New Zealand (South Island)

From Sydney, we flew to Christchurch together with Karen. Christchurch is mostly known due to its devastating earthquakes back in 2010 and 2011, destroying most of the old buildings and leaving the entire city in a ruin. By now, 5 years later the city is cleaned up, but still most part of downtown is under construction or even still completely empty.

Although Christchurch is the oldest city of the South Island, not much of that atmosphere was found back in what is left of it. However, we did spend an extra night at our Airbnb house in Christchurch, and enjoyed a relaxing day sorting out our destinations for the next weeks. Also, we needed some time to recover after our 4 hour delay and arrival time at 5:00 in the morning.

We rented a car, and made our way to the north part of the island. We made a stop in Kaikoura, famous for its ocean wildlife (whale watching, dolphin and seal encountering). Since it was high-season, all activities were fully booked in advance and anyway too dear. Also, we were hoping to find other, more natural ways of exploring the ocean world instead of joining touristy cruises. There were a few seal colonies located around the area and we got to see quite a few of them from very near! The last location was known as the cresh, a colony where baby seals are born and spend their first weeks in safe pools and ponds – very cute!

We headed up to Picton, a town in the northeast and the base for us to organize one of New Zealand’s most beautiful hikes: The Queen Charlotte Track. This is a 4 day hike (71km!) in a stunning seaside surrounding with little islands and peninsulas. It was supposed to be a relatively easy hike, but unfortunately the weather forecast was horrible.

Early morning on day one, we started with a 45 min boat ride towards the start of the track: Ship Cove. This was the first spot of New Zealand any European ever set foot on (James Cook)! The sky was grey and dark, but that added a very nice mysterious sphere around the peninsula.
There were only few other people on the track, which made the experience even nicer. After a 9-hour hike and near the end of our first day it started to rain heavily… and didn’t stop until afternoon the next day :(

The ‘relatively easy hike’ turned out to be strenuous enough for us and the long days combined with the rain and heavy backpacks made it challenging. Still it was a lot of joy, and when the weather was turning into full sun and blue sky on day 3, we were rewarded with the most beautiful views (see pictures!).  Overall, it was an amazing hike and a highlight of our New Zealand experience!

After 4 days sleeping in tents, we treated ourselves one night in a more luxury B&B in Nelson, another beautiful town. Sven got some new good hiking shoes that will hopefully last a bit longer than his last two pairs ( ‘thank you mommy ;)’ ).

And then we went off to the next famous National Park: Abel Tasman NP. This time we decided to take it a bit more relaxed. We reserved a tent spot at one of the beaches, and after a short walk from Marahau, we had a beautiful sunny and relaxed day at a stunning beach, exactly what we were all looking forward to. In the evening we were accompanied by a family of geese, some oyster-catchers and even a small blue penguin set foot on our beach. Unfortunately, also an army of sandflies kept us company day and night: a general irritation in New Zealand but especially bad at this beach.
The next morning we continued the coast track for about 3 hours, chilled some more at the beach and in the afternoon we were brought back to the village by boat.

From Abel Tasman NP we had a long drive to our following destination, the glacier area at the west coast. This ride is known as a beautiful scenic coast drive, so we really took the whole day, and had a few stops in between (Truman trail, Pancake rocks and just random lookout spots). The weather was nice and we were so amazed by all this beauty that we didn’t make it to the glaciers, but spent the night at a campsite along the road.

Unfortunately the weather conditions changed completely overnight, and the next day we arrived in a soaked Franz Joseph Glacier village. It was very busy, but luckily we found a cheap private apartment, where they served free breakfast and free soup + pasties. Since the glaciers were off-limit that day due to heavy rain fall, we gladly booked this comfortable accommodation for another night, and used this time for relaxing and sorting out our plans. The next day the glaciers were partly open to public again, but rather disappointing because they have retreated lots over the last couple of years (there are nicer glaciers in Austria/Switzerland and Norway).

By now we had travelled for two weeks, and had driven quite some kilometers, and there was still a lot of distance to be covered. Karen felt the urge to slow down and spend more time at fewer places, so here we decided to split up and meet each other again in the end in Christchurch. We continued further to the south (direction Queenstown) and Karen made her way to Hokitika, from where she would cross the island partly by train through Arthur’s Pass.

We made our way to the area around Wanaka and Queenstown, a place with beautiful hikes and sceneries known from Lord of the Rings. We only stayed shortly in Wanaka, where we visited the Puzzling World: a museum with all kinds of optical illusions and tricks.
We spent the night at a remote campsite near Queenstown. The next morning we went on a little adventure hike off the track before we made our way up and down to Glenorchy, along the most surreal beautiful colored Lake Wakatipu with snow-capped mountains in the background.

We stayed the Saturday night in Queenstown, and after eating camping food for days, we treated ourselves with a nice dinner at a restaurant and went out for drinks.
In Queenstown we also booked a luxury cruise to Doubtful Sound, a remote fjord in the southwest. This tour took us the whole next day: ferry-bus-cruise and back again. It was amazing! The pictures do not fully represent this experience, being the only boat in this great untouched part of nature. In the end we were even accompanied by a group of bottlenose dolphins, jumping around the back of the boat. It was a very unique experience!

From Doubtful Sound we were about to make our way back towards Christchurch, when we picked up some hitch-hikers who gave us a fantastic insider tip to still visit Catlins Nature Reserve in the very south. It would be a small detour, but we loved the spontaneous change of plan.
The next two days we travelled along the southeast coast, with some of the most beautiful stops (Curio Bay, Nugget Point, Kaka Beach, Moeraki and Katiki Point). We saw a lot more seabirds, seals and sea lions, but the two absolute highlights were a group of hector dolphins (swimming so close to the shore that Sven braved the ice-cold water to swim near them) and that we found a small colony of Yellow-eyed penguins – marvelous!
Karen arranged a cool Couchsurf-family in Christchurch for the last two nights. We still visited the earthquake museum (Quake City) and then left to Australia very early the following morning.

After a total of almost 12 weeks in New Zealand, we both concluded that this country has been our favorite so far. It was a total experience, with amazing landscapes and wildlife, where we also got to know the local Kiwi and Maori (-native inhabitants) culture. We will definitely come back here and further explore this beautiful country!