Kia Ora Aotearoa!
This is how we were received in Auckland. Actually, New Zealand, or as it is called by the Maori, the indigenous people: Aotearoa, was not on our travel list at all. New Zealand is actually meeeega far away from everywhere in the world, except for Australians and there also only from the west coast. Since we have to watch our travel budget and coincidentally the flight from Sydney was much more expensive than a stopover in New Zealand, the decision was made: Tatjana and Artur are going to see New Zealand for 6 days 😊 Why 6 days? Because we actually still wanted to follow our original travel plan with South America... So we picked a few attractions we wanted to see, which just took 6 days... *Attention: Spoiler Alert!!!!* or should I rather say HAD?😉
Since this was a very spontaneous idea, we didn't really have much planning time. A few quick searches revealed: Hobbiton + Waitamo Caves + Lake Taupo + Rotarua + Auckland. So, a lot of nature, not much city. A small excerpt of highlights of the North Island. Yes, that's right, you read it right. New Zealand is divided into a North Island and a South Island. That was also new for us. 😊
Day 1 – Waitomo Caves and Ruakuri Cave
On the first day we started very early in the morning towards Waitomo Caves. Thousands of fireflies live in them and when it's really dark, it looks like a starry sky. Arriving at the caves, with the promotional brochure from our accommodation in hand, we booked the tour of Waitomo Cave and Ruakuri Cave. Once glow worms and once stalagmites and stalagtites. Here are a few pictures from Waitomo Cave. No pictures of glow worms were allowed here. Side note: the glow worms are not, as is commonly thought, flies with glowing backsides looking for a mate, but real worms that attract their prey with the light and catch them with their adhesive threads. The glow worms pull up the threads together with their prey and eat the caught prey.
After Ruakuri Cave we spoke to our tour guide and he recommended the Ruakuri Bushwalk, 800m away. This is a 30-45 minute walk through a fern forest. This fern forest turned out to be a small rainforest and left us speechless on the first day. Side note: This was the second time that day that we couldn't close our mouths. The first time was at the countless fireflies in the cave. But look for yourself. The variety of plants was amazing! We especially loved the tree ferns that are characteristic for New Zealand. About 300 pictures later and a little wet, because it started to drizzle, we went back overland to our accommodation. On the way, we enjoyed the landscape and took away an incredible number of impressions. You can see more in the pictures 😊
Oh well... in the evening we ate in a fish & chips restaurant and met a nice local with his son, who gave us various tips on what we should definitely see. The two of them were also the second and third persons who told us that we should definitely visit the South Island, which is fantastic...
Day 2 – Lake Taupo + Huka Falls + Orakei Korako
On the second day we went again early in the morning, as we had no time to lose, towards the volcano crater lake. After Lake Toba (Sumatra - Indonesia), this was the second crater lake we visited on our trip. Some of you may wonder why New Zealand has crater lakes... It's because New Zealand is also on the Pacific Ring of Fire. We had already written a paragraph about this in the Sumatra article. In any case, due to its location on the Ring of Fire, New Zealand has many smaller and larger volcanoes, thermal springs and also regularly smaller and larger earthquakes. More about this later.
As you can see from the pictures, there are these strange wooden sculptures everywhere and these unique patterns and these special names... You'll find out later what they are all about 😉 After the short visit to the crater lake, we went to the actual attraction. The Huka Falls waterfall. Here, turquoise water flowed through a crevice at an insane speed and plunged several metres into the depths at the end. Even at a certain distance, it was very impressive and made it clear to us again how little chance we actually have against nature and that we humans should rather work with nature. This power, the sounds and the spray that was blown into our faces by the wind was very impressive.
And the third point we wanted to visit that day was the Orakei Korako thermal field. We felt a little queasy when we were given a safety briefing at the ticket office, telling us not to stray from the path as there was a danger of collapse everywhere and that we should be careful as some of the water or mud ejected was a hundred degrees hot, there were emergency telephones only at a few forks in the road and there was no mobile phone reception... After we had gained our first volcano experience in Indonesia on the volcano Berastagi and are now professional amateur volcanologists, this did not deter us. So we took a boat over to the other side of the river, where it was already steaming dangerously... We were only there with 3 other visitors. It was impressive. Water or mud was bubbling everywhere. There were almost all the colours you can imagine in nature AND the most fascinating thing: as soon as the water cooled down a bit, algae formed. Algae means life. But see for yourself 😊
Day 3 – Hobbiton – Redwoods – Wai-O-Tapu Thermalfield and Caravan
Now used to getting up early, we went to the film set of Hobbiton from Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit very early in the morning. Peter Jackson, the director, who himself comes from New Zealand, was looking for a suitable location for the film set for Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and found a farm that was predestined for it. The Hobbiton film set is now there and can be visited. Since pictures say more than a thousand words, we will leave you alone with the impressions 😊
Spoiler alert: If you wonder what the houses look like... They are... empty. Most of the houses only have some decoration on the windowsill and are locked. The houses that are open are empty. And the different sizes of the houses were specially made so that, for example, an actor (Hobbit) looks small in front of a house, but Gandalf looks huge 😊
Another recommendation was a national park with many redwood trees, which we visited briefly and went for a walk. After the strenuous walk over flat land 😉 we went to a real Maori restaurant where we ate real hängi. Hängi is a dish that is prepared underground. Unfortunately, nowadays everything is wrapped in aluminium foil, e.g. vegetables and meat. Then it is buried and a fire is lit on top. The dish was very tasty 😊
Of course, we also visited the Wai-O-Tapu thermal spring, which is recommended everywhere as a must-do. Here we have also added the matching display boards to the pictures 😉
Afterwards we went to our new accommodation... A sheep farm, where we slept in an old camping trailer ...
Why sheep farm? Simple... We read everywhere that there are more sheep than people in New Zealand. Of course we wanted to have a look at that and not only from the car while driving by, but also with our own eyes and talk to an operator. In this case even an operator with her husband 😊
Day 4: Sheep Farm - Waterfalls
In the morning we started the day with a tour of the sheep farm. We were allowed to feed the animals and the farmer Angie explained a lot about this very relevant industry in New Zealand. As we learned, the farm was "only" a small farm. On the South Island, there are supposed to be comparatively huge farms that are home to several thousand animals. These are called stations. We talked extensively with the farmer and she showed us everything. Starting with little lambs that wag their tails while drinking milk, which means they are happy. We also learned that the sheep are usually born at night, which suggests that the farmers are at work at all times of the night and day. We were also able to learn a lot about shearing sheep, dyeing and processing the wool into gloves, hats or shawls.
Click here for accommodation on AirBnB:
https://www.airbnb.de/rooms/49863610
On our way back to Auckland, we passed a gold mining town and the cult drink of the New Zealanders: L&P 😊
Our flight leaves in about 1.5 days. We have come to love the country and the people. Everyone was so friendly and gave us lots of tips on what we should see. Everyone gave us a warm welcome and told us how beautiful the South Island is and that we should definitely see it. So, on our way back to Auckland, we thought about it a lot... a lot... and sent one or two messages to find out if we could extend our stay in New Zealand. Because: When will we come to New Zealand again? 18 - 21 hours flight, +10 hours time difference to Germany... You don't just do that with 3 weeks summer holiday.
Day 5: Auckland
Early in the morning after waking up, we first checked our emails and messages: OK from the Spanish school in Colombia; OK from Tatiana's great cousin in the US; OK from our host in Colombia. Unclear: for our flight tomorrow. We can't rebook online, something is wrong with the credit card. Something is not working. A quick internet search revealed: Air New Zealand is based in Auckland. So we went there: at opening time at 9am we stood at the gate and explained our situation. A little confused as to why we didn't call the service hotline to make the rebooking, a very nice employee came to us and helped us to reschedule the flight. New departure date 06 August! The lady even took care of clarifying the incorrect reservations from our credit card with our bank in Germany! Thank you Air New Zealand 😊
So we won 3 weeks for the South Island and the other parts we would like to see of New Zealand.
Overjoyed, we took a quick look at Auckland and started planning the rest of our trip. Here are a few pictures of Auckland from our short city tour...
Regarding women's rights and New Zealand, here is a small, for us very interesting section, as we did not know this before: New Zealand is a model country culturally in many areas. New Zealand was the first country to introduce women's suffrage. First in 1893 as active suffrage and then in 1919 as passive suffrage. Great, we think.
And where we ended up, we'll reveal in the next article 😉
L&P und Fish & Chips – da bekomme ich gleich Heimweh! Ich hoffe, ihr habt auch TimTam Kekse probiert. Alles Liebe für eure weitere Reise!!
Liebe Tatjana, never say never. Wir sind 2 Mal in Neu Zealand gewesen, weil das Land so uns fasziniert hat. Aber ihr habt gut gemacht noch weitere Tage dort zu verbringen. Viel Spass dabei. Liebe Grüsse. Maria Luisa.
Hallo Tatjana und Artur,
wir sind sehr begeistert über Eure Reiseberichte.
Mit Spannung warten wir schon immer auf den nächsten Teil.
Sehr informativ und mit einer schönen Leichtigkeit geschrieben, das es eine Freude ist, Euren Spuren auf dieser Weise zu folgen. Die vielen Bilder anzuschauen bereichernd zuzüglich Eurer Abenteuererlebnisse.
Mama/Isolde und Wilfried