New Zealand

New Zealand, Yohan's absolute most favorite country in the world :-D He has spent here already twice several weeks/months, but for me is was the first time. When I think about our 6 weeks in New Zealand I think about amazing nature and lots and lots of nauseous making roads ;-p. Poor Yohan, he was probably looking forward to our visit to New Zealand the most of all countries and in the end he got stuck with me being in the first 3 months of pregnancy.... in other words ..... a wife that complained all day about feeling nauseous and cranky as hell :-( Poor him, but I promised him we will return, next time without being pregnant (or at least not in the first months) and in spring, as the scenery is beautiful in summer, but even more breath

taking in spring :-)

We landed in Auckland and continued to Paihia in the North of the Northern island. There we did a cruise that took us to the famous 'Hole in the Rock' and showed us all the wild life in the sea. We saw lots and lots of dolphins, penguins and even a shark! Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to do the swimming with wild dolphins we signed up for, because we only encountered groups of dolphins with babies and the rule is that you aren't allowed than to enter the water. A real shame, but we still had a great day and saw lots of beautiful nature. You can see on the picture with me laying down in the boat that I became a real pro in dealing with sea sickness the weeks and many boat rides that followed ;-P
From Paihia we took a day trip to Cape Reinga, the most Northern point of New Zealand where you can see the Tasman Sea and the

Pacific Ocean come together. Very special and you can really see the white foam where it exactly bumps into each other, never saw something like that before. In the Māori legend they refer to this as the meeting of the male and female sea coming together, a nice way of looking at it :-)

After, we continued to Rotorua, a little town where you have a special volcanic park "Wai-O-Tapu" you can visit. It's really nice, because you walk on a small sidewalk for a 1.5 hour and see all different kind of colorful hot springs, geysers and boiling mud pools. Besides that, you also have several lakes in the area. We did a great hike around the Blue Lake and saw from a distance also the Green Lake. Such beautiful nature and so many nice and friendly people that you meet on the way that are also hiking around the lake.

Our next place to visit was really cool: Hobbitant in Matamata. That is

the real cool place where they filmed The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies. When they built the film set, they never intended to keep it after finishing filming, but I am so happy they did, because its super nice to walk around and see all the 44 hobbit holes. Some of them made small, so you feel like a giant and some in a size that you could actually enter the door. And the details in all the surroundings, like little furniture, laundry hanging outside or the small vegetable gardens with real fruit and vegetables growing inside, really special. I am so happy we went to visit this place!

After, we continued driving to Lake Taupo where we did a great walk next to the Waikato River in order to see the Huka falls. So much water coming down and a beautiful place to walk around. We only stayed here 2 nights before we continued further South to Wellington. A big city where we walked around and saw lots of things, but mostly enjoyed the Te Papa Museum, before we took a 3

hour ferry ride to Picton in the South island. The city of Picton is really tiny, but from there you can easily take boats to the Marlborough Sounds. We choose to walk 16 km out of the 70 km of Queen Charlotte Track. It's a gorgeous walk true hills, forest and water and we were even able to spot 2 Orca whales in the water from the walking path! It wasn't a super easy walk, but I would do it again any second!

Next up was the city of Nelson, but first we made a short stop in Blenheim. It's an area that is famous for its wineries and even though I wasn't allowed to try the wines, the cheeses they served in the lunch menus were great. Worth to come back in 9 months to try the wines with it as well ;-p
After our little lunch break we arrived in Nelson. Also this is a fairly small city, but with a famous lake that has great hiking opportunities. We chose the walk around the lake and even saw beautiful red and

white mushrooms, the kind you normally only see in fairy tales ;-)

Our next destination was Motueka, because there you have a famous park that is called Abel Tasman. Because we already did a lot of tracks we decided to change it up a little this time. Instead of only walking we rented kayaks and kayaked the first 12 km. That was really cool, because we could go in this way to the little islands and even saw a seal colony! But wow, the waves and the streaming were sooooo strong! Pff... the last time I get myself talked into a kayak. Next time I will wait for Yohan in the end of the kayak track ;-) After arriving at the place where you can leave your kayaks we rested a bit on the beach and then got ready for the return walk of 14 km. It was a long day, but the walking path takes you through such beautiful places! I definitely needed 2 days of recovery after that, but still... really worth walking the trail!

On our way to the next destination we drove to Greymouth, where we stayed the night and the next day we drove to the Franz Josef and Fox Glacier. Two very impressive glaciers where we hiked all the way to the beginning of the glaciers. They are really impressive and it's crazy to think that Yohan was here only a few years ago in 2013 and you could hike up to the glaciers, but now because the glacier is so much retreating, it isn't safe anymore and you will only be able to get up with a helicopter. So we enjoyed the view from below and very much enjoyed the walk to there. You are surrounded by a kind of moon landscape and then suddenly in the middle you have for example a waterfall, very different then I have ever seen anywhere else before!

After such a gorgeous place, it's hard to find a place even prettier, but Lake Wanaka definitely succeeded in that. It's the place where Yohan

would love to retire one day and we had lots of fun walking next to the lake and deciding which house we would like to live in one day, as all of them are beautiful, spacious and have the lake view with the mountain surrounding them. Living in New Zealand would be way too far from everything for me, but I have to say, living at Lake Wanaka, that makes it very tempting!
After hiking so many days, my body crashed so I did a lot of resting/sleeping, but Yohan continued with his daily walks and walked a few days in a row up the mountain and back. So proud of him, because he is doing a great job in eating less and healthier and on top of that he really starts to enjoy to do a lot of exercise, so the kilo's are literally flying off! I am super proud of him, because doing a diet is one thing, but that isn't what he is doing, he really made a life change regarding food and that makes it so much healthier :-)
And it's good we aren't doing a real diet, because otherwise we would have missed the highlight of Lake Wanaka, a warm cookie just out of

the oven with homemade ice cream during the movie break in Paradiso cinema :-D That is by the way seriously the coolest cinema we have ever been! It's a really small place with only 2 theaters and for chairs they use all kind of real couches, bus seats and even the seats of an old Beatle car. We enjoyed so much that we went 2 nights in a row to see a movie :-D I don't think we will ever find a cooler cinema than this somewhere in the world!

Our next stop was the city of Queenstown known for their famous Fergburger, seriously to die for! When Yohan took me there I didn't understand what was all the fuse about, especially seeing the endless line on the street, but wow, that was really the best burger I ever had! Besides eating burger ;-) we also went up the mountain with a cable cart and took the karting cars to go down. So nice! It makes you feel like a kid again and the only thing you want when you arrive

downstairs is to go up again and do it again :-D But in the end we resisted that thought and settled for walking through the city for a nice Italian ice cream..... poor us ;-) tough life!

Before we continued to Dunedin, we made an extra stop in Te Anau, a tiny little village with a huge lake, but the reason why we visited Te Anau is because it has a nice glowworm cave you can visit. The weather was dreadful with pouring rain, but that doesn't matter, because in order to see the glowworms you need to enter deep into the cave. I am absolutely not a cave person, but this was pretty cool. After walking true small paths behind a guide, you enter a boat with 10 people and then they take you even deeper into the cave and you see the whole ceiling lighting up by the hundreds of glowworms. You aren't allowed to take pictures, but I can tell you it was nice to see, not something I have ever seen before. Crazy how nature works!

After the short stop in Te Anau, time for Dunedin where we stayed a few days in probably one of the most special hostels in New Zealand, the Hogwartz hostel. It's a hostel that is completely in Harry Potter style, really nicely done. Nice people staying there and also a great, super clean kitchen. So much fun then to cook your own meal!
Dunedin is a quite big city with lots of activities and we choose to visit the Otago museum that showed really nice the history of New Zealand and also had a planetarium what showed a nice movie about the earth that I really enjoyed and Yohan had a great afternoon nap next to me ;-p and after we also visit their tropical forest where they have hundreds of exotic butterflies flying around. The next day we had tour in a more interactive museum, well... with interactive I mean that we got to taste lots of different kinds of chocolate at the Cadbury chocolate factory :-) Besides that we also drove around in the area as it's beautiful and I drove for the first time in my life on the left side of the road. Because I got so nauseous in the car all the time,

Yohan suggested that I should start driving as well. Because I was so scared to do that it took till Dunedin before I tried it and it was so much easier than I expected! I should have listen to Yohan earlier as it made me feel much less nauseous on the road :-) So in a calm pace I drove us to a remote beach where there told us we could have a chance seeing seals and we were really lucky, because we not only saw like 6 seals, even a huge sea lion. So funny, Yohan was trying to take a picture of one of the seals and came a bit closer, when the seal started to move towards him and made a loud noise and my hero husband made a jump of 2 meter, grabbed me and started running. So funny, even when I think about it now, it makes me laugh :-D :-D After our adventure on the beach we continued to the Royal Albatross Center (biggest birds in the world). It's the world’s only mainland breeding colony of the albatross and we were very lucky because during the tour they took us very close to the breeding area and we were even able to see the chicks in their nests. I am generally not really a bird person, but the albatross is really impressive. On the picture, they don't look so big, but did you know that an adult albatross is 3 meter wide? Definitely a place worth visiting!

After really having enjoyed Dunedin we continued our trip to

Oamaru, because we wanted to see the Blue Penguins, the world's smallest penguins. At the center, they asked for a ridiculous amount of money to see the penguins jumping out of the see at sunset, so we joined a big group of people just outside the center where they told us we would be able to see the penguins as well. It took some waiting, but then out of the blue we saw from a distance tiny penguins jumping out of the sea and running inland in big holes where they have their nests. But to be honest the coolest thing was when we walked back to the car, that we found out that the penguins also clime on land next to the road and we were able to see them from really close and Yohan even had a chance to be a hero again, because he stopped the traffic when one of the penguins tried to cross the road.

After the one day stop in Oamara we continued driving to Lake Tekapo. Just before we arrived there we made a turn and saw this

amazing view of the lake between the trees, on the picture it looks amazing, but it was even prettier in real life! The color blue of the lake is so pretty! We went straight to the lake itself and walked a bit around and took some beautiful pictures. The rest of the afternoon Yohan walked up mount John, a nice walk up, with a beautiful view at the top of the mountain and I felt so exhausted that I stayed in the hostel and slept practically the whole afternoon. The next day I felt much better and we visited the little church next to the lake what you see on the picture. It's a tiny church with maybe place for 20/30 people and when you sit on the benches you have a view over the lake in front of you, it would make you almost go to church every week, so pretty is the view!

Our next stop was Mount Cook (highest mountain in New Zealand). We drove towards there and how closer you come, how more impressive the mountains get. Every time possible we would stop

next to the road to take a picture and how closer we came how more impressive the pictures got. I only uploaded a few of the many pictures we took. The best decision was definitely to walk the 3 hours trail in the Mount Cook National Park. The lookout point at the end of the track is the closest any walking track comes to Mount Cook and the surrounding is so pretty and impressive! Definitely one if the nicest places I have ever been!

After that we drove to our last nature destination, Kaikoura. Yohan had been here already twice before and really wanted to take me to a seal colony. It was great! We had to climb over lots of rocks, but ended up at were a lot of seals were hiding and I even spotted just a few meters away from us a little water pool between the rocks where the mothers left their pups to play and swim. It was amazing to be so close to so many pups and to see them jumping into the water and running after each other! We took some really great video's. On the

way we got some lunch at one of the seafood trucks, fresher eating seafood than this isn't possible ;-)
The next day was my birthday and Yohan told me we had to wake up super early, because we would go snorkeling with wild dolphins at sunrise :-D I don't think it's possible to do something more special than that, an experience we both will never forget! Because you go in open sea the water is super cold, even with a wet suit. To be honest I got quite a shock in my body when we entered, SO cold! I seriously couldn't think for a few minutes, but after that you are still cold, but too busy with looking down with the snorkel to see if you can stop the dolphins. In this part of the sea you have the dusky dolphin, a small kind of dolphin that swims super fast. When you look through you snorkel in the water below and you make the recommended funny sounds you see one moment nothing and the next second suddenly a few dolphins next to you. They are very curious and come close to you to check you out. When you are interesting enough, they will swim

kind of circles around you and then suddenly disappear again. Such a crazy experience to be so close to wild dolphins in open sea! After we came back to shore again, Yohan told me to hurry up, because we had an appointment in Christchurch and still had to drive a few hours. It didn't matter how many times I asked him what was the surprises, he refused to tell ;-) I had seriously no idea, till we walked into a beauty salon where they told me that I had a whole afternoon planned with a facial treatment, pedicure, manicure, eyebrows and haircut. Pff.... I really felt like a princess! And to finish this perfect birthday we went for a great dinner in the center of Christchurch. That was absolutely the most perfect way to finish our trip in New Zealand. I really hope we will have the chance later in life to come back with kids, because New Zealand is amazing!

Bye-bye New Zealand! Hello Australia :-D

(Travel plan: Auckland, Paihia, Cape Reinga, Rotorua, Lake Okareka (Blue Lake), Matamata, Lake Taupo, Wellington, Picton, Blenheim, Nelson, Motueka, Greymouth, Franz Josef & Fox Glacier, Lake Wanaka, Queenstown, Te Anau, Dunedin, Oamaru, Lake Tekapo, Mt. Cook, Kaikoura & Christchurch)