He guys, I'm really tired of all those complaints !!!!! You don't like my writing - well that will save me a lot of work - no more words, just pics.

I went to St. Arnaud to do some hiking in Nelson Lakes National Park, it's a very quiet place ( except the birds, they are really noisy, but that just shows how quiet the place is !! ) . I took a shuttle to Kawatiri Junction a few days later to make sure that I would be there in time for that stupid backpacker bus to pick me up along the road to take me to Punakaiki, because I wasn't sure whether I could hitchhike to that junction in time as there weren't many cars passing through St. Arnaud, especially not in the morning. It was one of that cloudy rainy mornings - the backpacker bus showed up just in time...at 9.45 it came around the corner...and passed without stopping. Couldn't stop laughing, that was just what I had dreamed of the night before, but who needs that bus anyway. I had to get out of the middle of nowhere, so I started hitchhiking, I went to Murchison first, then on to that crossroad close to the westcoast where one road goes up to Westport and the other one down along the westcoast and got picked up by an older guy. He turned out to be the owner of an old historic goldmine near Charleston, so I got a free tour through the mine when we arrived in Charleston. He told me that I might even have seen him on german television, as there was this german fellow called Hardy Krueger who made a film about the ( true nature of the ) Westcoast of the South Island and the people living there back in the late 70ies, and he stopped over in Charleston to do some filming here and even helped him building his place ( Has anyone seen that film? I guess I missed out on that one!) . Anyway, I had to go on, I finally found someone to take me down to Punakaiki ( along that beautiful coastline, althrough it was a little too cloudy ) , and this guy even spoke a little german, as he was living in Frankfurt for a while... now even the Kiwis are starting to talk german to me...AWFUL!!!!! After a late lunch I walked over to see the Pancake Rocks in the afternoon, and the bus that was supposed to pick me up in the morning was having a photostop over there right then, so I walked over to them and heard the busdriver talk to somebody about that junction he had missed in the morning...he was pretty happy to see me, I think the expression on his face when he realised who I was while still wondering how I made it here was even better than the expression on my face when I saw the bus passing by in the morning.... anyway, I did a nice hike the next day ( and it was sunny, so I could see all the cliffs and hills ) , a little hike called Truman Track ( huge waves and rocks at a lovely beach after walking through some native bush/ forest ) and a longer walk towards the Paparoa NP...I liked the vegetation, lots of huge trees with moss on them, palms and fern that always made you wonder what may be behind the next bend of the path...the hidden valley of the dinosaurs maybe??? I left Punakaiki in the afternoon as I was running out of groceries, I went on to Greymouth , did some food shopping over there and left the next morning, heading towards Franz Josef ( Glacier ). On the way over there we did a lot of touristic stops, pretty annoying, but at least we stopped at a deer farm where a Westcoaster told us about how they made a living back in the good old days when men were men and sheep were scared...and no auckland-to-christchurch-in-a-day-with-a-bungy-jump-option-tourists ( like us ) were roaming the islands, this guy was awesome, I liked his rough westcoast-sense of humour ...you could also try some possum pie over there...possums are those little animals that were introduced to new zealand and ( as so many things that were introduced) became a plaque they can't get rid off anymore, destroying the native bush over here....one of the most common local activities/sports ( right after rugby, of course ) is to race along the streets after sunset to hit as many possums as possible....Kiwis are pretty concerned about/ occupied with everything that was intoduced some time ago, which just shows their efforts to save their amazing natural enviroment, but it's a little odd too when you think of the fact that they were introduced themselves.....ohh, I think I'm starting to ramble.....ok, I arrived at Franz Josef in the afternoon and did a hike to see the glacier, I couldn't get very close as there was a flood 3 days ago that destroyed parts of the path leading to the glacier and a little bridge and I didn't want to get wet feed while walking though a river as it was already cold enough on that rainy afternoon. The next day we went on south, passing FOX ( Glacier) and Lake Mathesen, which is called the Mirror Lake, because it reflects an amazing panorama of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman on a sunny day...... as it was cloudy and raining straight, I don't need to tell you what the lake reflected....originally I wanted to stay there for a while, do a glacier hike on FOX Glacier and go for some hikes around Lake Mathesen, but I changed my mind when we got there, didn't make much sense to stay and wait for better weather, so I just went for a short walk to see something of the lake at all, just accompanied by some hardcore-Japanese, we were completely wet after 1 minute. I arrived in Queenstown in the evening and went to a bird park the next day to spot some Kiwi-birds, couldn't stop giggling when I saw them jump around and racing along very fast, like a way to big Kiwi-fruit with legs and a long beak, pretty unique. The next day I took a tour down to the Fjordland NP and made a cruise on the famous Milford Sound. I stayed in Te Anau for 2 nights to do some kajaking on the Doubtful Sound which was way better than the cruise on Milford Sound. Since it's more difficult to get to that second fjord ( you have to cross a lake with a boat and a mountain pass by bus to get there), we were almost on our own in that remote wilderness. I returned to Queenstown a day ago, did some wicked rafting on the Shotover River this morning and gonna head towards Dunedin tomorrow.

From Taupo I went on to Wellington to stay there for a night before taking the ferry down to the South Island. Arriving on the South Island on a very cloudy day, I went straight on to Nelson - which they call the sunshine city. Hahahahaha....didn't see the sun ( or even a dot of the blue sky ) for 2 days, it was raining straight for 2 days - you couldn't tell where the fog on the hillsides ended and the clouds began, I didn't have an idea what the surrounding of Nelson looks like till my last morning over there - when I left, the sun was shining from a blue sky, as if it would have been like that for ages....that's New Zealand, asking someone what the weather is gonna be like the next day will just earn you a strange look and a smile that says "How the hell to know what the weather is gonna be like, don't you know that you're in New Zealand? I took a bus up to the Abel Tasman Nationalpark and stayed at a little village called Marahau right at the start of the Abel Tasman coastal walk - trailhead...there was a lovely hostel over there, a real backpacker athmosphere, cozy with wooden funiture, a huge living room with soft big armchairs where everybody met for a chat in the evening !!! Did I mention that New Zealand is packed with germans ( especially those who just finished school and headed off for a year )? I'm speaking german all day long over here !!! A bunch of people from Dresden stayed at that hostel in Marahau, and talking to them and listening to our lovely accent made me feel like being home. I tramped one third of that costal walk that day towards Anchorage Bay, and walked back to Marahau in the afteroon to wait for another girl I met in Nelson, as we were planning on renting a kajak over there. My feet where like ice cubes that night, and it was cloudy again the next morning. When the girl finally arrived on a later bus it was to late to rent a kajak for that day, so we took the watertaxi to Awaroa Bay further north in the park, not without having a look on the that seal colony living on Tonga Island. We hiked through the rainforest ( now we know why it is called RAIN forest ) and along golden beaches, it was almost low tide, so we were able to take the shorter low tide route, althrough we had to wade through water now and then.... and finally made our way down south to Anchorage Bay just in time for the sunset and a barbeque on board of a boat over there where we spend the night. The next day was the sunniest day so far, so after been droped off by the captain of the boat we just lay on the beach of Anchorage Bay till noon ( must have had looked like the seals we had seen the day before ) and hiked over to the next cove in the early afternoon to wait for our kajaks to get ashore - to make a little guided seakajaking tour back to Marahau. I just loved it, unless we didn't make it to Marahau on our kajaks, althrough we would have had to surround just one more cliff. But some wind came up and the waves got so high and strong that we didn't make much process while paddeling and paddeling, so our guide advised us to turn and let us drift back towards the last beach we had passed to wait for the watertaxi, which was really busy with picking up all those kajaks along the shoreline of the nationalpark. I had a lot of fun out there with all those waves, our landing on the beach was funny too, because the last wave that reached us made our kajak turn over, so we finally went for a swim. I returned to Nelson in the evening, gonna stay here for one more night before heading down south towards a little town called St. Arnaud ( off the beaten path, eh??).

Rotorua - there's a light smell of rotten eggs everywhere due to all those geothermal spots over there. I asked a Maori guy how to get to a place called Hell's Gate and he just told me: drink a lot, drive fast and crash - but as he didn't want to lend me his car I had to take the bus to that mean-smelling ( worse than rotten eggs ) place, steam is coming up next to boiling mudpots- they've chosen the right name for it. In the evening I had a Hangi meal and saw a cultural performance of the Maori- a haka ( kind of war- dance). Went to see some more geothermal landscapes the next day, full of amazing colours, unfortunally I can't capture the smell of those spots for you, lucky you!!! I hiked through the Waimangu Volcanic Valley - there was a lake called Frying Pan Lake and due to all the steam coming up there was a layer of fog on it's surface that had something mystical --- I had to think of Lord of the Rings all the time. I went on to Taupo on Thursday, it was cloudy that day so I couldn't do what I had in mind. I did the Tongariro crossing yesterday ( Friday ) . That's a one-day-hike through the volcanic valley between Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe, the last one may be known to some of you as Mt. Doom in the land of MORDOR. It was pretty foggy when we started, so you couldn't see the summits of the volcanos, but it was still worth it, seeing lava flows, waterfalls, volcano craters ( hot steaming soil under your feet at a high of almost 2000 meters - while there was snow on the next mountain) and beautifully coloured lakes. And I got some fresh air again after all ! When I woke up today ( it's saturday althrough this diary says that it is still friday ) and looked at that blue sky I knew that I would get some more fresh air today -- while skydiving !!!!! Still can't believe that I jumped out of that plane at 12.000 ft--WICKED !!!!!