Singapore

It is stop over time! On our way back to Germany we took a break to explore Singapore and to celebrate Chinese New Year.

After half a day in an airplane and three additional hours in the airplane we arrived in the baking heat. The warm summer days in New Zealand were nothing compared to this. Not being used to the wet heat, we were sweating all day.

We took the MRT (public transport) to our first hostel. The MRT is an easy and cheap way to get around Singapore, I can really recommend it. Sadly, our first hostel was not that good. The bed was way to small for me and the bathrooms were quite dirty. The hostel hosted a lot of people in a very small room and the breakfast was okay at best. Our other hostel on the other hand was much better, with a hotel like atmosphere, clean facilities and friendly staff.

A huge difference was the food. It had more flavour in general and was specially sweeter than the food in New Zealand. We found variations of food we did not knew before, like red bean ice cream. Another difference to New Zealand was the attitude of the people. Kiwis were friendly, laid back and welcoming, while the people in Singapore always treated us as business partners. Singaporeans were always polite towards us, but never as open as the Kiwis.

Singapore is a great destination to be a tourist. It has just stunning architecture, great museums, art galleries and colorful markets. We visited mosques, temples and churches, also many fantastic gardens. It is such a diverse city and has very different corners.

Maeve and I were very lucky with the time we had chosen for our stop over. We were just in time for Chinese New Year, one of the world’s biggest celebrated festivals. To celebrate the beginning of the year of the dog, the hole country was going out. We joined the huge mass of people in Marina Bay, where the famous firework took place in the evening. But the CNY celebration takes longer than just this one evening. Days later we ran into a CNY-parade and the hole Chinatown district was decorated. I am very happy we were able to take part in this madness, this was surely something to remember.

Singapore and New Zealand are quite the opposite in many aspects, but that is the reason, why they fitted perfectly together for this journey, which is nearly over after Singapore. It was a wonderful time and I can recommend everyone to do this or something like this once in a lifetime.

Thanks to everyone who shaped this journey or followed us online. Thank you for listening, I really enjoyed writing this blog.

“The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journey new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still ’round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”

–Roads Go Ever On by J. R. R. Tolkien

East Coast

The journey continued from Queenstown to Kaikoura. We saw New Zealand’s highest mountain and had our first earthquake experience.

Probably the most touristy town in New Zealand is Queenstown. It mixes mediterran and alpine vibes with an enormous playground for young and old, it is the adrenalin capital of the world. I am no adrenalin junkie, so I neither did bungy jumping or zip lining, for me it was interesting enough to watch the others. Maeve and I ate our best ice cream of the hole trip in an icecreamery in Queenstown, called Patagonia. Our favourite places were the park and Sunshine Bay, which you can access after a short walk through the bush.

A lot of walking was also the program for Mount Cook. We walked the Hooker Valley Walk, saw the nice Hooker Glacier and Mount Cook itself. Mount Cook village is a small collection of houses in a valley with access to many different hiking paths.

Christchurch surprised us with much more construction work than expected. The earthquake from 2011 is still visible everywhere in the city. On the other hand Christchurch had still an English flair and an awesome Art Gallery, next to a nice botanical garden. Another highlight was the friday night food market and the museum. I made my first earthquake experience at one of our nights. Maeve did not noticed it at all, but I was wide awake. It was just a medium sized quake, but for me it was terrifying.

Kaikoura, our next destination, is famous for it’s wildlife. You can encounter seals, dolphins, whales and many different birds. Even on our way into town we saw dolphins and seals. We had some nice fish and chips for lunch (which is a typical Kiwi food), but our day here was very foggy and cloudy.

Today we start our way back to Auckland. Our time in New Zealand is nearly over, but this is definitely not the end of our journey!

Fiordland

The South of the South

We arrived in the very south of New Zealand. Not only did we saw the stunning scenery of Fiordland, but had also some major problems with our bus company, Stray.

After a short one night stop in Queenstown, we made our way to Te Anau. This small holiday village was our New Year’s Eve destination and quite busy, because it is the peak season of summer holiday in New Zealand. Both, Queenstown and Te Anau, are located at beautiful lakes and have a nice waterfront with lots of activities going on.

On the way to Milford Sound we stoped at different other beautiful locations like Mirror Lake. Milford Sound, which actually is a fiord (or fjord as the European would write it), is for many tourists the number one place to visit on the South Island and it was totally worth it. We took an awesome boat cruise and had the best weather.

Gunn’s Camp, our accommodation for the next nights was a very traditional camp, without phone reception, without WiFi, with very limited power and with way too many sandflies. At least we could do some amazing bush walks there and had time to completly relax, without our phones as distractions. At the day we were leaving, we got really lucky, because I was not sleeping to well and woke Maeve up early. We got ready for the day with quite some time until the bus would be leaving, but we discovered, just when we were about to make some nice and relaxed breakfast, the bus was leaving one and a half hour earlier than exspected. We just had enough time to grab all our stuff and go to the bus, skipping breakfast. If we had not got up way too early, we would never had made this and I am not sure if the bus driver would have noticed that we were missing. The problem was: the driver and the other people on the bus decided to do a hike in the morning, but they did not inform us. How are we supposed to know this? If you are travelling with Stray and you hop off the bus, you do not get informed about anything. And this is a huge problem.

Invercargill’s best place to spend some nice hours is Queens Park. It is a wonderful and diverse botanical garden. Further has Invercargill some nice shopping streets, churches and cafés. Still it was probably smaller than most European would expect (same issue with most of the towns in New Zealand). In Invercargill the Stray story continued. We wanted to leave Invercargill in the morning and were there an hour early, because one of the drivers said beforehand they are quite early in Invercargill sometimes. The bus did not come, an hour late neither. We finally phoned the office and found out: the bus got resheldued to the afternoon. Again, no-one told us, they could at least write an email about this. So we spend half the day waiting for the bus and it was still an hour late when it finally arrived in the afternoon.

Now we are back in Queenstown, the adventure playground of New Zealand, for the next few days and soon we are heading to New Zealand’s highest mountain. . .

Glowworms and Hobbits

It was time to visit the famous glowworms in Waitomo and Hobbiton, we had our touristy week and it was definitely worth it!

We had much more time in Waitomo than most tourists, because we stayed for two nights in a hostel and most visitors just spend a few hours here. On the other hand, Waitomo is very small, so you can see the whole village in a hour. At the first evening we tried the Buffett, that was advertised in our hostel and were quite disappointed. The advert was not wrong, we just thought about something else when we heard Buffett and “all you can eat”. When we arrived at the restaurant, with the free shuttle, quite some people from the shuttle made a face. In front of us was just a big pot of stew, some rice from the rice cooker and potatoes. We tried the make the best out of it and enjoyed the nice view at the restaurant.

Next morning we visited the famous glowworms. First we did a two hour tour in the Ruakuri Cave, which was very interesting and we were in a nice and small group. We saw our first glowworms, which are actually cannibalistic maggot with shiny poo. Further this cave had stunning speleothems, which you can see at the pictures below:

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The second cave we visited was the one and only Waitomo Cave. It was unbelievable how many glowworms we saw. It was like looking at the stars in the sky. Sadly, we were not allowed to take any pictures in the Waitomo Cave.

At the very top of our New Zealand must do list was always Hobbiton. The famous movie set in Matamata is a highlight for every movie-nerd. Hobbiton is a beautiful small village of Hobbit holes and gives you a real feeling of being in the Shire. At the end we even had a beer at the Green Dragon, which is due the high number of visitors in the Shire now the busiest pub in New Zealand.

At the end of our very touristy week we stayed in Rotorua. Rotorua is a very special town, because it has seismic activity nearly everywhere in town. There are a lot of hot spring, geysers and colourful ponds. It was amazing just to walk through the park, seeing the activity. On the downside it smells constantly like rotten eggs in Rotorua.

After Rotorua we did a nice, but short trip to the East Cape and the east coast. We had some beachtime and saw the most eastern point of New Zealand. At the end we arrived in Rotorua again and celebrated Maeve’s birthday at the local food market. Today we are leaving, going to Lake Aniwhenua.

Raglan

We arrived at the west coast and stayed in Raglan, the surf capital, for two nights. Most of our time was spend at the beach with the stunning waves or in our accommodation, the Solscape eco retreat.

For an insight into this short stop of our journey, have a look at those pictures (more information in the description of the pictures):

Raglan’s famous waves

Early morning view

At the beach

The view from the hostel

Inside our wagon, we shared the room with four other people

The “garden” at our accommodation

Where we sleepy, old train wagons

Stranded in Hahei

​We hopped of the bus in Hahei and took some time to explore the Coromandel Peninsula, but we had much more time than expected.

Originally we had a different plan: spend two nights in Thames and a few in Hahei, then hop on the bus again. Then our bus driver told us there is not much to see in Thames and advised us to go directly to Hahei. Since we would do a short stop in Thames anyway to buy food for the next days, we agreed on going to Hahei directly. He was right, there was not much to see in Thames and we were pretty excited to see the beautiful east coast of Coromandel…

But just as we arrived in Hahei, we wanted to book our next bus to Raglan four nights later. Suddenly the website had huge problems and we were not able to do anything at all for the next few hours. The next day we tried again, I even phoned the Stray office only to find out that the bus is full. Additionally the next bus, two days later, was full too. This is the reason, why we had to stay eight nights in Hahei, instead of four, because only then we would be able to catch a free bus. Honestly, there are worse places to be stuck at and we had a great time, but eight nights was a long time. We learned to book our bus sooner, especially with the main tourist season coming now.

Our accommodation in the Hahei Holiday Resort was a group of nice cabins and exclusive for people travelling with Stray. The resort was close to the beach and we did some nice group BBQ and bonfire with all the other Stray-passengers there.

The first thing we visited was the Hot Water Beach. On this beach you can dig your own hot pool at low tide. The seismic activity under the sand is heating up the water until it is very hot. Actually the first hole we dug, the water was too hot and we had to do another one. It is an awesome natural phenomenon, which you can even enjoy in the rain.

Hot Water Beach was great, but the number one tourist activity in Hahei is walking or kayaking to Cathedral Cove. It is crowded in tourists everyday, but we were lucky to have the place nearly for ourselves, because we got up very early, watched the sunrise at Hahei beach (6am) and walked directly after the sunrise to the Cathedral Cove, arriving there at 7am. It was just stunning walking in the cove, it is much bigger that it looks like on photos. We relaxed for a while next to the cove and made our way back when it started to rain. At the end of the walk back we were soaked.

 

We celebrated my birthday at the beautiful Hahei beach with blueberry cake and even went swimming. The beach is really long and has a lot of white sand and small waves. Some of the beaches in the area, including Hot Water Beach, are not really safe for swimming, this one is.

 

Hahei has a restaurant and a cafe, as well as a small general store and a place for take away food. We did a very nice Beer tasting in the restaurant at my birthday. The beer they served was crafted on the Coromandel Peninsula. In the cafe we had hot chocolate and spicy chai latte on other days.

The time in Hahei was very good, even if we had one or two rainy days. It was a bit hard to let the friends leave we made there and to always integrate into a new group of people.

 

When we finally left Hahei, our trip went from the east coast to the west coast. We passed Hamilton and arrived at our new destination: Raglan.

Paihia and Cape Reinga

After one month of wwoofing and one month in the same area, we were really excited to start using our bus pass.

We left Whangarei in a Stray-bus. It was the first time we used the bus pass “Everywhere” and were positiv surprised by the friendly driver who even drove us to the campground in Waitangi.

The following days were filled with exploration in Paihia. The first day we took one of the beautiful bush walks to Opua, but we calculated the distance wrong and ended up doing a 27km (!) trip instead of 17km. We saw a lot of the bays and beaches the Bay of Islands has to offer, but at some point our legs were just too tired to enjoy them for long. At the end of the day we just fell fast asleep in our tent.

We did a bus tour to Cape Reinga, the most nothern point of New Zealand and a spiritual place important to the Maori. They believe it is the point where your soul enters the journey to the afterlife when they die. Also it is the place where two oceans, the Tasman sea and the pacific ocean meet. On our way to get there we drove over the 90 Mile Beach, which is exactly 55 miles long, and had a chance to try sandboarding, which was real fun!

Russel, which lays right across from Paihia, is called the hellhole of the Pacific, because of the city’s past where traders and pirates walked, drank and lived there. It takes just a few mintues by ferry to get there, but we were quite a bit disappointed by the small tourist village in front of us, when we stepped from the ferry into Russel. The village seems to have fallen asleep and it is actually quite boring, if you got lured there by it’s exciting past. The only things reminding you of the past are the small museum and the bullet holes in the walls of the church. Russel might have been the real life Tortuga we know from the Pirates of the Caribbean, but now it is just a few shops, restaurants and a nice view. Nevertheless, I have to admit that it had amazing ice cream, we tried triple chocolate, maple-walnut, salted caramel and white-chocolate-raspberry . It was one of the best so far!

A nice, not too long, walk is from Waitangi to the Haruru falls. On 10km you see a wide range from local bush to mangrove forest. We spend quite some time having lunch at the falls and enjoying the view.

It was amazing, how easy we got in touch with other campers and travellers back at the campground, especially with the german family we met. They even invited us for a great BBQ evening. Most travellers we talked to were very polite, friendly and open, making it a joy to talk to them and exchanging experiences.

We had our own little Halloween party at the beach, surrounded by seagulls (scary animals 😉 ), with fish and chips and more ice cream, at the end of our stay. It was a nice way to spend our last evening in Paihia and the Bay of Islands.

The next morning we made our way to Auckland for a short stop by bus. We left Auckland early the morning after. Now we are on a peninsula famous for being the Kiwi’s favourite holiday destination. 

Auckland without Auckland

The ugliest part of New Zealand or a wonderful, modern city? A lot of people have differing opinions on Auckland. Maeve and I took a close look on the biggest city of New Zealand.

Auckland was our first contact with New Zealand and our home for nearly two weeks, enough time to explore the city and have an own opinion about it.

“Auckland is a city with two faces.” -Maeve

Maeve said and it is absolutely true: you have the fast-living urban jungle on one side and the peaceful real jungle on the other. Tourists who just run up and down the Queen Street sometimes say Auckland is a grey city, without interesting sights to see, but they miss so much!

Auckland, the city of parks

In my opinion one of the best things about Auckland are the parks and the fact that there is always one close to you. Whether you are in the smallest park of Auckland in Ponsonby or in the biggest, the Auckland Domain, they are absolutely loveable. Some even have small forests or bush, streams or lakes. We spend some days just going from one park to the next. One another day we explored Mount Eden (which is kind of a park too) and it is totally worth taking the walk to the top! The view is probably even better than from the sky tower (so you can save that money).

The city of sails

Auckland is a paradise for sailing and the harbour is worth taking a walk around. It calls itself city of sails, not only since the city has been choosen as host for the American Cup. One in four people in Auckland owns a boat, the city itself has two coasts, which are not more that 16km away from each other on one point. There is even an official Coast to Coast Walk.

Auckland without Auckland

If you have had your tourist day in Auckland (which was probably just running up and down the Queen Street, visiting the sky tower and the old ferry building) and if you already had your first negative encounter with Auckland (e.g. bedbugs in the hostel, problems with the ATM, getting kind of lost; all of it happend to us), you are ready for the great Auckland without Auckland. You start to discover the beautiful side, maybe take a walk through Ponsonby first. We were lucky to live in this area for a few days with our host. It has a lot of sweet, small cafes and shops and great houses. Maybe you find the hidden beach, you just spend some time in the glass houses in the Auckland Domain or explore the Victoria Park Market, which has quite some mediterran vibes. Whatever you do to find your Auckland without Auckland, you will probably realise that the city is not that grey and not that ugly, you just have to look around the corner.

Our first two weeks in New Zealand a over now and we left Auckland behind us. We are on the way to Whangarei and to meet some woolly friends.

Waiheke

A few days between vineyards, jungle and the Hauraki Gulf 

Matiatia welcomed Maeve and me with warm sunshine and a lot of wind. The harbour at the east side of Waiheke Island is for 1 million passengers per year their first contact with the Island, because the Fullers ferry terminal is there.

Like a lot of other people we took the bus to the hostel and got on the ride our first impression of the Island of Wine. It is a very hilly landscape with a mixture of Pacific plants and some that seemed mediterran. Form the top of the hills you could either see the sea or a vineyard, the conditions for the grapes are said to be perfect there. A positiv surprise were the friendly and relaxed bus drivers on the Island. They like to chat with you and even stay calm and have a good laugh when someone throws an egg at the bus (really happened!).

Our hostel was located in Onetangi, a village on the east side. We saw one restaurant in Onetangi, it does not has shops or supermarkets, but you can take a great (and long) walk or the bus to the next village which has a supermarket and other stores. We took the walk and it was in our opinion the better decision, since we saw many interesting thing along the way.

Back at the Onetangi beach you can spend quite some time collecting all the different seashells. The beach is not very crowded, you will meet just some people walking their dog or the Waiheke High School doing Kayak classes in the water.

From the beach (and the bus stop) you have to take the stairs, 190 steps (with your backpack or suitcase), to the Waiheke Backpackers Hostel. It is a cosy, small and friendly accommodation with view at the sea, but it is a bit expensive for a hostel.

On our last full day in Waiheke, we wanted to see the coast in the south, so we went to the Rocky Bay. If you start at the beach in Onetangi (which is on the north side), it’s just 6.5 km to the south coast. One the way we saw even more vineyards and tropical marsh land, with a swamp where salt- and freshwater met. Form the swamp to the coast lays the beautiful Whakanewha Regional Park. Don’t let the maps fool you! Sometimes there are four path or more next to each other when the map one shows one. The woods in the park and at Rocky bay are full of palm trees and ferns. I really enjoyed walking on the cathedral track (this one leads you directly to the coast), even on the exhausting parts, because of the to me unknown plants there.

Rocky bay was full of gravel, which was a huge difference to the sandy beaches in the north, and it had plenty of oyster everywhere. We were able to walk to a lot of the bay, because the tide was low. Rocky bay is also on of the protected homes to endangered bird and plants, we were lucky to see many birds there.

As much as Waiheke seemed to be a paradise, it also had it’s darker sides: parts of the Island and the coast are not available for the public anymore, because people privatised areas of the land. The most famous example may be the Cactus Bay, which is for the public only accessible by swimming or kayak. Cactus Bay is said to be the most beautiful bay of Waiheke, sadly we could not visit it ourselves. A local told us, this is a change that is happening on more and more parts of the Island.

Still, with all the beauty, the good weather and the laid back people it is no surprise Waiheke Island in the Haraki Gulf is one of the Kiwi’s favourite holiday destinations.

A long awaited arrival

Or an arrival that took three days

On Monday we took the train to Cologne. After the heartwhelming goodbye from our families, which included a big banner, small New Zealand flags and some tears, we finally stared our journey. Quite some people in our train wagon had noticed the goodbye scene and some of them had a chat with us. The train ride took several hours, but I was just too excited to sleep.

The train arrived late in Cologne and it was pure luck the next train was still there, we ran from one train to another and were in Cologne not more than twenty seconds.

A very modern ICE brought us to the airport in Frankfurt and with some help we found the stop for shuttles to the Hotel. It was time for a rest, we spend the night at the smart stay hotel, which was simple, but nice and clean.

At 12.30 the next day we were finally in the plane to Singapore. It lifted off at 13.00. The crew at Singapore Airlines provided great service and the 12 hours on the plane were flying . . . Luckily I had a seat at the window, I saw a lot of cliffs and mountains in the middle eastern desert from brids-eye-perspective, the sunset above the clouds and a very big thunderstorm near New Delhi at night. The only thing bugging me the hole flight was I could not really sleep.

Singapore made a very good first impression on us. It was warm and we saw a lot of palms even in the airport. The coast was full of ships and the architecture at the airport great. Sadly we had to go to catch the flight, but I am happy we are visiting Singapore on our way home again.

The last part was the flight from Singapore to Auckland with Air New Zealand. Again it was a very long flight without sleep for me, but after quite some turbulence above the Tasman Sea we finally arrived in New Zealand. We were really happy when we left the biosecurity at the airport behind us and were on our way to the base backpackers hostel.