auckland

Auckland is by far the biggest city of New Zealand with 1.2 million inhabitants. Its the city of the sails, here are many boats and yachts located. For 190$ you even could sail with an ex-America Cup Yacht.




The ferry terminal looks a little displaced with all the modern skyscrapers behind it. From here you can go to the surrounding islands. One island is volcanic, only created 600 years ago.



They have a great nightlife here, many pubs with modern or traditional music. In this Irish pub some musicians meet on a regular basis and play their traditional music.



In another bar you can be sure to be totally down under ;-)



The skyline is amazing, the dominant building is the sky tower. I got a nice picture of it at sunset time.



You can go up and take some pics from the observation level. Or watch people to do the skyjump. The are taken down connected with a rope. The have also glass-bottom parts at the observation level. Even if I know that nothing can happen it took me a while until i stepped onto it. Of course with weak knees and wet hands.




The view of the skyline from the skytower is very nice. Here is the viewwith light.



and without:


And here the skyline from a boat trip:

update

i was lucky to be able to sell my car and spontaneously decided to add another south pacific island to my trip. to best flight time was tonga, so i went there.
i hope to be able to update my blog with some pics in the next few days.
i arrived late and did not see much. in the morning it was raining heavily, but now its fine and a little cloudy. very humid....

Paihia

I traveled further north to the Bay of Islands and stayed some days in Paihia.
The first day I booked a sailing trip into the Bay. We were lucky and saw a group of Dolphins and also some Penguins. The dolphins had been very curious and came very close to the boat.





We stopped at a beautiful island and i even went snorkeling for 20mins in 18degree water. The highlight was a stingray, which I saw very close to the shore.


On the next day I booked a trip to cape reina, the northest tip of new zealand. The lighthouse there is quite nice. It was very windy, but thats normal for this place.


Souvenir-hunters from all over the world have been stealing the signs here, only london and sydney was left. What does that mean.. i really don't know...



The attraction there are the sanddunes and a ninty mile long beach. In fact the ninty mile beach is only 54miles but dont try to argue with the locals about it. The government even wanted to rename it but failed.


We drove at the beach with a 4WD Bus. I could have driven with my car too, but I thought it to be to dangerous.

On my way back to auckland I passed a city, where the austrian artist friedensreich hunderwasser had lived for some time. He designed a house and a public toilet.

Coromandel

The next day it was constantly raining, so I drove very long to the corimandel peninsula.
One one city happened an oldtimer meeting, I saw so many old and funny cars, even some convertibles without roof with very wet drivers.

The corimandel peninsula is very scenic with nice bays and beaches.



These mangroves looked beautiful in the sun.



And working on this farm with that landscape could be nice, too.



On this campground I did a short coastal walk and talked with a Kiwi, who comes here every year since 25 years for 10 days fishing camping and drinking. The trees at the shore are very beautiful.



On my way back I drove fast on a gravel road and tested the 4WD capabilities of my car. Unfortunately it was toooo fast and I ruined my second tyre.



So far: 3 different cars, 4 times calling the AA Service, one dead battery, one dead car at the offroad-parc, two flat tyres.. not bad in this short amount of time.

Rotorua

My next stay was in Rotorua. On my way I stopped at several tyre shops and auto wreckers until I gave up and bought some new tyres. Hopefully I can sell my car for a good price and get the money back.
Rotorua is the fun capital of the north island. Heaps of things to do and lots of oportunities to spend money on "funny" things.
This here is called "Zorb". You are inside a giant ball and you atr rolling downhill. It was invented in New Zealand.



I decided to do a offroad track which was quite nice. You drive through deep water, slide down a steep hill and other things. I had also bad luck with my car, after one stop it wouldn´t start again and I got a new one! In general speaking I am not lucky with cars here in NZ, see my next blog Corimandel.



After that I drove to Whakatana at the coast where I could take a picture of this mermaid at sunset.



I passed several beautiful lakes and geothermic active areas where you could have a mud-bath or swim in hot springs. You could smell this areas, they smell strange.

Many NZ people are not sensible to cold. They are wearing shorts even in the mountains with snow, are walking barfeet when I wear my high and warm boots and still wearing t-shirt when i put on the second layer of fleece. funny... I thought, I am not sensible but these people here are tough.

Waitomo Caves

To be independend from the weather I decided to continue to Waitomo. The forecast for the next few days was bad with rain and thunder and I dont wanted to stay so long in the Tongarino national parc, because there is nothing to do there with rain.

In Waitomo are some nice caves, I booked a 6h tour. The description of this tour was interesting: "getting off the standard tourist tracks" "not for the faint-haearted" etc.

Here you see me fully equipped and ready to go.



If I stay here for the next 10000 years, these rocky teeth will bite me.



There were also some abseiling sections into the dark.



And this was the 100% wet part where I had to dive! under a rock to reach the next section. You see me surfacing here. I also lost one of my contact lenses here but was lucky to find it and put it back in again.



And after 4h in the cave I was happy to see the sunlight again. The last section was quite exhausting and challenging. Here is my guide Greg, a native Kiwi.



My adventure day was not over, I had to fix this one too, started to get all of the necessary tools out of my car but ended up to call the AA service because i couldn´t find out how the jack was working.

Tongariro

I continued to the Tongariro National Parc. I read the weather forecast and hoped to be able to do the tongariro crossing. Unfortunatly it was raining raining raining.. I spoke to the info center there and they told me, its not good to do it because i will not see anything. So bad luck.

On the next day it cleared up for a short time and I drove up to the mountain to see the landscape. In this area the "mordor" part of the film "lord of the rings" had been done.
Mordor is the wasteland, where the bad guy lived.

Taupo

My next stop was Taupo. I didn´t want to drive till there but I couldn´t find a camp ground. I had to drive over 2h in dark with rain, partly on gravel road, which was exhausting.

Close by Taupo is a geothermic active area called "craters of the moon". The have a nice loop track through the steaming and smoking holes.



One of the biggest holes is shown here. The whole place was very noisy and also smelled strange, a little like sulphur, a little muddy.



On my way to Tongariro national parc I took a nice pic of the coming storm front.



Unfortunately this storm front will keep me inside the next days too. Up to 40cm rain in 24h are coming and the forecast is bad till saturday.
So I had to cancel my next planned hiking trip, this would have been the Tongariro crossing, one of the best one-day trips in NZ. You are passing bye vulcanic and alpine sceneries. Probably I can come back later but dont know that now.