Experience 11: What a beautiful New Zealand
The beauty of New Zealand is hard to describe, film or photography. In the Dutch version of this blog we link to a youtube movie. The movie is in Dutch and Rob is doing a lot of talking so we would bother you with that. When you take a look at the photos from our previous experience combined with the photos below this page, you might get an impression of New Zeeland and its beauty.
We arrived in Auckland by plane on the 26th of February and the next day we drove in our cool camper van to Rotorua. There we stayed two nights and then headed up to National Park Te Urewera. We camped beside the magical lake Waikaremoana, where almost no tourist can be found. Then it was time for Rob to taste some wines in Hastings. Lous enjoyed the cheeses. After Hastings, we went south to Wellington. We did some sightseeing and stayed at a motor home campsite right in the middle of the city. A great place to stay near the harbour. At the museum Te Papa we learned about New Zealand and bought a location guide book from The Lord Of The Rings. It’s great to enter the coordinates in your iPhone and you can visit the exact location. Paste this string with coordinates “S 41 18.075, E 174 47.319” in your phone for example, and you will be near the tree where the Hobbits did hide from the Nazgûl (unfortunately it was an artificial tree that does not exist anymore) when they left the Shire.
On the 8th of March we sailed to the Southern Island. On our way to Kaikoura, Lous screamed: “Look, sea lions!” And near the road we found a colony of at least 15 seals (sea lions have ears, seals have wholes we learned on the way).
From Kaikoura we drove in 2 days to Lake Tekapo. Brilliant blue water hypnotised us for two days. Next stop was Mount Cook. We have been very lucky with the weather, so we could see the snow-white top of this largest mountain of New Zealand. In Queenstown we had an ultrasound and we found out that our baby is healthy, which made us very happy. Even happier then we were before… hard but possible!
Via Te Anau we drove to Milford Sound. The village Milford Sound itself is not special, you have to be on the water for the great views of the fiords. From Milford Sound we drove to Haast, a wonderful trip of about 560 kilometre, which took us twelve hours. Our next stops were the Fox Glacier and the Fransz Josef Glacier. Spectacular glaciers which both end in a forest, an amazing view. After visiting the Glaciers, we headed to The Abel Tasman National Park. On the way we stopped at the Paparoa National Park, where we saw enormous pancake rocks (take a look at the pictures, they really look like a stack of pancakes). Abel Tasman National Park is another great park. We had to think of Tayrona Beach, a beautiful National Park in Colombia. We did a walking track in the middle of the park. We walked for three hours and got dropped off by the boat.
Now we are on the Northern Island again. Tomorrow we will do some walking in the Tongariro National Park and on the 2nd of April we will visit our Dutch friends in Auckland. On the 4th we will fly back to Sydney where we will meet our nephew Floris. With Floris we will travel for a month in Australia. We look forward seeing him!
Greetings from the three of us!