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North of Motueka there is the Abel Tasman National Park that offers several great hiking opportunities. The most famous is probably the Abel Tasman coastal track which can be hiked in 2 or 4 days. We decided to spend 2 days on this coastal track (overnight stay at a DOC camping site). The coastal scenery was really great and the hiking path was pretty easy, nearly wheelchair accesible *g* (no steep uphill or downhill parts). To prove that you don’t need expensive hiking boots to do a great hiking track I decided to hike in my flip-flops *g* After two days our legs were totally covered with sandfly bits. Those crappy sandfly bastards obviously wanted to eat me alive.. To get back to the beginning of the Abel Tasman track we called a water taxi and got picked up at Toga Bay.

From Taupo we drove down south 150km(!!) to Napier and walked through the city which is known as one of the world’s best Art Deco Cities. Actually most of the buildings in Napier date from the 30s (because nearly the whole city was destroyed in 1931 by earthquake&fire) and the 1930s are famous for this Art Deco architectural style. Hmm, it was nothing really special – actually kind of boring.

But this 150km journey wasn’t senseless, because Heiko figured out that he was not able to jump accross a 6 metre wastage-water river. that was fun – except for heiko ;-)

The Tongariro Crossing is one of Newzealand’s finest hiking tracks. You can do it as a 7-8hours hike in one day, but we decided to overnight in a little DOC hut and spend two days hiking. The hike starts gently, climbs to the saddle between the active volcanoes of Mt.Tongariro and Mt.Ngauruhoe and passes by several volcanic craters and crater lakes. The scenery has been used to film Lord of the Rings famous land Mordor and Mt.Ngauruhoe has actually been the Mount Doom where Frodo has finally destroyed the evil Ring.

The small shape on the mountain that’s me, Mount Doom is in the background (see pic above). On the highest part of the Tongariro Crossing we grabbed our camping cooker and had some spicy noodles – with an awesome view!

While other people in good’ol Germany might still have been drunken on Easter Sunday morning – we got up pretty early and headed towards Taupo Airport. Heiko & me got a short briefing, put on some special suits, glasses & gloves and boarded a little airplane. Togehter with some other keen Easter-Sunday-morning-Skydivers we flew up to 12.000 feet (ca. 4km) – and one after the other jumped off the plane and took his way doooooownnn…

This was a Tandem Skydive, therefore we were attached to a professional Skydiving Master. Both therefore shared one parachute.

The first few seconds of falling were the best, because you accelerate pretty fast until you reach ca. 200km/h (that’s terminal velocity!) Awesome! After 50 seconds of absolute freefall – including 20 seconds of spinning-arround-like-in-a-washingmachine my skydiving master pulled our parachute – and the freefall suddenly stopped. As we slowely glided down towards the airport I also steered the parachute..:-)

Due to all those thermal springs and steaming pools that spread the smell of sulfur arround Rotorua, this city is also called the City of Sulfur. Yes, the whole city – and the surrounding areas – smell(ehm, stink!) like sulfur. (I was immediately reminded of my Chemistry class in 9.grade..) It shouldn’t be too hard to find out if somebody comes from Rotorua just by sniffing at his clothes. (Our clothes smelled like sulfur until we washed them!)

Rotorua has the most energetic thermal activity in the country, with bubbling mud pools, gurgling hotsprings, gushing geysers and evil smells. To see all those thermal attractions we visited the Thermal Wonderland. Entrance fee was only 18NZ$.

At 10h15 the Lady Knox geyser in the Thermal Wonderland errupts daily. Actually this erruption is caused by a couple of kilos of soap powder. Yes, soap powder! The geyser is blocked up with some rags so the pressure builds up and everyday a guy from the Thermal Wonderland shoves some soap powder into the geyser to decrease the water surface viscosity – and then it goes off…

Not far away from Omapere we hiked (ehm, walked) some Kauri forest paths to see some giant trees. There are not many Kauri Giant Trees left, but those that are still there – in between all those normal trees – are really impressive! Kauris measure up to 60 metres in height. Their diametre can measure up to 6 metres! The paths to see the Kauris were pretty short (it took us about 30 minutes) and even wheelchair accessible (neither steps nor uneven surfaces). Nice.

Our way back to Auckland lead us through Omapere, a sleepy little town on Northland’s west coast. We stayed overnight in a very cosy and relaxed backpacker, met friendly people and played some Monopoly (in the Kiwi version of this game you get 100NZ$ income when you pass GO – I was only used to the old german version with DM-prices, Schlossalle, etc..) To come to headline of this diary-entry: we had also had a couple of Heineken at the beach and watched yet another lovely sunset.

Well, I almost forgot to mention my favorite beach in the Far North which is located at Henderson Bay and called Henderson’s Point. Just like Rangiputa Beach we found this lovely windswept beach by chance as we decided to follow some gravel road to the coast: A couple miles after Houhora we turned right off the main road 1F and followed the Henderson Bay Road until we reached Henderson Bay. Actually it is again a very lonely beach and again Chris and me were the only persons! The scenery at Henderson Point’s beach is awesome and definitely worth visiting – either to go for a swim or just to enjoy yourself.

In Te Paki we decided to have a look at those giant sanddunes which are directly accessible off the car park (just accross the road). But before heading through the sanddunes – once more – we cooked come spicy noodles :) After the first dune we saw the sea&beach in the far distance. Actually sea&beach didn’t seem too far away, but this was probably a mirage. (I always thought you only see mirages in the real desert *g* ) After walking through the sanddunes for approximately one hour I finally ended up in some bushes somewhere between the first sanddune and the beach, which was actually still about one more hour of walking away :-( Meanwhile I had lost Chris, who was also heading towards the beach.. Well, I underestimated the distance to the beach and therefore gave up and returned (ca. one hour walking..) back to the car and met up with Chris.

Afterwards we met some strange Kiwi guys more or less accompanied by the cops, but that’s another story..

Doesn’t this sound great? NINETY miles of beach – just beach!

Actually this beach is only 90 kilometres long, but 90 Mile Beach obviously sounds better than 90 Kilometre Beach. This beach is located on the west coast of the northern part of Northland and seems pretty lonely. We didn’t meet many people there although the nearly endless beach is really an nice scenerie.. Although there is a beach road along 90 Mile Beach you are only allowed to drive on this road with four-wheel-drive vehicles and actually our car rental contract even forbid us to drive along 90 Mile Beach..

But the funniest thing definitely was this sign that would have allowed us to go 100km/h while driving directly towards the beach! Any car making it this fast would probably end up in the sea, eh?!

Chris and me decided to do the Cape Brett hiking tour. Cape Brett is the most north-eastern part of the Bay of Islands and supposed to be beautiful.. As we purchased the hiking-tickets at the DOC office we were pretty shocked: Hiking fee was 30dollars(!) ..but that might have been due to the fact that the hiking track crosses sacred maori land. Normally the DOC hiking tracks are free or you pay a tiny fee. The DOC is the Department of Conservation that takes care for all famous hiking tracks in Newzealand.

Well, the track was supposed to be a 7,5hour walk – we did it in 5hours. And YES, it was pretty exhausting. (After 5 hours we reached the hut where we stayed overnight.) Actually the steep hiking fee of 30dollars was really worth it, have a look at the pictures! We enjoyed amazing views as we walked on the pinacle of the mountains. (Acutually we didnt always walk on the highes part of the mountains – the track went uphill and downhill – but when we walked on the pinacle of the mountain the views were overwhelming!) Totally tired we arrived at the hut, drank the best Heineken beer ever(man, that beer was great..maybe because we really earned it *g*) and after an lovely sunset and some tea we fell aspleep like babies.

In the morning we enjoyed the sunrise and hiked back in about 6hours. We walked past the regular hiking track to have a look at some other beautiful spots past the track. Despite of the fact that this hike was really exhausting and the hiking fee is pretty expensive – I can really recommend anybody who visits the Bay of Islands to go over to Russel (that’s where the DOC office is) purchase the tickets and walk to Cape Brett.

…It’s awesome up there!

In Whangarei we put on our hiking boots again and visited the Abbey Caves. We had to go through kneedeep water in underground rivers until we finally reached caves with stalagmites and stalagtites.

on saturday morning 6am chris&me picked up megan, nathalie and jenny and headed down south to raglan. this is one of the best surfing regions on the east coast of the northisland. at raglan surfing school we were taught the basic skills to ride the waves – and then headed on to the beach. really a nice scenery! it is not so easy as it might look like in the telly, but as soon as you’ve caught a wave (or the wave has caught you *g*) and you’ve paddled fast enough – you should ‚just‘ stand on you bord an ride it. sounds easy, eh? it’s awesome! although we only surfed in for about 3hours (in about 1metre deep water), we were able to catch many waves and had a lot of fun!

on wednesday I dont have class and so I planned to go to Rangitoto Island. I got to know melissa in the diving class and she doesn’t have class, too. therefore we decided to spend a day hiking together on this tiny island which mainly has nothing but a vulcano crater, some caves, and heaps of forest. that’s it. the ferry from auckland harbour to rangitoto took about 30 minutes. unfortunately we stopped by at devenport harbour to pick up seemingly the whole population of devenport younger than 13years: two (or maybe even three) elementary school classes joined our trip

Actually I have heard about this irish holyday called St. Patrick’s Day before – in english class. But I didn’t know that there are so many Kiwis that claim to have irish heritage! On this day nearly everybody claims that his/her great-great-great-grandparents – or whoever – has originally been from ireland. And thus, everybody celebrates his/her irish heritage on this day. Even many americans we got to know, claimed that they’ve got some percentage of irish heritage, because they’re great-grandfather once…..(i dont believe them!) We just celebrated our lack of irish heritage

In the University Introduction Week Chris and me have signed up for the Recreation Centre, it offers Squash Courts, a gym, indoor wallclimbing, boxing and other kind of fitness activities. Chis introduced me to the indoor climbing wall and after this introduction I was able to secure him from below. Most times, you climb with your climbing partner. You are attached to a security rope and your partner secures you from below – and takes hold of you if you should ever fall.. If you reach the top of the climbing wall your climbing partner slowly lowers you down – the lowering technique depends on what kind of gear you use (either an ATC or a grigri. sounds funny, eh? bjoern told me that the original name is much longer but as it is a french name that nobody is able to remember the kiwis shortened the name to grigri..) Timo, Heiko & Bjoern also got introduced to the indoor climbing wall and so we all met at the Recreation Centre and climbed some walls.

we met on friday 12th march on 6h00pm with several other canoing club members. (‚we‘ is heiko & me) due to the fact the we don’t own a car, we signed up for the booze bus that was supposed to carry us to the camping site at fulljames. we actually knew that ‚booze‘ is another word for ‚alcohol‘ and that we’d therefore drink some booze on our trip to fulljames – but we didn’t know how long this trip would take. as some guy of the canoing club told us, that it’ll take about 7 hours, we decided to buy some more booze at the next liquor store..

by the way, the motto of the university canoing club is ‚the drinking club with a paddling problem‘ (shouldn’t have been the other way round, eh?!) or even more explicit: ‚drink all night and swim all day‘.

the trip started.. we stopped at some motorway parking – either to get rid off our beer by going for a splash or to play some silly drinking games (remember the motto of the club?!) furthermore, on our trip to fulljames we had to collect several items: redbull for the driver, an empty rubbish bag(the idea was probably to empty someone’s rubbish bag..), a milk bottle filled with tapped water, a roadcone and several other stuff.. as there were many motorway construction sites on our way to fulljames, it was pretty easy to get a roadcone: for sure we got very hungry therefore a break at some fastfood restaurant was compulsory.

finally we arrived at the camping site at about 2am in the morning – and the party went on to 6am. after some hours of sleep we joined the first kajaking trip in the morning. after some short instructions (‚when you flip over and find yourself with head-under-water just clap with your hands on the upper side of the boat to get your buddy’s attention. if your buddy doesn’t come to rescue you, just get out of your kajak – or drown‘) we started paddling.. i can tell you: i flipped over a couple of times, i found myself head-under-water a couple of times.. and swallowed lots of water :-) but after all: kajaking is real fun! although it is really exhausting and i was totally done&tired afterwards – i really enjoyed it.

well, we’ve got this little tiny cooking book. it contains many interesting recipes, among other things it contains a recipe for Tofu Skewers with Peanut Sauce. well, sounds healthy and we’ve never eaten any vegetarian tofu – therefore we decided to try some tofu.

bad idea! tofu tastes like nothing – absolutely nothing… although we marinated the tofu and although the peanut-coconut sauce was really tasty – the whole meal was awefull. I was only able to finish one tofu skewer, chris even managed to eat two! at least the rice we made as side dish was good (ehm, eatable) with the peanut-coconut sauce..

so here’s the original how-to-make-spicy-soup recipe – for sure it can be adjusted:

take the link-bus to newmarket (1,20NZ$ bus-fee for each ride, doesnt matter on which station u r getting off..) go to woolworth and buy at least one of these huge 10er-family-packets of chinese noodles (chicken or beef flavoured, we prefered chicken) buy tabasco and chilli powder as well. back at home boil water in a pot and throw one packet of chinese noodles (one packet per person!) into the pot. and now the most important thing: add ALL the spicy yellow powder(contained within the noodle-packets) and add chilli powder and tabasco.

beginners add about one or two soup spoons of chilli powser (per noodle-packet) and about 10 drops of tabasco. important note: you have to add a bit more of the chilli powder and the tabasco each time you cook those spicy noodles! for two persons you only require one soup bowl, the other person can eat out of the pot :-) and dont forget two drink the whole soup liquor, that’s the spiciest thing! bon appetit!