Travel Blog: Day 116

Since this is my last day in New Zealand (I will be flying to Sydney tomorrow) it is about time to tell you a little bit more about my stay here.

Lucas (the French guy) and I picked up our microcamper as planned and started exploring the country. Driving on the left side is not as hard as I thought. Actually it still feels more awkward to cross the street - never really being sure in what direction you have to look. What is a classic though is turning on the windshield wipers when trying to turn on the left turn signal ;-)

I will try not to bore you with too many details so I just outline our journey: we first went into the direction of Coromandel peninsula. From there we made our way south to Rotorua and Taupo and eventually to Wellington where we took the ferry to the south island

. Here we expored the Abel Tasman National Park, made a short trip to the Golden Bay and then from there went south to Fox Glacier. Next stop was Queenstown. Here I left Lucas and made the final trip to Christchurch on my own.

The beauty of the country is really amazing! Wherever you go - you are not going to see anything ugly. New Zealand is definitely a country for outdoor activities and outdoor adventures and I got my share. Started out with a rafting trip in Rotorua where we rafted the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. The next day I went skydiving and the day after bungee jumping. Both those activities were absolutely breathtaking and too short!

Skydiving actually was way less frightening than I thought. I want to think that I was pretty calm the whole time until dropping out of the airplane. From then it's just pure fun! The earth is so far away that it is not scary at all. Jumping down from a 47 meter platform with a rubber rope around your ankles is a different story! But since I did something similar in Venezuela it was not too bad.

Lucas and I were doing a little bit of hiking as well - for example in Tongario National Park where we could see 'Mt. Doom' from Lord of the Rings. In Abel Tasman we rented a kayak for a day. Especially in Abel Tasman we were lucky with the weather. Let me just tell you something about New Zealand weather: it was not as warm as it looks on most of the pictures. For one thing we got quite a lot of rain. But even when it was sunny the temperatures were usually only around 22 Celsius (72 Fahrenheit). And since the ozone layer here is so thin the sun is really burning down intensively. For me it meant that I could only stay in the sun for a few minutes before I had to move into the shade....where I would get cold pretty quick because of the wind and the "low" temperatures. In the three weeks that I stayed in New Zealand I only went into the ocean four times.

So, for me New Zealand was the country of:

• green! Everything is green here. Have not been to Ireland yet but it cannot be a lot greener there.
• lots of nice people...many of them calling you 'mate'.
• cows and sheep. Yes, I saw lots of cows in the land of sheep.
• expensive internet access.
• beautiful nature.
• cars driving on the wrong side.
• good and cheap meat in the supermarkets.
• roadkill.
• volcanos and all kind of thermal activities.
• outdoor adventures.
• one lane bridges.
• polite bus drivers and passengers. At least here in Christchurch almost everybody would thank the driver when getting of the bus. And the driver would answer something like "You're welcome. Have a lovely day."
• glaciers in the middle of the rainforest

....and a lot more that I cannot think of right now. I am sure glad I came here for it is a beautiful country (I know I am repeating myself).

Now I am looking forward to exploring Australia!