Month: October 2019

From Christchurch we travelled by plane to Melbourne Australia, timeshift was -2 hours. We’ve been a little frightened on immigration procedure because we had some seeds bought in NewZealand with us.

We ticked truthfully “Bringing seeds,fruits,plant material to Australia” on the arrival card, which resulted inspection by a friendly Biohazard lady. The seeds were bought at a plant nursery in New Zealand. The biohazard lady was searching for the latin name of the seeds, unfortunately there was none printed on the sticker besides the english name of it. She was looking up the seeds in bio-security database, but failed to find. So they had to confiscate it.

I did afterwards some search on my own, it was “Gomphocarpus fruticosus”. This took me 3 minutes to find the latin name, but by the time at customs i was offline.

Lesson learnt: always buy packages with latin name printed to.

Paua shells, Shadi found at some beach havent been a problem. Unless it is clean, no tissue on it and dry the biohazard-lady said, it’s ok to bring them in.

Melbourne’s airport is a 30 minutes bus-drive away from the city-centre. There is no public transport to go into the Centre, we had to use SkyBus Express shuttle for about 20€/pax. We stayed at Ibis Bourke Street hotel which was in convenient walking distance to all of the tourist’s spots. Good thing in Melbourne is , that city centre’s tram is free and most of the attractions are in the free tram zone and it is easy to find your way, because of the grid-like setup of the city.

First impression i had on Melbourne: a mix between Manhattan (where i’ve not been so far) and any Chinatown (of which i’ve seen quite a few) in the world.

We went to an Poke restaurant next to an Karaoke club. Although there was a concrete wall between the 2 venues, it was somehow odd to eat raw fish accompanied by loud singing of K-pop next door.

Next day we did some sightseeing tour by walk/tram. We crossed Flinders Street Station, the “Australian Centre for the moving image” (a Film-museum which was closed unfortunately) and the “Marvel Stadium” (a ~60000 seat football stadium , formerly known as Etihad stadium).

As most areas of Newzealand are populated only by sheeps and cows, roads are straight on for kilometers without curves, it was somehow strange to arrive at the biggest city on the Southisland, Christchurch.

At first look , we hated it. Too many cars in the roundabouts, cityscape full of new ugly buildings, freezing cold with high winds … ugly.

During drive to our accomodation we crossed the site of one mosque, where the 2019’s mosque shooting took place – full of of mourning wreaths. 51 people were killed by one guy – unbelievable.

2011 was a series of earthquakes, where in total 185 people were killed by collapsed buildings – this city attracts bad luck, as it seems.

After our first night of 2 , weather situation got better. On second look, the city had its charme. The Christchurch Art Gallery was a must-go.

To sum up: When not going to Christchurch, you are not missing a lot. It’s a city, with all the good (more variety, better internet, entertainment) and bad (traffic, more stressful) aspects of it.

Long Time, No see …

We moved from dunedin to Christchurch, stayed there 2 nights, moved to Australia’s Melbourne stayed there another 2 nights and moved on to Cairns on the North east Coast of Australia.

Waaaaaarrrmmm temperatures finally !!!

Details tomorrow

The city of Dunedin, very scottish, very young because of a lots of students, beautiful surroundings.

The name “dunedin” is scottish gaelic and means “Edinburgh” – and that’s how it looks there. Lots of victorian and edwardian architecture, warehouse, good beer, sheeps, fried mars-bars, everything like in Scotland.

We did some exploration trips in search of penguins – but unfortunately didn’t find any. But we saw some colorful birdlife in Dunedin’s Botanical garden, lots of sea-gulls, adolescent seals in real proximity to us and some exotic plant species. But see it on your own.

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for archiving reasons: the pictures show following places we visited:

McLeans Falls

Waipapa Point

Tautuko Beach

Purakaunui Falls

The Catlins

Kaka (!!!) Point

Nugget Point

Dunedin Botanical Gardens + Town Centre

Katiki Point (we’re we spotted the Seals)

Boulder Moriaki

Oamaru ( “Steampunk Capital of the World”)

From Te Anau we drove to Invercargill, the most southern bigger city on South Island. The most southern town is Bluff, from where it’s just ~4800 km further down south and you’re on southpole.

Invercargill has a population of ~50000, from which are about 13000 students, as it is home to a Technical college free of charge. I was expecting a growing, urban and hip city-centre, but vacantness dominates. Most of the arcades and shops were closed, quite disappointing. The city seems to be the place-to-go in Southland district for buying new tractors and car. Kiwis like cars, i’ve seen quite a few american vintage cars from the 50ties, everyone in perfect condition.

We stayed at “Bavarian motel” for 2 days and enjoyed Netflix there and a good chinese restaurant nearby. That’s the benefit of staying in bigger cities, good internet and food besides the usual fish’n chips and steak pies the locals seem entirely to live on.

Due to our visit to Milford Sound, which was top priority on our bucket list, we decided to stay in Te Anau at the Arran Motel. The city is the gateway to the Fiordland and lies itself on the lake of the same name. It’s mostly farmers living there but i guess nowadays most of the people live on tourism.

Most of them come from China, which explains the majority of chinese restaurants there and specialised hotels for them.

There’s an endangered bird species living in forests there, the Takahe. As it is a flightless bird, it relies on to nests on the ground, which makes the eggs easy prey for predators. The other bird is a Parakeet, in Maori “Kākāriki”

Tuatapere is a small town of ~600 people, but it’s New Zealand’s sausage capital. The local butcher there produced 1 ton of sausages per week and distributed all over Southland. The butcher’s successor will get the secret recipe for free, when he buys the butchery.

here’s the pictures from Milford Sound – it was definitely worth the long drive and the bad winds we had there. The captain of the cruise vessel informed us that we have 40 knots of wind, which is ~ 70 km/h. Maximum they had at Milford Sound was 160 knots (about ~300 km/h).

On the upper deck it was too cold for both of us – soon we went below deck to have some hot coffee and heat up. As soon the vessel reached the open Tasman sea, winds declined and the 2nd half of the trip was much more enjoyable. The highlight was the close approach to one of the falls.

We did see some male seals lying lazily in the sun – as it is pairing season they need to have some rest before starting their business again. And yes, there’s again some more rainbows to enjoy.

The hooded girl wrapped in thick jackets next to the asian girl getting wet by falls is Shadi btw.

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Glenorchy – Kinloch – Cardrona

The relocation drive from our creepy hotel nearby Queenstown to Te Anau was done – quite a long drive of about 180km. Which sounds not that bad, but driving here is different. As the roads are winding with a lot of ups and downs, average speed is ~60km/h. And then there’s the sightseeing spots after every single curve. This takes time.

After dropping our luggage at the Arran Motel, we straightly headed to Milford Sound where we pre-booked a boat cruise. Te Anau is the last outpost before Milford Sound, this means again a drive. Distance to Milford Sound was 118 km. 118 km of pure nature, creeks, wildlife, glaciers but also no shops, no gsm-coverage, no gas-stations. So you better get prepared.

What does wikipedia know about Milford Sound:

“Milford Sound / Piopiotahi is a fiord in the south west of New Zealand‘s South Island within Fiordland National Park, Piopiotahi (Milford Sound) Marine Reserve, and the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage site. It has been judged the world’s top travel destination in an international survey (the 2008 Travelers’ Choice Destinations Awards by TripAdvisor)^[1][2] and is acclaimed as New Zealand’s most famous tourist destination.^[3] Rudyard Kipling had previously called it the eighth Wonder of the World.^[4] “

well, see yourself. Photos will follow shortly.

The first gold was found in 1862, in a few weeks (!) population risen up to 1500 people. There was a big chinese community coming from Canton area in China to find their luck. By that time, the average income of golddiggers was 7 times the one from a farmer in Canton china.

They had to live in a separate part of the city in extreme poverty.