Hokitika Wild Foods

Yeah, Wild Foods Camping ground has opened for 2010 and people have started arriving and putting up their tents! Its friday afternoon, and what I soon will realise is the most drunk festival ever is about to start! Clarky and Rowie warming up with some drinks! We got up at 9 on saturday, and some started to drink before normal people normally eat breakfast. Very soon four sheep turned up, and they were not afraid of "drinking pressure". They had it as their law. We started walking from the camping ground around two or three and it was great fun looking at all the cool costumes! Twister girls, batman and supergirl! This was my bed on saturday night! It was uncomfy, but so was the tent. At least it was completely dry, and almost soundproof! Couldnt hear all the crazy people outside:) PANCAKE ROCKS
Started driving towards Golden Bay on Sunday, but had to stop at Punakakia and the famous Pancake Rocks! Teapot hole! Cool formations? What can you see? Some suggestions in the next photo. This was the first weekend I used my downjacket! After carrying it around Australia and most of the South Island! GOLDEN BAY
Spent the day at Wainui Bay and Beach. This is the beginning of Abel Tasman National Park, and it is a really nice spot. I got there at high tide, around 11 or 12 o'clock. But the tide went down really fast, and it was a HUGE difference from when I got to when I left.! There is a track to Separation Point Lighthouse from this beach, but I didnt go there. You can only go there at low tide, because you walk along the beaches! Guess three o'clock isnt the best time to decide you want to go sailing! Low tide High tide Low tide High tide

I love Queenstown!

The car is absolutely loving being on the road again. We are in Franz Joseph now after a long drive from Queenstown. So far Ive driven 1500km in it on my own. We are developing a special, but good relationship. It hasnt god a name yet, but Im pretty sure the old lady was wrong about it being a girl. Only thing thats certain is that the day it doesnt start - Ill call it Vidkun! So, three days in Queenstown is definatly not enough. I love this town. Or, I love how much it reminds me of Voss. It is the extremesportcapitol of New Zealand. You can do skydiving, paragliding, climbing, skiing bungy (okey Voss hasnt got that, but we have different stuff) It is located next to a huge lake, way bigger that Vangsvatnet, but the similarity is there. And it is surrounded by mountains and has a gondola going to the top of the one closest to town! It even has a hamburger everybody has to taste before they leave. Voss has Tre Brør Burger - Queenstown has FERGBURGER. Above is one of the takeoff areas for paragliders. Since Im on my own its not very easy to go climbing, so I paid some (alot!) of money and got to go on a full day climbing tour to the Wye Creek climbing area. It was me, a english girl called Jess and our guide Rosie. It started with a drive, then a loooong walk up a steep hill. Not like Bolstad where you can drive to the wall and place your bum on the car while belaying! See the round light are down by the road? Thats where we started walking from! We did four different routes up there. I tried on a fifth one, but couldnt quite it past the difficault part. It started with a overhang! :S This is me on the first climb. So cool climbing outside again. Havnt done that since September! Going up "The Mission" The route is 30meters long! I was pretty tired when I got to the top of it! Still a few meters to go!

Thursday was driving day again. Left rainy Queenstown in the morning, and after a while I was driving in sun :) Thats how it is when youre driving north!! (remember - north means warmer here ;)

Drove past a caravan of tractors! I had seen them while I was on the eastcoast in february. Apparantly its like 30 tractors driving around the South Island on a vacation. Theyve got everything from new tractors to very very old ones. Some have a tent and their stuff attached at the back, while others pull a camperwagon along! They all wave at everyone they pass and go around at a very slow pace. Im glad I passed them instead of ending up behind them! Knights point! Another nice spot to eat my lunch! :) Found this really cool beach with lots of random stuff made into towers. People had written stuff on the rocks and treetrunks. I didnt make a pyramide OR write anything, but stopped and took some photos! :) Hope everything is good back in Norway! Im off to Hokitiki friday, and Ill spend the weekend there, sleeping in my car! Its the Hokitiki Wild Foods Festival :) Rob, Slee, Rowie and other Peel Forest-ers are coming, so I wont be alone! :)

Te Anau

I havnt got a single photo of Invercargill! Invercargill doesnt deserve to have its photo taken. I am sure that if you tried to find a postcard from Invercargill you would spent a lot of time searching - then ending up buying a postcard with a photo of a kiwi. The photo above is taken ca 50km drive from Invercargill. Thats when things worthy of photographing pops up. Its called Monkey Island, but the reason is beyond me. I walked to the top and down on the opposite side of it and the only wildlife I could see was a wasp and some spiders. The view from Monkey Island is great. Again - worthy of a photo. Thats two more than Invercargill, and this is just a random stop on the Southern Scenic Route. Someone had made the effort of building steps on both sides of Monkey Island - leading up to a viewpoint on top. 60km from Invercargill is McCrackens Rest. The name - again - I have no explanation for, but a really nice view. Someone had been nice enough to put of a signpost so that you could find out how far away different stops are. As I said - really nice view :) When I got to Manapouri the first thing I did was to find out where I was supposed to meet up Sunday morning. Since Manapouri is the size of a pea, that didnt take me too long. Afterwards I drove my car down to a beach. Really nice - made me smile! I got my clothes off, bikini on - time to do some tanning! :) Pink is a tan that takes lot of time to get right! Im still more on the white side than pink, so happy whenever I can get some sunshine. And yes - I did put sunlotion on. Spf 30! When I got to Te Anau I soon discovered it was a town I could like. Small in size, with a HUGE lake. Really - the lake is huge. Probably as big as all of Voss county! They also have some cool sights around their lake. Glowworm cave is one of them. After having a couple of sandwiches with venisonsalami, I put some warm clothes in a bag and walked down to the beach/pier. A ticket to see the Glowworm caves was 63$! Or, 56,70 if you are a YHA member, so I got 6,30 back after running up to the hostel for my membercard!

The trip was worth the money! It started with a cruise over to the Cave-visitor senter. Then we got split into smaller groups and started walking through the caves with our guide. After a while we got to a small landing - and after being asked to be completely quiet we got onto a small boat in halfdarkness. When everybody was in the boat, (This was also the perfect timing of someone letting go of a silent but horriblesmelling fart. I nearly passed out breathing it in!) our guide turned out the last of lights and dragged us further into the cave. It was really cool sitting in complete stillness and darkness and discovering more and more glowworm above our heads and on the walls. It was so many of them in the cave grotto that I thought someone had a light on! Our guide led the boat back to the landing and we walked back through the cave to the normalworld. Cool experience! Unfortunately - I wasnt allowed to take any photos, but I have on of myself on Te Anau beach while waiting for the boat to arrive :) Sunday was an early start again :) Thats two in a row getting up before the sun! Good on me! Kayaking on the Doubtful Sound is definitly worth getting up for! It started with a cruise across Lake Manapouri. Not as big as Lake Te Anau, but still WAY bigger than Vangsvatnet! It actually took 40minutes! We got onto dry land next to a huge powerstation. Or actually - just the electricity being led up and off to different cities. The powerstation is under the mountainpass we drove over to get to the Doubtful Sound! Yeah, they built a powerstation under a mountain! Why not? Alot of people have asked me today why Im paying to go kayaking in the NZfjords when Norway have fjords as well. The answer is simple - I wanted to check out if they were as similar as it seemed from photos. And they really are! They are beautiful, big and peaceful. There is one difference though - norwegian fjords got people living along then, roads running on the sides of them and ferries crossing them all day. The New Zealand Fjords and surrounding mountains are NOMANSLAND. Im serious! Take out a map of New Zealand and check it out. The bottomleft part of New Zealand have NO roads and NO towns. Its dead. No-one have ever considered trying to live there. Why should they? They have two perfectly fine islands without steep mountains and deep fjords. They can keep it a pricy touristattraction! :) We had a superb day! Not rain at all - and that is really uncommon for a place that have over 200 rainy days each year. And it doesnt really rain or snow here during winter! Home away from home! Funny how I can be on the opposite side of earth and find something that could have been an hour away from my house! LOVE IT

more roadtrip

I started my solo roadtrip on Tuesday with ca 300km from Peel Forest to Dunedin. Listening to The Rock FM in my very own car, singing as loud as I wanted and knowing that I could go wherever I wanted was a really cool thought. I stopped when I got tired, had lunch at a beach - and didnt have to worry about anyone else than myself. I was lucky enough to find the hostel without much trouble (i did stop at a gasstation as soon as it seemed like I was in Dunedin. Better to ask first so that I at least started off in the right direction) and when I got there they had a parking spot left for me to steal :)

Dunedin is not the most beatiful city on earth. It has an industrial feel to it, and I was happy that two nights was all I had paid for. I got talking to two of the girls in my dormroom, and we all walked to the nearest supermarket to stock up for dinner. After some food and some drinks on the balcony we all went to bed - important to get some sleep ?

Dunedin doesnt have much to see, and the things it offers can be seen in a day. So we spent the first half of the day inside the library for some free internett and facebook updates. After that i took my touristshoes on and walked to Cadbury Chocolatefactory for a tour. I wasnt allowed to take photos, but they gave me lots of chocolate - and I got to see a chocolatewaterfall. Only thing missing was the Oompa Loompas ;) After a nice afternoon-nap, me and a girl called Rosie drove off in the car to look for some native wildlife! Very exciting indeed. Unfortunately, the albatross didnt wanna come in for a closeup - so the above picture is the best I can offer. I can tell you though - they are really impressing birds! Thursday was a drivingday again. Dunedin to Invercargill was my goal. The cities arent too far apart, so I decided to go for the Southern Scenic Driveway instead of the slightly shorter inland highway. Very nice view indeed! ? !

After arriving in Ivercargill and having some problems finding Tuatara Lodge, I finally had a roomkey in my hand, and a parking spot without the risk of getting towed. I then realised that Invercargill is an even more boring city than Dunedin. What is going on in the south? My only choice was to drive off somewhere on Friday - and I ended up in Riverton 34km from Invercargill. I dont know why Riverton has a large stonewhale near the beach - but it was a thing I thought I had to take a photo of. Someone must have put a lot of effort into getting it there - and I was the only tourist around. Just a few meters away you could find this beautiful beachspot - too bad it was windy and cold. We are after all on the fifth day of autumn! With this sad selfportrait im logging off and going to bed. Tomorrows drive is from Invercargill to Te Anau. I sure hope Te Anau has something exciting to offer. At least I get to feel really at home on Sunday. Kayaking in doubtful should be interesting! Im gonna check out if the new zealand fjords are as similar to the norwegian ones as they seem to be in photos!

roadtripping!

First thing we did after getting the car was packing alot of stuff in it, and driving to Kakanui. Familyroadtrip! Two cars, seven people and way too much alcohol! Its so much fun doing stuff with the "family"! After drinking maybe a third or fourth of the alcohol we all fell into our beds and competed in snoring the loudest. Saturday morning was all about getting food in and our butts out. Paua-fishing is way easier if you're at the beach at low tide! :) After walking around the coral for some hours and discovering that 99% of the Paua's were 12,4cm or smaller, (Youre only allowed to take them home if theyre 12,5cm or bigger) we called it a day and drove to the beach-house. We had a huge lunch and had to make a big effort to get out of the couch and clean the house. Our next stop was the Moeraki Boulders. They are big round stones at a sandy beach and a popular tourist-attraction. You can get some cool photos and of course we jumped in the water to climb onto them! It wasnt my plan to get soaking wet, but I did, and we had to make a quick clotheschange before going to look for penguins. Apparantly there was a lighthouse nearby with a lookout-point for penguins. We found the spot, sat ourselves into a small wooden box overlooking a sheltered beach, and waited. After waiting 2 minutes Slee, Rob and Matt got tired of it and went back to the cars to find some fishing gear. A minute later Larky followed. After 10 minutes Jenny gave up, and another 10 minutes later me and Raewyn had to realise that the penguins werent home. Funny thing is, the boys had walked to the backside of the beach to do some fishing, and there on the top of a grasscovered hill, a penguin was standing! He was completely alone and just stood there looking down at the sea. He didnt seem to bothered by us walking past and taking photos, but from time to time he would stretch his wings (arms?) out. Maybe to strike a pose? We were thrilled to finally see one of these creatures and could happily walk down to some cliffs and look at Rob fishing with half a fishing rod. The other half broke off when he threw the bait in the water, but that didnt stop Rob from having a fish on it when he was about to go home! Earliest start Ive had in New Zealand was sunday! At 5.15 in the morning i was in the shower trying to wake up! It was of course for a good reason! Going salmonfishing with a jetboat in Rangitata Gorge is definatly a good reason! Even though i didnt get any fish myself, i did see the sunrise, drive fast up and down the river and see the salmon that Eddie got. Biggest salmon ive seen coming out of a river. Was of the biggest ones we get in Meny! Monday was my last day in Peel Forest and i got a surprise text that I was booked in on a horsetrek! :) I had never ridden a horse on my own, and I LOVED it.. :) even though I wasnt in control when the horse was running.. Didnt fall off, and thats all that matters. We had a big BBQ at night with lots of excellent food, and a norwegian apple pie for "pudding" :)