Haere ra Aotearoa - Thanks for everything - Sad to leave but our hearts are content

LEAVING ON A JETPLANE....
Don't know when we'll be back again.....
And so we're on our way to Singapore in the plane. A ten hour flight on a low cost airline. Really a low cost one, as we're not even being offered a single drop of water (you can get some it you explicitely ask for it though). It's been short night, and that doesnt really help our mood. We're sad. A bit excited too, but also worried. We'll have a 27 hour layover; we didn't want to risk missing the next plane, as the airlines often change schedules and it's not improbable that we would have a delay. But since we're not continuing with the same airline, we'll have to clear customs. Not necessarily a problem; but we might not be able to check in yet. Without a hotel reservation, we might need to spend a night in front of the counter. It's all part of the game :). Sigh.

We'll be flying towards Colombo, Sri Lanka tomorrow, and we're not entirely sure what to think of it. On the one hand, we're really looking forward to a new adventure, on the other, we're so used to Western civilisation again; we're kind of dreading the touting, the shouting and the bargaining again. Unspoilt territory it should be, not totally invaded by tourism, and off season. Let's see what the tourists looking for an alternative to Thailand have made out of it so far.

CLIMBING THE CASTLE, CONQUERING THE CAVE AND MEETING THE DEVIL
But back to our New Zealand story. We should probably be writing 2 blogs to be up to date again: one for the way north through the southern island (through Arthur's Pass and Nelson) and one for the last bits on the Northern Island. But right now we couldn't care less; chances are that no one is reading it anyway (apologies to our two friends whom we know for sure they do!). Sometimes we wonder why we write at all. It's a lot of stress, and it takes ages. Same goes for the photos, as we've sorted out 24678 photos so far. But we know that if we don't, a lot of names and places disappear otherwise from our memory. So what the heck, we'll just continue. There's only 2 more to be written  anyway.

We left Christchurch with one sad and one smiling eye, as we left anywhere where we've stayed with and met with lovely people. Nicola recommended Arthur's Pass and Nelson Lakes, and she was more than right! Crossing the mountain range, the temperature dropped a bit, and the surroundings turned into a less populated scenery. The road slowy winds up, only to be met on the other side with a dazzling 16% slope downhill. In the middle, we found Castle Hill, a very rocky area that has been scenery for the Chronicles of Narnia. Giant limestone boulders the size of houses, spread everywhere in the field. Like a bunch of Giants played with marbles. Ideal for bouldering, if you'd bring your own equipment. Since we didn't want to risk any more injuries (one rib is enough), we decided to take only the easy route up :) to a magnificent view. A shame we didn't really bring more time with us, as it feels like a really unspoilt area, where not many tourists go.

A few kilometers further, a signpost to the Cavestream tells us to go right. A 600 meter long cave with an underground steam and 7 (little) waterfalls /steps. Pitch black and ice cold. We doubted if we should or shouldn't go. It's freezing...we can't get our wetsuits dry...what about shoes??.... We won't make it before sunset....We thought of enough excuses and went anyway :) what else do we have the wetsuits for??! The first part is the deepest, if the water isn't higher than your waist/breast, you should be fine for the rest. We plunged in and were gasping for air. After 15 seconds, our feet started to sting. After 45 seconds they just went numb. Definitely not a good thing to do barefeet, as you wouldn't feel it if you would hurt your foot on a stone. It's funny how uou get precious about a pair of 15 dollar shoes that you bought specifically for this kind of things. They get so dear to you that you don't want to "sacrifice" them.  And so we made our way through the cave. Freezing, scrambling over rocks and pitchblack if without a torch. But the yellowish limestone reflect a lot of light; once lit, you can actually see quite well, even with just a small headlamp. But it's hard to orientate. After about 20 minutes Mar got a bit uncomfortable. It feels like ages, and the first fun of it is gone. Our feet hurt and we can hardly stop to take photos, as we notice on our breathing and heartbeat it's simply too cold to stop. One waterfall is a bit rough and Jan needs to pull Mar up as there is no real place to hold on to. But other than that, the track is fine. A last climb on a metal ladder to crouch out through the last 10 narrow meters above a big waterfall and we're there. In the end, it took us only 40 minutes instead of an hour. Just early enough to warm up in the sunshine, and feel like a hero :) We stayed the night near a lake and returned a shoe (that an Irish bloke lost in the cavestream!) to the nearest restaurant. No phone coverage here!

In Arthur's Pass, the village, we doubt about hiking up to Avalanche Peak. But it's a 6-7 hour hike and it's cloudy. Another option is to hike to a hot pool and camp the night, but it's been raining and the rivers might have flooded. The lady at the DOC is unable to produce an adequate map for the environment, nor give us the information we want. We're frustrated, probably mostly since we cannot make up our mind and it's getting late in the day. That's the nasty thing about winter: short days. If you don't get up by 7:30, half your daylight is gone. Frustrating for night owls. So we end up an alternative route: hiking half an hour to Devil's punchbowl, the longest free-drop-waterfall in New Zealand. And it's wet at the top. The wind blows the water straight onto us, whilst we're standing in the shadow of the mountain. Not a really suitable day for a swim. we'll leave the devil be. There's no real nice place for lunch with view on the waterfall except for all the way down again. Jan is still frustrated about our indecisiveness and missed opportunity to climb the Avalanche Peak and the only comfort is the fact that it is still in the clouds by the time we start the car again.

On the top of the pass, before the 16% downhill race :) we found some Kea's again. Really close this time, and not scared at all. The explicit "do not feed kea" sign is ignored by a tourist couple (kea's get dependend on human food and thus bored as they don't need to hunt anymore..) and they were punished by a bored and frustrated kea eating the antenna of their car. Serves them well. Silly enough they didn't even mind the parrot eating it and took photos as if it was cute. Humans...sigh...

RAIN + RIDGE = HYPOTHERMIA?
Am finding it hard to recall all we did; the Asian looking person in the chair next to us on this full A330 flight whobbles in his chair and the sound of the engine is still loud enough to go through our earplugs. We miss train riding right now, but it looks like Sri Lanka has a lot of trains :) Hope we will still like trains in two weeks :)

Through the Buller Gorge we made our way north. Sunny Nelson received us with wet, but open arms. We experienced the wettest autumn in 70 years, in a place that is supposed to be bright, warm and sunny. It literally poured down. Happily, we stayed with Susan & Dwayne in their honeyhouse :)

The otherwise so lovely Cable Bay turned grey. In fact, it's really a shame to be in the Nelson/Abel Tasman area when it rains; we did that 5 years ago. The otherwise turquoise water and yellow beaches turn into "normal" grey ones. And with tons of water coming down, the Abel Tasman canoe trip literally fell in the water. Quite sad, as that was on the wish list for a long time! But one of the nice things with that trip would be pulling your kayak on a deserted beach and sleep in just you sleeping bag under the stars. No use in doing that now. We've experienced real bad weather and rough seas when we kayaked in Åland, we didn't have a real interest in repeating it under the same conditions. Sigh...

Instead, we did get to do a bit sightseeing in Nelson. Walked in the Japanese Gardens, visited the Cathedral and the Centre of NZ, a short walk up a mountain to the point where they started all measurements of the country. Geographically seen it is not the real Centre, but who cares? It's a beautiful view over the city! But most of all, we spent time with our friends!

From Nelson we took a little side trip to Nelson Lakes National Park. Gorgeous. It offered us in terms of trekking just what we needed. Rougher terrain, no more 1 meter wide paths and actually a steep mountain ridge. The Robert Ridge to Lake Angelus was really nice, really nice. It's a really long ridge, and when sunny a beautiful view. A shame we had to rush a bit as it was getting dark, and we could only stay for a night as there was a blizzard coming up the day after. All alone up there we walked through the mist, only seeing the track (back from where we were coming from) once in a while. It took us longer than expected to scramble over the rocks and the last part seemed to be just without an end. We were getting tired and just made it before dark. While Jan lit the fire in the deserted hut, Mar cleared out the ash tray outside. Suddenly, out of the mist, a dark figure appeared. We didn't expect anyone to be out here so late!! "You have matches or a lighter?!" Glad that they didn't see the startled expression on my face. Quite excited two Americans stumbled into the hut, frozen, unable to untie their shoelaces. No stove, no lighter, little food and a too thin sleeping bag, in other words, well prepared :)
While we warmed up next to the fire, we were glad we didn't take the valley-track, the guys were soaked from crossing the river many times. At least it made the decision whether or not to take the same route back an easy one.

The Angelus hut is beautifully situated, amidst white mountains, right on the shore of the lake. A beautiful sight to wake up to. Quite cold as well, but the first 100 m ascent changed that soon enough. It is always hard, balancing between not sweating and not freezing. I think we both prefer not sweating. We waited for the  weather to clear up, but it was worse than the day before. Cold, foggy and wet on top of it. Darn these rainclothes. Mar got really soaked, and by the time we reached the middle stop on of of the shelters, started to shake. Classic mistake of not directly changing into dry clothes and keeping on the wet ski underwear. We had to pull out a sleeping bag to get her warm; and with a hot water bottle tucked under her jacket, we marched on, literally ran down the track. The car was still there (there have been cases where cars have been broken into on this kind of parking spots!) and still in one piece.

COUNTING SHEEP
From here we made our way back north to Wakefield, to Nicola's mum, Sue. They have a sheep farm, and we ended up helping out with the pregnancy scanning of the ewes! 3600 ewes in two days. Being on the farm was amazing, heartwarming, it felt like home. Sue took us in as her own kids. And with 7 wonderful sheep dogs, we always had a friend around. Driving the quadbike, pushing and pulling sheep, changing the brakes for the young bulls, it's all part of it! And we gladly helped out, although it's sure we're not becoming farmers now. It very rewarding work, working with the animals and the dogs, but we know it can also be really hard times. The drought of the last summer caused many sheep to be little; they won't become pregnant under 40 kgs. Not enough rain means not enough food, and thus not enough lambs. "Red for dead, on the head". We marked them with the spraycans, more often than we wanted. The dogs easily turned into our friends, and we wish we could have taken one with us.

With our new brother :) Hamish we went hunting for possums. Other than in Australia, where they are protected, possums in New Zealand are a pest and you can hunt them everywhere (well we think they are a pest there too but protected :)) About 15 plucked possums will give you enough fur for a kg, about 125 dollar worth. But its hard find the possums you shot in the dark on a steep hill down below. That is, if you managed to kill them, as they are quite reluctant to die. Probably not the best story for the nature activists amongst our readers, but it's just how things are here. We wanted to live as New Zealanders, and this is part of it.

CROSSING THE STRAIT AGAIN
It was so hard to part from Nelson area and our new friends, but we had to make our way north again. Unfortunately, the bad weather had caused a storm in the Cook Strait the days before. 10 meter swell caused the ferry to stop its service, causing our early morning ferry to be late as well after it finally took up its service again. Bummer. We wanted to be early in Otaki and have one night of not rushing to a place to sleep before dark. We just wanted an easy evening without stress. This day apparently wasn't one of these, although it did mean we could spend some time near the beautiful Marlborough sounds in the morning; playing the guitar and enjoying the sun.

The crossing only takes about three hours, and the swell  had died out quite a bit. In the sounds itself (about 1.5 hours) its nice and flat! There we got to see dolphins! It's a very nice trip, even though it is overpriced in comparison to European ferries.

DRIVING ON SAND AND HIKING IN SNOW
And then we were on the north side again, our last 600 kilometers before the end of this episode. From Otaki we drove to Foxton Beach. We simply had to do it: Foxton-Himatangi beach road, 15-20 km on the sand. Quite exciting, a bit nervous we were. And since one of us forgot to put the floormats in the car back, we even got to drive a bit more :) . It's a really good strip of sand, even doable with a 2WD. A bunch of youngsters were doing donuts :)

Another 2-3 hour drive took us all the way to the east side of Tongariro National Park, across the desert road (where the LOTR Black Gate scenes were filmed). We cooked our dinner next to the moonlight mountains, underneath the stars. A magical place. We decided to do the track again, this time from the north. It's not the most beautiful part, but it's the most volcanic active area. On this side, mount Rahui erupted last year, and the smoke is still rising from its crater, as it is from the Ketetahi Springs. Until these, the track is winding through the forest, before opening the view onto Mount Tongariro and Rahui. The Ketetahi Hut is only a day shelter these days, as it's been badly hit by burning flying rocks from the Rahui explosion. The rocks damaged the roof and smashed the beds. Quite a destructive power!!  After treading through the snow for 1,5 hour after the hut, we finally see them: the blue lake and the emerald lakes! Not as blue & green as in summer (due to the ice), but still pretty. We climbed up the last steep slope to the middle summit to have the best view on both sides: breathtaking. And since we were late in the day: no one else! We passed some guided groups on the way, all armed with ice axes and crampons. Not bad to be prepared, but it was definitely not necessary yet. Later, we heard a trip like this costs 160!! Dollar per person. Gee, we were speechless. we'd like to be a guide here :)
Quite funny, we did meet two others on the "summit", Andrew and Matt and we were invited instantly to stay with  Matt in Taupo. We're happy to see that the world is full of lovely people, that don't judge and take you in as if you are long lost friends.

BRIDGING THE DISTANCE
A contrast to what caused a bit of a down today, as we seem to have lost some good friends through something we still dont understand. It's hard to clear these things through E-mail without hurting even more. And apparently it is not so easy to bridge physical long distances for a long time, and it's  easy to have some misunderstandings in communication....
But somehow we're starting to wonder whether it is us. Maybe we have become too much of a couple that has been on their own too long? But the new friends we meet show us the opposite: we can't be too unagreeable if so many take us heartily in their lives share everything and every occasion with us regardlesy.... Perhaps we are a bit stubborn and self-determined and direct, but still...maybe it's just a mistake, but it has shaken us. The journey seems to start taking its toll on us and our relationships. Are we too demanding on the loyalty of our friends? We dunno. Maybe it's simply time to come home but these downturns diminish our joyful anticipation of our return, we felt rejected and unwanted....

PLANNING THE HOMECOMING
So in the end it made us change our plans today; we're coming home to Holland instead of Germany. After landing in Frankfurt, we are taking the train directly to Schagen to meet our family. The day after onwards to Bremen, meeting the other part of the family. Anyone who is bored and doesnt know how to kill some time or still wants to see us is more than welcome ;). This strange mixture of longing for home and not wanting it to end is getting hold of us; and its tiring.

LUXURY ON THE AIRPORT
Luckily, we didn't pass through immigration in Singapore immediately to pick up our bags. With a 27 hour stop, 2 different airlines and earliest 2 hour checkin before the 2nd flight, we would have been stuck in the hall before checkin. Now, we had the transit lounge waiting for us: free water, free movies in the cinema, free massage chairs and foot massages, a butterfly garden, an orchid garden, a snooze lounge with almost flat beds... Amazing. This is better than a hotel, and we were able to catch up on some sleep. The only downturn: we lost our Australian souvenirs :( some too adequate customs people took out the vegemite (apparently a gel, even though it is no liquid), and our bottle opener from Sydney (sorry girls!). We were supposed to send it by mail, and our last minute decision to take it in the hand luggage apparently was fatal. Grrr. But that's life.

FLYING HIGH & FLIPPING IN THE KAITUNA
From Tongariro we drove up to Rotorua. We hadn't done any "crazy" stuff yet that the area is know for, so what the heck. We booked through Grabone (just like the Bookme website) a 60% discount voucher to go rafting. A grade V on the Kaituna river. Most of the river is quite lame, only a grade 2-3, but it does have one big drop. They claim it is the highest commercial rafting drop  in the world - a 7 meter waterfall that used to be the burial place of the local tribes. Being the smallest raft with the heaviest people, our chances of making it dry (alive??) weren't the best. And of course....we flipped over. It was only afterwards that our guide told us he had a 50-50 track record. Quite reassuring :) but we didn't mind. We had a wetsuit and can swim. It was actually quite cool, as it is a relatively "safe" place to practice this kind of things and get used to flipping over in white water. And it would have been even boring to stay dry. The Chinese raft which was the only one that stayed dry (all weighing less than 40 kgs) were disappointed and wanted our flipping photos. How ironic.

Kerosene Creek wasn't warm due to rainfall, but the Wai-o-Tapu bridge spring was; we had a romantic candlelight hot bath. Wanting to have a nice place for the last night in the car, we ended up searching long. We didn't want to be the only ones camping near Kerosene Creek. Without being racist, local Maoris seem to have fun in hanging out there late at night. Last time, we woke up at 3 am by someone lighting fireworks next to us. But at that time, there were 5 other cars parking overnight. This time, we were alone. So we drove all the way up to Lake Rerewhakaaitu, a DOC site. Again we wondered why. They're so far away from everything, and of the ones we stayed at, none at a spectacular place. Near Tongariro, we could have parked near the road wih a beautiful view. We decided to drive the 10 km gravel road to a basic DOC site, with nothing but a long drop. No view, no river or lake, just a really cold muddy (what used to be grass) spot. Think it is time we write some recommendations to the DOC headquarters (which do not exist) instead of complaining here. Kind of getting the feeling that they are more administrative than helpful in a way.

But enough complaining.
We took a leap into the Freefall Xtreme tower and learnt how it feels to skydive without the actual planeride. A bit tricky since we had much wind from the side, but we both managed to fly solo shortly!

TRADING OUR HOME
Auckland northshore received us with a smile. A lovely host family and two dogs that wouldn't leave our side. We felt like coming home (again); we were spoilt with lamb roast and made pavlova with tamarillos. Delicious.

The long dreaded car sale went without any issues (thankfully!!) and was much easier than the purchase. We placed it on gumtree as a backup, but thanks to Suse & Dwayne we sold it to two lovely people that will take good care of it. Seems like the demand-offer of cars is more balanced than in May. In summer the prices go up ridiculously, right after summer they drop steeply and people get desperate. We are grateful that we didn't have to experience that and hope that our -still unnamed- beauty will be as good to the new owners as it was to us. And even though we should probably not have worried so much, we couldn't help it. Funny how we are somehow more control-freaks than we would like to be - apparently you dont change as a person easily even if u try :). But it turned out all fine.

With the car sold, we could relax our last days. A whalesafari was our special treat. It's amazing how some animals work together; the Australasian Gannets give away the location of the dolphins, and we saw many  (common dolphins). It's very impressive to see how the Gannets fly up against the wind, circle and then aim for the right spot. They fold in their wings, and like little bombs they drop into the water, looking for fish that is chased by the dolphins. A magical sight. The dolphins played with the catamaran; and although it wasn't the first time we saw them, it was still really impressive. If it wasn't for the sharp eyes of Jan, we might not have found them; fortunately he did. Brydeswhales. Named after a Norwegian, the size of a humpback whale with the characteristics of a fin whale. It blew out air before it graciously dived again, hungry for more fish. It was a nice way to end the journey down under, with sunset over Auckland. We're sad to leave, as we don't know when and if we will come back. It's so far away, the flight is so long; it's not really a two-week holiday destination. Saying goodbye to Mike and Coruba that have become our beautiful, but aged, black, furry pals was hard. The chances that they will live still if we come back is small. It shows us even more that we have to cherish each day and every moment that we have, or could have with our loved ones. We know it's going to be really hard to fit back in the grid of "normal" life. Our only hope for survival is The fact that we will be close to our friends and family again.

In the meanwhile, we've boarded the plane to Colombo. Fashionably late on an already delayed flight. We're unsure what to expect and of how touristy the country has become in the meantime. It's only 4 years after the civil war. In Cambodia, after 10 years it was still present. Perhaps it's a mixture of India and South East Asia? We don't know You should think that by now we should be accustomed to traveling in Asia; yet somehow we're still nervous, every time. Let's see what happens tomorrow.