Spoiled by the scenery in Queenstown

I have been here in Queenstown for a week now. It sure is a lively little town with lots of tourists. There's a skiing season at the moment so the accomodations are pretty full. Heaps of people also come here to do some jumping of the cliffs, so if you want to do the most extreme bungy jumps or any other high priced activities, Queenstown is the place to go. The town is surrounded by snow-capped mountains and a lake so the views are again something too unrealistic. We don't praise the beautiful mountains all the time anymore so we came up with a new saying: Spoiled by the scenery.

Last Saturday I had this cultural evening with the british girls. This time I got to taste some long island ice tea, which of course I had tasted before. The special thing was that we were actually having this "tea" from actual ceramic teapot. Looked pretty funny when we were pouring drinks to each other. A later in the evening one of the girls lost her concentration a little bit and the lid of the teapot broke when it dropped to the floor, oh my. We continued the pub crawl to other bars as well and ended up being pretty 'tipsy' at the end of the evening. Had again really good fun.

In the beginning of this week I did some hiking around the Queenstown area and did a 5h "climb" to one of the mountains next to Queenstown. I couldn't make it to the summit since it's a winter and the track is pretty icy and snowy but I managed to find a really good viewpoint again without any tourists. I only saw a pack of (wild?) goats gazing on the track and I had to take a snowy detour since I don't know if those goats were aggressive or not. They had big horns though! I tried to scare them away by yelling them and waving a huge stick but they didn't seem to mind me at all. Stupid goats..

I hired a snowboard (Elan endless 161), pants and goggles from Wednesday to Friday and did some nice snowboarding around the Queenstown. There's couple of ski resorts near so you don't have to go to the same resort all the time. On Wednesday I went to the Coronet peak, which was pretty all right with many different kind of slopes. I went there with an Australian guy Andrew from Cairns. The terrain park at the coronet peak was quite a joke but they still had couple of nice rails for someone who enjoys riding them more than me.

On Thursday I went to the Remarkables, which has less slopes that Coronet peak. There was a lot of potential powder runs though and on a good day the Remarkables can probably offer really good powder riding. Unfortunately it had been sunny for the whole week so there wasn't too much powder to ride but atleast I got some tan on my whitish face. The park here was pretty nice and it felt good to try some boxes again. The superpipe was still under construction but the shape of it looked really good.

Yesterday on Friday I headed a little bit further to Cardrona which is actually more close to Wanaka than Queenstown. As soon as I got to the ski resort I noticed that this is a bit bigger than the previous resorts here and there was a really good looking park and two halfpipes. Unfortunately again they were still shaping the FIS-standard 150m superpipe but there was still a bit smaller pipe which was actually quite the same size than the pipe in my home ski resort in Finland. I did the most of the slopes once in the morning while they were still in good condition but I pretty much spent the rest of the day riding and hiking the half pipe. I really got into it again since the last time I was riding a pipe was over a year ago. On the evening I headed out with Andrew who had his last night here in Queenstown. What a great nightlife the Queenstown could offer again, great place. I said goodbyes to Andrew this morning and he invited me to visit him in Cairns which I'll do around September-October.



Today is Saturday and my last day in Queenstown. I'm heading out with Scottish Dave and English Matt who are pretty merry guys and actually just got wool handling(?) job near the Queenstown. Sounds hard work. Tomorrow morning I should head to Wanaka for another week which is going to include some more snowboarding. The weather forecast said it's gonna rain tomorrow and monday. Fingers crossed that it will be snowing at the mountains and we'll get some nice powder!

Milford sound

I booked a shuttle bus + cruise from Te anau to Milford sound which is around 160km away. The weather looked miserable in the morning and we had to stop and put the snow chains on when we climbed up the mountainous road (nice sceneries again) towards Milford sound. There was only two young british guys in the bus besides me, off-season.



As soon as we descended from the mountains to the Milford sound the weather turned pretty clear and we could see the Mitre peak raising up to the skies. The British taught me that the mitre is the hat which the bishops wear and yes I'll have to admit that the peak resembles like one. For the good weather we had to thank the southeastern wind which pushed all the air against the mountains and not many clouds made it over the mountain ridge to the western side. The boat we had booked seemed to be quite empty. There was around 10 "normal" tourists like us in the boat which is capable to take much more(hundreds?) people onboard. Well it turned out that we had to wait japanese tourist bus which was probably delayed by the heavy snowfall on the mountains. Because of this really long and painful 20min wait we got a free buffet lunch worth 28nzd. I was surprised but didn't ask any more questions while quickly loading my plate with chinese food.

Well I could probably wrote another paragraph about the impressive sceneries in the Milford sound but it's maybe better for you to come and see it for yourselves.

What a coincidence, on my way back I bumped into these three british girls again at the boat terminal. Last time I saw them was in the Wellington when we had this Guinness cultural evening. Well, we are gonna expand this experience today on Saturday here in Queenstown. It's probably going to be a big night out. Cheers.

Fox glacier

I started my trip to Fox glacier early in the morning from Nelson. The distance between these places is only around 500kms but I still needed to travel the whole day in the bus. It might give you a little bit of hint of the landscape the road went through. I could only watch the sceneries in awe.

There's two big touristic glaciers on the West coast of the South island. The Franz Josef glacier is actually spread into more wide area and is more popular among the tourists. I made some early research to help my decision and heard that the scenery in the Fox glacier should be better with more sheer valley and you can actually get more close to the glacier without getting on it. I don't know if this is right since I didn't went to Franz josef but the Fox was indeed impressive. I spend pretty much the whole day walking to get most of the viewpoints.



From Fox village you can also go to lake Matheson which offers a superb reflection of mt Cook and mt Tasman on a calm day. The first is the highest mountain in NZ. I woke up early and was lucky since weather was calm and the lake was really like a mirror showing the upside-down image of the snowy-capped mountains.

From Fox I decided to head straight to Queenstown just for one night, then to Te Anau and to check out the Milford Sound. As the winter might be really good time to go tramping into Abel Tasman national park, it sure isn't the right time trying to do the most of the great walks. Majority of the Milford track is closed due to high avalance risk and there's probably lot of snow on the other tracks as well. I'll go to check the Milford sound probably by cruise tomorrow and then head back to Queenstown and Wanaka to enjoy the snow as it should be enjoyed, snowboarding or skiing.

Abel Tasman national park

I left Nelson after one night and headed to Marahau on Friday to do some planning on upcoming treks. Marahau is a good gateway for doing tramping or seakayaking into Abel Tasman national park. During the summer all the accomodation is fully booked but since now it's winter and off-season it was pretty quiet which is of course a good thing. This time of the year the average amount of hikers in the park is around 30 persons/day and during the summer the count gets over 250. Which one would you prefer?



I had a plan to go hiking to Bark bay from Marahau and stay a night at the hut which is kept by department of conservation. Next day I would like to take a kayak back to Marahau. It took me a whole day to book a suitable trip since the minimum number of persons was 2 for all the trips. I had already given up the hope but then I met one woman in my hostel and she had the same kind of plan and the same problem with too few people wanting to do the same route. Well we booked the full day kayak trip from Bark bay to Marahau on Sunday and it cost 130 nzd/person + hut accomodation 10 nzd. The company promised to deliver the kayaks and a guide to Bark bay on Sunday and also take our backpacks back to Marahau since there wouldn't be enough space in kayaks for them.

The track from Marahau to Bark bay was around 25km and we did it on Saturday. It was a high tide and we had to walk 4km longer route since we couldn't use low-tide passings which were now under water. The track went through beautiful coastal sceneries and tropical-like tree fern forests and along the way I noticed that my partner seemed to know quite a lot of the nature. Well it turned out that Karin was a teacher from Netherlands teaching biology to kids 12-19 years old. She was in her 30's and was pretty fit since her hobbies included trekking, running and swimming. She had also done the 4-day/160km march in Netherlands. We had a nice pasta/carrot/raisin/peanut dinner under the stars on the beach at the Bark bay.

Today on Sunday we kayaked pretty much the same route back to Marahau following the coast. We had a guide who was paddling in a single kayak and we shared a double kayak. There was a good lunch included in the trip and which we enjoyed on a beach in an isolated bay. The weather was perfect with blue sunny sky and calm waters. Saw some seals, a blue penquin and many funny looking seabirds(yeah the guide told me the names but can't remember).

My muscles are pretty sore at the moment and I want to go to sleep. It's already 9pm!
Tomorrow morning 7 o'clock I'm heading towards Fox glacier. I'm supposed to be there around 5pm so a long day travelling ahead.

Just some off-topic detail: I'm now back in Nelson and staying at YHA hostel. I met a girl from Canada and her surname is Kivimaa. She told at her grandparents had moved from Finland to Canada around 1920. She can't speak any finnish though nor has ever been in Finland.

Windy Welly

I forgot to mention that I had an opportunity to use sauna in my previous hostel at Taupo. Well, it wasn't exactly the kind of sauna we have in Finland since this one was a dry one so you couldn't pour any water on the rocks. After more than half a year without sauna this was still better than nothing.

I didn't manage to do the Tongariro crossing walk since the weather was bad at the mountains but I spent the last day in Taupo mountain biking on really nice tracks which went next to beautiful rapids and waterfalls.

After beautiful bus trip (which went next to mt. Doom in LOTR) I'm here in Wellington which is also called Windy Welly because it's really windy here. Yesterday I accidentally met two british girls here in YHA hostel. I had met them before in Rotorua and then again in Taupo. It seems that I'm gonna meet same people again and again since they're travelling the same route to South than I am. Well we ended up in Irish bar drinking guinness and listening to live band. I enjoyed that cultural experience very much. I also learnt that some English put a hint of black currant cordial into their guinness, weird.

Today I went to see the Te Papa("our place") museum here. It has 6 floors and many different exhibitions including the lord of the rings exhibition. The latter was really good including all the gear, armor, weapons, monsters, art + misc stuff about the movie. I think it was my longest stay in museum ever since I spent there around 5 hours.

Tomorrow I'm taking a ferry to South island and a bus from Picton to Nelson where I'm probably gonna meet these other travellers again. On Saturday my plan is to head towards Marahau which is just next to Abel Tasman national park and a great base camp to do some sea kayaking and walking.

Jumping off the plane

I'm currently here in Taupo at the North island of New Zealand. This is probably the cheapest place to do skydive in NZ. I had prebooked a skydive from Auckland which was pretty risky since I needed a good weather to commit the jump here in Taupo. There was no refund possibility for the prepaid ticket.

The first day the sky was blue and sun was shining but I wasn't able to jump since the winds were too strong. On the second day morning I was refused to jump again since the wind was still too strong and it was a little bit cloudy. Luckily on the afternoon the skies got clear and I was able to do the jump. I blamed myself though for taking a little bit of unnecessary risk with prepaid ticket. I heard that one couple had waited for a whole week for a suitable weather so I can consider myself really lucky. However the jump was a great experience, not too hard since you don't have to do almost anything because it's a tandem jump. My jumpmaster had around 9000 jumps so I was feeling pretty safe. What a coincidence that he was from my neighbouring country Sweden, but had lived here in NZ for 5 years. I impressed him with my strong Swedish skills.

This morning I woke up at 5:30 and was ready to do the Tongariro crossing, which is regarded one of the best 1-day walks in NZ. Unfortunately the winds had got stronger and the visibility poorer on the mountains and the trek was cancelled 15 mins before departure. Tomorrow I'll give another try, but the forecasts don't seem quite good so I'll be probably off to Wellington.

I'm staying at the Rainbow lodge which is really good and laid back hostel. Yesterday we got a new person to our dorm. He's really delightful with awful smelling socks and a loud snore. This really beats most of the records!

Rotten eggs

After one big night in Auckland with a group of british and the following not so glorious day with hurting head I started to head South towards Rotorua. I made some shopping in Auckland which should ease up my travelling a little bit: 50h intercity bus time, sleeping bag and some warm clothes.

I got first warning about local weather when leaving the sunny Auckland the weather turned to really rainy and windy in no time. The landscape also transformed into more and more hilly and I had nice time enjoying the green sights on 4h bus journey to Rotorua.

You know when you arrive Rotorua because you can see little clouds of steam everywhere and you start to smell rotten eggs which comes from sulphur gases. Yes here's lots of thermal activity around this area.

After a quite uneasy night in hot rocks hostel(don't recommend to anyone). I woke up in the morning, changed the hostel and planned to go some trekking to see the Geysirs and other local things. Well I managed to walk about one hour when I met and old local man Brian at the same track. After few words he offered to show me around Rotorua with his car. We ended up going through all the local and nearby sights and I'm pretty sure we drove over 100kms with his car. I saw things that you probably wouldn't see just by going to organized tourist trips. Deserted thermal pools and waterfalls that locals use as a spa, mud/water pools with boiling water, geysirs and of course lots of sheep herding on steep green hills :).

Brian didn't even want to take anything when I offered him some money but after he had paid me into local thermal/geysir area and to see some Maori musical performances I insisted to pay him something. It still wasn't the full price though. I was thinking all the time that there's something behind this all friendliness but after the day he just dropped me to the hostel and we said goodbyes. It seems that Kiwis are a bunch of really friendly people.

So far I'm really amazed about New Zealand. The scenery is just unbelievable and it should get much more massive and beautiful when I'm going to South island! Tomorrow I'm heading to Taupo though gonna do a 12000ft/4km tandem skydive. 75euros/150nzd for that one with a free t-shirt and ground dvd. Good deal. I rescheduled my flight back to Wednesday 9th of August. That makes my total New Zealand time a bit over 5 weeks but it seems to me that it's still barely enough to see and experience everything I want.

Towards Auckland

Ok didn't succeed with my great plan which was to fly to New Zealand and wait for my Australian student visa to expire until I apply for new one and fly back to Australia. The problem is that you're not allowed into New Zealand if you haven't valid flight ticket back to country where you're allowed to enter. Since my return flight was scheduled on a date where my current visa to Australia would already be expired, I had a little problem at the check-in.

The cheapest choice was to re-schedule the return flight to Australia to a date when my visa was still valid. After few quick phone calls to Jetstar I managed to change my flight with 50nzd fee(25eur). Now I probably need to do some more strategy movements(reschedule the flight back to where it was and spend another 50nzd) to be able to apply for work&holiday visa to Australia.

Well anyways I'm here in Auckland now. I'm staying at the Auckland Central Backpacker hostel which has really nice facilities available. I'm probably staying here for couple of nights before heading South to volcanic Rotorua. We had a nice time trying to find this hostel with a British girl since the bus driver who should have stopped in front of this hostel didn't even know where this is. We got good first impression about New Zealand.

Well, the impressions just got better since I had a damn good lamb-kebab with hot chili and garlic sauce for only 7 nzd(3.50 eur). Ode for strong currency!

Fitz's farm

Last weekend I had a great oppoturnity to visit my aussie friend at his farm. The farm is located around 400km northwest from Newcastle near Armidale and the road there went through beautiful hilly landscape. Sometimes the hills tried to beat up my van but with 2nd gear and 35km/h we managed to climb them up. Craig was keeping me company in the van and as a geologist he was able to tell everything about rocks surrounding us.

The farm was really beautiful and huge. It was nothing compared to farms I've used to see in Finland since this one contained many many kilometers of bushland where cows, sheeps, goats, kangaroos, horses and other animals were herding. There's also an airstrip at the farm with cessna 172.

We had fun time taking the farm's five working dogs and a pig dog for a run and driving around bushy hills with quadbike and two 250cc dirtbikes. We also did some kangaroo spotting in the night by driving around with old 4wd landcruiser equipped with bright spotlight.

Overally I would say that it was a great and relaxing weekend before my journey to New Zealand would begin.