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The Coromandel Peninsula is famous for one hiking track that nearly everybody who visits Coromandel does: The Pinnacles Track. This hike is not at all intense, it takes only 1,5hours (although guidebooks say 3hours..) up to the hut. From the hut to the pinnacles it takes approximately 1hour – and then you enjoy awesome views over the Coromandel Peninsula. We spend the night at this DOC hut and – after sleeping in – hiked up to the Pinnacles on the next morning(ehmm, at noon.. Actually this hike isn’t dangerous, as long as you don’t step off the cliffs *g* Just have a look – a false step off the cliffs would be really fatal!

The red something standing on one of this pinnacle is ME!

we’ve been at the hot water beach at night! at night there’s not much to see.. no photo!

Although it was ‚high tide‘ we waded our way through the arch and entered Cathedral Cove (a sacred Maori Bay – normaly only accessible at ‚low tide‘) This rock was directly on the shore of Cathedral Cove..

..actually I’m not quite sure if this was at Waikawau Bay – but the waves were great and the beach lovely :-) That’s me going for a quick swim..

We arrived at Fletcher Bay on Friday laaaate at night. Actually the way to this most northern tip of Coromandel is best driven at night, because then you can easily see the oncoming traffic on those really narrow gravel roads! Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic on Friday night, just a lot of possums crossing the street (most possums even don’t leave the gravel road while cars approach – it seems like they want to be run over by cars..)

On the next morning we hiked the Coromandel Coastal Track from Fletcher Bay to Stony Bay, met some sheep and drove back south to look for some nice beaches & bays.

The most amazing and spectacular miracle of nature I’ve seen so far in Newzealand are the Blowholes in Punakaiki at night. Unfortunately we couldn’t take any pictures at night, but even pictures could not describe this experience! The blowholes are in a limestone landscape full of secret caves, streams that disappear and reappear via holes in the ground. The sea water surges into caverns below the rocks and squirts out those geyser-like blowholes that are beyond belief! The show is most spectacular at night – and luckily we even had fullmoon! :-) Meanwhile I had lost Chris, who was also heading towards the beach.. Well, I underestimated the distance to the beach and therefore gave up and returned (ca. one hour walking..) back to the car and met up with Chris.

Hiking on one of Newzealand’s finest hiking tracks – the Milford Rainforest Track – normaly means: 4 days of sun and sandflies (that nearly eat you alive!) alternating with rain&wet clothes. As we hiked this track after the main season was finished, we didn’t have to pre-book it and therefore we could hike it in fewer days. (In the main season you can only book the track for 4 days with 3 fixed overnight stays at the huts!)
Luckily we also enjoyed mainly sunny weather, which is really unusual for this rain forest track! All in all we only had about 1hour of rain! The scenery we hiked through is really amazing, the flora is totally different from what we had seen before. We hiked through an amazing vegetation, which was surrounded by impressive mountains. As we reached the highest point of the track we enjoyed overwhelming views on the surrounding valleys & mountains. Having a small chocolate-break (yeah, that provides energy!) in this awesome scenery we also saw a kea. Keas are the world’s only alpine parrot! They are sometimes found in Newzealand’s alpine mountain areas, have green feathers & red wings(you can only see when they fly). On our way downhill we passed by many high waterfalls, wild streams & cold creeks with cristal-clear water. Although the water in all those creeks was freezing cold (it’s melted ice from the top of the mountain) we couldn’t resist the stupid temptation to go for a short swim. Well, we got butt-naked, jumped into the f***ing cold water and took a picture of us (thanks to the self-timer!). Unfortunately afterwards (we’ve already put on some of our clothes) we realized, that one of us didn’t look towards the camera :-(

Further downhill we walked over a suspension bridge and spontaneously decided that this bridge was the perfect location to jump off into the river. To exclude any risk we measured the height of the bridge (ca. 8 metres) and the depth of the river..

What else than the headline should I say?

I got attached to a bungy, took a deep breath, jumped off, rushed down 43metres and screamed…aaaaah!

Our guide book Lonely Planet describes the area arround Alexandra to be a ‚Heaven for Mountainbikers‘, therefore we decided to stop by to go for some up&downhill mountainbiking. We found a pretty good mountainbiking track which was located in a lovely mountainous area. It was real fun and the landscapes we cycled through were again overwhelming! Unfortunately some km before finishing the track some invisible pot-holes (or maybe there were some invisible rocks..) on the track kicked me off my bike and I smoothely landed (nice formulation..) on my left arm, waist & leg and rolled down the hill.. By the time I’m writing this, all injuries are gone!

The one thing Dunedin is famous for is definitely Rugby! Although we had no idea about the rules and didn’t know any of the rugby players – we put on yellow&blue face painting and headed to the rugby stadium. Actually the game wasn’t really that interesting (might have been due to us not-knowing-what-rugby-is-about *g*) but afterwards everybody ran onto the field, just to party or talk to the rugby players to get some autographs. The whole atmosphere before, during and after the rugby match was really awesome! Afterwards we followed those Dunedin fans into one of the famous after-game-bars called ‚The Bowler‘ – and the party went on. All in all I can say that attending a rugby game in Dunedin is real fun and definitely recommendable!

On the Otago Peninsula we asked some local guy how we could get to see some of those famous yellow-eyed penguins. We followed his description, crossed the peninsula on those windy and steep roads and after parking our car at an end-of-the-road ‚car park‘ we ended up walking ca. 45minutes through fields, bushes & sanddunes to get to the beach. Actually this was not the official way to see the penguins, but we only discovered this afterwards.
After this long walk to the beach at Sandfly Bay we finally saw some sealions and yellow-eyed penguins. Two sealions were totally busy with flirting, so they didn’t notice us taking pictures of them.

At Moeraki we laid some egg-shaped rocks on the beach. We won’t tell you how we managed to build so many of them, but believe me: it was a hard job!:-)

The company Dolphin Encounter in Kaikoura offers boat trips along the shore of Kaikoura to visit dolphin schools. Dolphins usually race through the sea in large schools of hundreds of dolphins. It’s amazing to see them from the boat effortlessly slicing through the ocean water and doing their famous flip-jumps.

Due to the cold water we had to wear thick wetsuits that kept us relatively warm. Moreover snorkel, fins & mask were provided. Geared up with all this stuff we were dropped of by the skipper into a large dolphin school passing by. Once in the water you can easily attract dolphins for example by diving down and crossing their way, or simply by circling arround. Most dolphins are not shy and once you have got the attention of a dolphin it starts circling arround you – which can be interpreted as: Let’s play together. It’s really an overwhelming experience and definitely worth it! :-)

On the coast of Kaikoura there are large seal colonies. We walked along the coast and saw many seals relaxing in the sun. Actually they didn’t do anything except sleeping and once in a while they went for a quick swim in the sea. Nice life..

The Marlborough Sounds Maritime Park is famous for great hiking tracks as well as stunning kajaking tracks through many lovely fjords. For a change, we decided to explore this region on the water way and rented two sea-kajaks. Sea kajaking with those huge two-person-kajaks is pretty easy (compared white-water kajaking in those tiny kajaks we used with the Uni Canoeing Club in Fulljames). On our way through several fjords of the so called Queen Charlotte Sound we stopped at some lovely beaches for a sun bath and also met some lazy seals laying on the rocks.. Once more we camped overnight and returned on the next day. Not to forget the oncomming wind, that made it really impossible to paddle faster than 2 or 3km/h!

North of Motueka there is the Abel Tasman National Park that offers several great hiking opportunities. The most famous is probably the Abel Tasman coastal track which can be hiked in 2 or 4 days. We decided to spend 2 days on this coastal track (overnight stay at a DOC camping site). The coastal scenery was really great and the hiking path was pretty easy, nearly wheelchair accesible *g* (no steep uphill or downhill parts). To prove that you don’t need expensive hiking boots to do a great hiking track I decided to hike in my flip-flops *g* After two days our legs were totally covered with sandfly bits. Those crappy sandfly bastards obviously wanted to eat me alive.. To get back to the beginning of the Abel Tasman track we called a water taxi and got picked up at Toga Bay.

From Taupo we drove down south 150km(!!) to Napier and walked through the city which is known as one of the world’s best Art Deco Cities. Actually most of the buildings in Napier date from the 30s (because nearly the whole city was destroyed in 1931 by earthquake&fire) and the 1930s are famous for this Art Deco architectural style. Hmm, it was nothing really special – actually kind of boring.

But this 150km journey wasn’t senseless, because Heiko figured out that he was not able to jump accross a 6 metre wastage-water river. that was fun – except for heiko ;-)

The Tongariro Crossing is one of Newzealand’s finest hiking tracks. You can do it as a 7-8hours hike in one day, but we decided to overnight in a little DOC hut and spend two days hiking. The hike starts gently, climbs to the saddle between the active volcanoes of Mt.Tongariro and Mt.Ngauruhoe and passes by several volcanic craters and crater lakes. The scenery has been used to film Lord of the Rings famous land Mordor and Mt.Ngauruhoe has actually been the Mount Doom where Frodo has finally destroyed the evil Ring.

The small shape on the mountain that’s me, Mount Doom is in the background (see pic above). On the highest part of the Tongariro Crossing we grabbed our camping cooker and had some spicy noodles – with an awesome view!

While other people in good’ol Germany might still have been drunken on Easter Sunday morning – we got up pretty early and headed towards Taupo Airport. Heiko & me got a short briefing, put on some special suits, glasses & gloves and boarded a little airplane. Togehter with some other keen Easter-Sunday-morning-Skydivers we flew up to 12.000 feet (ca. 4km) – and one after the other jumped off the plane and took his way doooooownnn…

This was a Tandem Skydive, therefore we were attached to a professional Skydiving Master. Both therefore shared one parachute.

The first few seconds of falling were the best, because you accelerate pretty fast until you reach ca. 200km/h (that’s terminal velocity!) Awesome! After 50 seconds of absolute freefall – including 20 seconds of spinning-arround-like-in-a-washingmachine my skydiving master pulled our parachute – and the freefall suddenly stopped. As we slowely glided down towards the airport I also steered the parachute..:-)

Due to all those thermal springs and steaming pools that spread the smell of sulfur arround Rotorua, this city is also called the City of Sulfur. Yes, the whole city – and the surrounding areas – smell(ehm, stink!) like sulfur. (I was immediately reminded of my Chemistry class in 9.grade..) It shouldn’t be too hard to find out if somebody comes from Rotorua just by sniffing at his clothes. (Our clothes smelled like sulfur until we washed them!)

Rotorua has the most energetic thermal activity in the country, with bubbling mud pools, gurgling hotsprings, gushing geysers and evil smells. To see all those thermal attractions we visited the Thermal Wonderland. Entrance fee was only 18NZ$.

At 10h15 the Lady Knox geyser in the Thermal Wonderland errupts daily. Actually this erruption is caused by a couple of kilos of soap powder. Yes, soap powder! The geyser is blocked up with some rags so the pressure builds up and everyday a guy from the Thermal Wonderland shoves some soap powder into the geyser to decrease the water surface viscosity – and then it goes off…

Not far away from Omapere we hiked (ehm, walked) some Kauri forest paths to see some giant trees. There are not many Kauri Giant Trees left, but those that are still there – in between all those normal trees – are really impressive! Kauris measure up to 60 metres in height. Their diametre can measure up to 6 metres! The paths to see the Kauris were pretty short (it took us about 30 minutes) and even wheelchair accessible (neither steps nor uneven surfaces). Nice.

Our way back to Auckland lead us through Omapere, a sleepy little town on Northland’s west coast. We stayed overnight in a very cosy and relaxed backpacker, met friendly people and played some Monopoly (in the Kiwi version of this game you get 100NZ$ income when you pass GO – I was only used to the old german version with DM-prices, Schlossalle, etc..) To come to headline of this diary-entry: we had also had a couple of Heineken at the beach and watched yet another lovely sunset.

Well, I almost forgot to mention my favorite beach in the Far North which is located at Henderson Bay and called Henderson’s Point. Just like Rangiputa Beach we found this lovely windswept beach by chance as we decided to follow some gravel road to the coast: A couple miles after Houhora we turned right off the main road 1F and followed the Henderson Bay Road until we reached Henderson Bay. Actually it is again a very lonely beach and again Chris and me were the only persons! The scenery at Henderson Point’s beach is awesome and definitely worth visiting – either to go for a swim or just to enjoy yourself.

In Te Paki we decided to have a look at those giant sanddunes which are directly accessible off the car park (just accross the road). But before heading through the sanddunes – once more – we cooked come spicy noodles :) After the first dune we saw the sea&beach in the far distance. Actually sea&beach didn’t seem too far away, but this was probably a mirage. (I always thought you only see mirages in the real desert *g* ) After walking through the sanddunes for approximately one hour I finally ended up in some bushes somewhere between the first sanddune and the beach, which was actually still about one more hour of walking away :-( Meanwhile I had lost Chris, who was also heading towards the beach.. Well, I underestimated the distance to the beach and therefore gave up and returned (ca. one hour walking..) back to the car and met up with Chris.

Afterwards we met some strange Kiwi guys more or less accompanied by the cops, but that’s another story..

Doesn’t this sound great? NINETY miles of beach – just beach!

Actually this beach is only 90 kilometres long, but 90 Mile Beach obviously sounds better than 90 Kilometre Beach. This beach is located on the west coast of the northern part of Northland and seems pretty lonely. We didn’t meet many people there although the nearly endless beach is really an nice scenerie.. Although there is a beach road along 90 Mile Beach you are only allowed to drive on this road with four-wheel-drive vehicles and actually our car rental contract even forbid us to drive along 90 Mile Beach..

But the funniest thing definitely was this sign that would have allowed us to go 100km/h while driving directly towards the beach! Any car making it this fast would probably end up in the sea, eh?!

Chris and me decided to do the Cape Brett hiking tour. Cape Brett is the most north-eastern part of the Bay of Islands and supposed to be beautiful.. As we purchased the hiking-tickets at the DOC office we were pretty shocked: Hiking fee was 30dollars(!) ..but that might have been due to the fact that the hiking track crosses sacred maori land. Normally the DOC hiking tracks are free or you pay a tiny fee. The DOC is the Department of Conservation that takes care for all famous hiking tracks in Newzealand.

Well, the track was supposed to be a 7,5hour walk – we did it in 5hours. And YES, it was pretty exhausting. (After 5 hours we reached the hut where we stayed overnight.) Actually the steep hiking fee of 30dollars was really worth it, have a look at the pictures! We enjoyed amazing views as we walked on the pinacle of the mountains. (Acutually we didnt always walk on the highes part of the mountains – the track went uphill and downhill – but when we walked on the pinacle of the mountain the views were overwhelming!) Totally tired we arrived at the hut, drank the best Heineken beer ever(man, that beer was great..maybe because we really earned it *g*) and after an lovely sunset and some tea we fell aspleep like babies.

In the morning we enjoyed the sunrise and hiked back in about 6hours. We walked past the regular hiking track to have a look at some other beautiful spots past the track. Despite of the fact that this hike was really exhausting and the hiking fee is pretty expensive – I can really recommend anybody who visits the Bay of Islands to go over to Russel (that’s where the DOC office is) purchase the tickets and walk to Cape Brett.

…It’s awesome up there!

In Whangarei we put on our hiking boots again and visited the Abbey Caves. We had to go through kneedeep water in underground rivers until we finally reached caves with stalagmites and stalagtites.

on saturday morning 6am chris&me picked up megan, nathalie and jenny and headed down south to raglan. this is one of the best surfing regions on the east coast of the northisland. at raglan surfing school we were taught the basic skills to ride the waves – and then headed on to the beach. really a nice scenery! it is not so easy as it might look like in the telly, but as soon as you’ve caught a wave (or the wave has caught you *g*) and you’ve paddled fast enough – you should ‚just‘ stand on you bord an ride it. sounds easy, eh? it’s awesome! although we only surfed in for about 3hours (in about 1metre deep water), we were able to catch many waves and had a lot of fun!

on wednesday I dont have class and so I planned to go to Rangitoto Island. I got to know melissa in the diving class and she doesn’t have class, too. therefore we decided to spend a day hiking together on this tiny island which mainly has nothing but a vulcano crater, some caves, and heaps of forest. that’s it. the ferry from auckland harbour to rangitoto took about 30 minutes. unfortunately we stopped by at devenport harbour to pick up seemingly the whole population of devenport younger than 13years: two (or maybe even three) elementary school classes joined our trip

Actually I have heard about this irish holyday called St. Patrick’s Day before – in english class. But I didn’t know that there are so many Kiwis that claim to have irish heritage! On this day nearly everybody claims that his/her great-great-great-grandparents – or whoever – has originally been from ireland. And thus, everybody celebrates his/her irish heritage on this day. Even many americans we got to know, claimed that they’ve got some percentage of irish heritage, because they’re great-grandfather once…..(i dont believe them!) We just celebrated our lack of irish heritage

In the University Introduction Week Chris and me have signed up for the Recreation Centre, it offers Squash Courts, a gym, indoor wallclimbing, boxing and other kind of fitness activities. Chis introduced me to the indoor climbing wall and after this introduction I was able to secure him from below. Most times, you climb with your climbing partner. You are attached to a security rope and your partner secures you from below – and takes hold of you if you should ever fall.. If you reach the top of the climbing wall your climbing partner slowly lowers you down – the lowering technique depends on what kind of gear you use (either an ATC or a grigri. sounds funny, eh? bjoern told me that the original name is much longer but as it is a french name that nobody is able to remember the kiwis shortened the name to grigri..) Timo, Heiko & Bjoern also got introduced to the indoor climbing wall and so we all met at the Recreation Centre and climbed some walls.

we met on friday 12th march on 6h00pm with several other canoing club members. (‚we‘ is heiko & me) due to the fact the we don’t own a car, we signed up for the booze bus that was supposed to carry us to the camping site at fulljames. we actually knew that ‚booze‘ is another word for ‚alcohol‘ and that we’d therefore drink some booze on our trip to fulljames – but we didn’t know how long this trip would take. as some guy of the canoing club told us, that it’ll take about 7 hours, we decided to buy some more booze at the next liquor store..

by the way, the motto of the university canoing club is ‚the drinking club with a paddling problem‘ (shouldn’t have been the other way round, eh?!) or even more explicit: ‚drink all night and swim all day‘.

the trip started.. we stopped at some motorway parking – either to get rid off our beer by going for a splash or to play some silly drinking games (remember the motto of the club?!) furthermore, on our trip to fulljames we had to collect several items: redbull for the driver, an empty rubbish bag(the idea was probably to empty someone’s rubbish bag..), a milk bottle filled with tapped water, a roadcone and several other stuff.. as there were many motorway construction sites on our way to fulljames, it was pretty easy to get a roadcone: for sure we got very hungry therefore a break at some fastfood restaurant was compulsory.

finally we arrived at the camping site at about 2am in the morning – and the party went on to 6am. after some hours of sleep we joined the first kajaking trip in the morning. after some short instructions (‚when you flip over and find yourself with head-under-water just clap with your hands on the upper side of the boat to get your buddy’s attention. if your buddy doesn’t come to rescue you, just get out of your kajak – or drown‘) we started paddling.. i can tell you: i flipped over a couple of times, i found myself head-under-water a couple of times.. and swallowed lots of water :-) but after all: kajaking is real fun! although it is really exhausting and i was totally done&tired afterwards – i really enjoyed it.

well, we’ve got this little tiny cooking book. it contains many interesting recipes, among other things it contains a recipe for Tofu Skewers with Peanut Sauce. well, sounds healthy and we’ve never eaten any vegetarian tofu – therefore we decided to try some tofu.

bad idea! tofu tastes like nothing – absolutely nothing… although we marinated the tofu and although the peanut-coconut sauce was really tasty – the whole meal was awefull. I was only able to finish one tofu skewer, chris even managed to eat two! at least the rice we made as side dish was good (ehm, eatable) with the peanut-coconut sauce..

so here’s the original how-to-make-spicy-soup recipe – for sure it can be adjusted:

take the link-bus to newmarket (1,20NZ$ bus-fee for each ride, doesnt matter on which station u r getting off..) go to woolworth and buy at least one of these huge 10er-family-packets of chinese noodles (chicken or beef flavoured, we prefered chicken) buy tabasco and chilli powder as well. back at home boil water in a pot and throw one packet of chinese noodles (one packet per person!) into the pot. and now the most important thing: add ALL the spicy yellow powder(contained within the noodle-packets) and add chilli powder and tabasco.

beginners add about one or two soup spoons of chilli powser (per noodle-packet) and about 10 drops of tabasco. important note: you have to add a bit more of the chilli powder and the tabasco each time you cook those spicy noodles! for two persons you only require one soup bowl, the other person can eat out of the pot :-) and dont forget two drink the whole soup liquor, that’s the spiciest thing! bon appetit!

actually the title of this entry is only related to the end of the night. on thursday 26.02. we (chris&me) started with some beer in our appartment, then headed on to the UniLodge to meet timo, heiko and bjoern. had one tom collins (guess timo&co had some more of those before *g*) and bacardi-drinks.
dunno when we arrived at the Shadows (Campus Bar) but it was really full inside. we started with a free drink :-) and the party went on..

at about 0h30 chris left (he was pretty drunken, eh?!) and only a couple of minutes later they switched on the ligths and turned off the music. what a pitty!

as we’ve not yet had enough we headed on to the so called Globe Bar. later that night i became aware, that almost every tourist(!!) ends up in this bar – some earlier, some later. actually it was not sooo bad.. (on our way to the Globe Bar we passed Albert Park and had our own ‚little foam party‘. some guys must have thrown soap into a public fountain, so there were heaps of foam *g*)

and now about the ‚bloody mess‘: as i went home at about 3pm i found chris lieing infront of our appartment door.
ok, i grabbed him and – after he almost fell down the stairs into the basement – we went into our appartment.

chris: ‚o sorry jan, i threw up on the carpet..‘

it (the vomit on the carpet) stank horrible. so we – ehm i – had to clean up the bloody mess. meanwhile somebody threw up a second time (dont know who *g*)

however – taking into account the whole night – it was real fun..
and thanks to febreeze: the stinky odeur of the vomit has finally left our appartment.

due to an agreement between germany and newzealand german students who are coming as study abroad student for one semester can study for local fees ( ca. 2400NZ$), BUT ONLY if they are enrolled as fulltime student into a postgraduate programme. (postgraduate means that you have already studied at least 6 semesters and therefore got your degree.)we have initially been offered to study as fulltime student on undergraduate level.(undergraduate means that you are in your first three years of studies..)an undergraduate progrqamme costs much more (about 8500NZ$), because they charge international fees..to be enrolled as postgraduate students we therefore ran round the university faculties and finally found three professors that allowed us to participate in their postgraduate lectures. for sure we had to provide the required prerequisites – and so we got signed for postgraduate studies!