't that warm, but a very nice temperature for a nap.

Now I have to discuss the weather in NZ a bit. We had heard horror stories about all the rain they have in this country. But exept for the first 3 hours the first day, we had sun shine all the time! We also tought it would be extremely cold,

The Ocean

The sceanery is just too fantastic

but during the days it was like on a nice (not too warm) summer day back home! I tought these stories about crappy weather was one of these stupid things people say about a countries, like: "In Finland icebears are walking on the streets". Sadly I was later proven wrong. I'll get back to this.

Time goes fast when you have fun and suddenly it was friday and time to head to Wellington, the capital of Aotearoa "land of the long white cloud". That is by the way what maori's call the country and I only wrote it down to prove that I can spell it=). In Wellington Mr New Zealand had promised to open his mini-guesthouse for us and make sure we get some PARTY-PARTY. He kept his promise. Mr NZ lived in a cool old (not sure if you can call anything in NZ old..) wooden house on Mt Victoria, with an amazing view over the city. After arriving to the house it didn't take long before we continued doing what we did in Thailand, drinking Chang beer. And only one thing comes out of that: Party-Party!!! we had also prepared a bottle of Fisu to have

The forrest

These trees look like ents. I didn't go to check out if thay could talk.

something finnish to give, and "sadly" we (Anna, Mr NZ, Manuel and I) emptied almost the whole bottle just for ourselves. A crazy night, I won't try to explain in details what we did and what happened, couse belive me, you don't want to know and I wouldn't be able to tell you even if I wanted. But one thing worth mentioning is the cucumber show Mr NZ had for us. Thank you for that!! And as always the best time to make decisions is when you are drunk. That is why Anna and I decided to try sky diving while we are in NZ. Even if I was a bit drunk this is something I would never come up with myself and I blame it all on the guys... We headed to the centre and went to a lot of bars, one of them was called Molly Malones which I tought was funny and the rest I can't remember. Exept that there was one bar that didn't want to let me in because the doorman tought I was too drunk (don't understand where he had got that idea from). Manuel saved the situation by explaning that I'm from Finland

Anna and pancake rocks

This is one of the places we found thansk to the nice signs along the road.

and don't speak english well enough to make myself understood. Thank you for helping me out!

I don't understand how we managed to do it, but next day we went for a long walk in the city with Mr NZ, Mark and Manuel. We took the cable car up to the botanic garden, walked along the harbour and went for a beer (eli tasottava). Wellington is lovely. It is a small city next to the ocean with everything you could ask for. I don't know why, but there was a lot of modern art everywhere and that made the stroll around the city very interesting.

For the evening we had planned a barbecue coz Mr NZ had a grill on his balcony. The second evening was a lot more quiet even if the house this time was full of people. I guess we where a bit tired, but we did have a lot fun. Anna invented a new extreme sport, balcony diving, which is pretty extreme but not as extreme as balcony jumping. That was something we didn't try.

Sunday really felt like a sunday, in a good way I mean. We took our car (which by

More scenery

Lord of the rings. The fellowship is paddling along the river.Looks familiar?

the way was called DJimmy) and drove around, played mini golf, had fish and chips for lunch and relalxed. In the evening it felt sad to know that I had to leave the next day and that is when you know you've had a great time!

Now it was time for the northern island and time to learn what people mean when they say that it is raining in NZ. It started to rain. It didn't stop for many days. Driving was horrible, especielly when I still on thusday (two days after Wellington) felt that I had a hangover. We didn't do much, stayed one night in Napier and continued to Taupo. In Taupo the rain got so bad that the electricity went off in the hostel and the rain started to flow in. We were depressed. On wednesday we came to Rotorua and at this point I desperately needed some action. What I did, was that I took a maori tattoo on my foot. It is the perfect souvenir from NZ, something a just can not loose!

It was still raining and we decided not to stay in Rotorua longer than one night. We headed up north

Me and our car

This is DJimmy.

to Auckland early on thursday morning and at some point the rain stopped!! Hurray! We were so happy! Now it was time for one of the have-to-do-things in NZ. We took a round of golf on Waitomo golf course. This was a nice, early start of the season and with my 15 points for 9 holes I must say that I'm satisfied. Later we went to the Glowworm cave and that was one of the coolest things I've seen for a while. It was a cave full with worms and it looked like a night sky filled with stars. I learned that glowworms a quite funny creatures. They live like worms hanging from the seeling for many months, eating their own species and once they become flies they only live for 4 days because they don't have a mouth. The only thing they are supposed to do is lay more eggs. An interesting life!

Auckland I didn't like. There was just nothing special with the city and I didn't like the atmosphere. Our only mission here was to jump out from an airplane. And so we did. It is impossible to explain what it feels like, I just want

I am driving...

Check out the vinyards!

to advise all of you to try it for yourselves. It was en exellent ending of our fantastic NZ adventure. And even if I tought this tandem jump would be a once in a life time experience, I know now that I will do it again as soon as I get the chance!

I am embarrased to admit how little I knew about NZ before I went there. I still don¡t know alot, but I know what the country feels like. In my head I just could see millions of sheep (which they by the way have) and Lord of the rings. I knew that the people where called kiwis, but I didn't know why. Now I have seen a kiwi and they are adorable. I belived that kiwis (now I'm talking about the people) where a bit wierd (don't blame me, all the kiwis I had met so far had been behaving wierdly). But I learned that kiwis are the most friendly and genuine people, not to mention that the men look very good. The two weeks we had there are unforgetable. To make a long story short: I love New Zealand. Exept for the bad locasion, the