Steward Island - 1.1.2013 - 4.1.2013

On the first of january, I could sleep a tiny little bit longer, but not that long. I had to check out at 11 am from the  hostel in Invercargrill. After that I guess I cooked some lunch and then had to wait until about 15:30, when our bus driver brought me and 2 other people to the ferry terminal in Bluff. So all in all we were only 3 people who went to Stewart island. All the others went back to Queenstown that day. At the ferry terminal we cecked in our luggage and then at 5 pm the ferry started. The journey from bluff to Stewart island lasted about an hour. The island itself is only about 35 km away, so if the weather conditions are not too bad you can see the island at the horizon while standing at the ferry terminal. After our arrival at Stewart island we checked in into the hostel. Then I  cooked some green Thai curry for dinner, which took me ages, because it was so busy in the kitchen. The curry was not bad but a bit too spicy. I don't like it if things are to spicy, because I think this destroys the natural flavour of the food.


On the 2nd of January I got up quite early. I decided to go for a walk to the lighthouse at Ackers Point, because people told me that penguins can be seen there. Before I started my walk I chose to go to the harbor again to the information centre quickly, because I wanted to find out where exactly penguins could be seen. The girl at the office told me that penguins could only be seen in the evening, because during daytime they were out on the sea for fishing. Nevertheless i decided to walk to the lighthouse in hope, that i might see a penguin nevertheless.

half moon bay on the way to the Ackers Point light house

On the way to the lighthouse i met a local from the island, who said something like, "nice day - not?!" Which i found a bit strange, because the complete sky was covered in clouds, and it looked like it could start to rain every second. But yes as i found out later, on this island it rains almost 365 days per year! So i guess as long as it is not raining it is really a nice day on this island :).

Ackers Point Lighthouse

When i arrived at the lighthouse i couldn*t see and penguins, but i was surprised to see seals on the rocks, where i would have expected penguins :). One of the seals was very active and "walking" around, which was really nice, because usually the seals just lie on their rocks and sleep, and do nothing.

Seal at Ackers Point Lighthouse

Seal at Ackers Point Lighthouse 2

After my trip to the lighthouse i returned to the hostel to have lunch. In the afternoon i decided to go for a second walk, and check out the other side of the bay. There i found a beautiful lonely beach. On the map i had it said that there should be a walking trek along this beach, which goes kind of back to the hostel.
I couldn*t see any path so i decided to walk along the rocks near the beach, in order to see weather i could perhaps find a path beyond the rocks. I walked as far as i could along the rocks until i came to a point, where i would have had to climb across a chasm. Because i was alone and i am not an experienced climber, i decided to go back, the same way i came. Before i went back i made the following picture of the coast. Beyond these rocks you can see the small lonely beach , where i came from.

beach, picture taken while standing on the rocks

After this small trip to the beach, i went back to the hostel, where i decided to wait until about 9 pm. My plan was to go out again in the evening in order to perhaps see some of the blue penguins at the lighthouse. So at about 9 pm i started to walk to the lighthouse. I waited there for ages. The sunset was a bit strange, because there were so many clouds, but nevertheless the colors were quite pretty. After waiting there for ages, i was about to give up. Because it was already dark. And my chances got lower to see a penguin in the dark. Apart from that i was the only one at the lighthouse. At the moment when i wanted to go back, to other persons showed up at the lighthouse. They told me that they live in Christchurch, and come to this island often for holiday, and that they come to the lighthouse often in the evening in order to see the penguins and the Titi. They were carrying red torch lights, which are better if you want to see animals at night, because they don*t scare the animals so much. So we waited some more minutes at the lighthouse, and then suddenly all around us there were noises of the penguins and the titi which were coming back from the sea. You could see the titi birds flying around the lighthouse, and one after another they were crashing into the bushes like  airplanes having a crash landing. Unfortunately we couldn't see any of the penguins. We waited a bit longer, and then we so one single penguin hiding in the bush. Maybe they knew that we were there and were afraid to climb back into their nests. The two Newzealanders told me that usually you can see lots of the penguins.
Maybe we just had an unlucky night. But in general i guess it is a bit hard to see the penguins at this lighthouse, because they can only be seen after sunset, when they climb back into their nests.

sunset as seen from Ackers Point Lighthouse

On the 3rd of January i went for a walk to the so called "Horse Shoe Bay", with two girls from my hostel. The bay which our hostel lies in is by the way called the "Halfmoon Bay". The Path to the Halfmoon Bay was about 3.5 km away. On this way we saw some nice bays and beaches, one of them was called the "Dead Man's Beach".

pretty small bay on the way to the Horse Shoe Bay

dead man's beach

trekking path along the coast to the Horse Shoe Bay

Horse Shoe Bay

Invercargrill - 31.12.

In the morning of the 31st of December we left Gunns Camp, where we had stayed over night and headed to Invercargrill. On our way to Invercargrill we made a short stop at the so called "Mirror Lakes". The water of these lakes has almost the reflection of a mirror if you look at it. In the picture down below you can see that someone put a green sign with yellow letters to the lake surface , which says "Mirror Lakes" , but you can only read the sign if you have a look at the reflection in the water :)

Mirror Lakes

Invercargrill itself is not my favourite city. It*s so large and the streets are completely empty. After our checkin into the hostel our bus driver brought us to the bluff, the point on the southisland where also the ferry departs to stewart island. At the Buff there is a funny sign which shows the name of different places and there distance. For example Stewart island is 35 km away from this point as you can see on the picture down below. I found it quite exciting to see that i was "only" 4810 km away from the South Pole at this point. You can really feel how it gets colder and colder the more you travel to the south of New Zealand. On the other hand the Equator is about 5133km away in the other direction , which means at this point you are about in the middle between Equator and Southpole. However if i won*t ever go to the Antartic Stewart Island will probably be the most southern Point i will ever have travelled to on our Planet.

Bluff

Milford Sound Cruise - 30.12.

On the 30th of December we went on a boat trip trough one of the Fjordlands on the South Island of New Zealand. The Part of the Fjiorlandlands where we did our boat trip is called "Milford Sound". There is another similar Fjiord called "Doubtful Sound". There are also boat Cruises which you can do to "Doubtful Sound", but i got the Mildford Sound Cruise for about 30$ which is pretty cheap (usually you pay at least 100$), so i only did this cruise at this time. On that day it was raining a lot and we had lots of fog. But nevertheless Milford Sound looked simply beautiful. I hope you can see what i mean on the pictures down below. On the side of the mountains hundreds of waterfalls are coming down. And the whole scenery looks even more mysterious with all the fog. I think even the pictures can not describe how beautiful it looks like. You have to be there in order to see it.
If there is nice weather, people told me, sometimes dolphins can be seen at Milford sound.
Seals can be seen all the time, they usually lie around on there rocks how they always do it.

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Mildford Sound

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

Milford Sound

big Waterfall at Milford Sound

me at Milford Sound :)

After our trip to Milford sound, we headed to "Gunns Camp" a small campsite in middle of the nature, where we would stay over night. On the way we passed the "Valley of a thousand Waterfalls". As our bus driver said: "If you cannot figure out why it is called that way, by looking around, then i cannot help you :)".
Similar to Milford sound here thousands of waterfalls come down  the side of the mountains.

Valley of a thousand waterfalls

On the way to Gunns Camp we also passed this river. I cannot remember the name of the river. I just thought it*s a nice photo ;).

Queenstown - 27.12. - 30.12.

On the 27th of December we left lake Wanaka and went on in direction Queenstown. On the way to Queenstown we stopped at a river where people were bungy jumping.The color of this river was unreal blue, as if someone had poured blue color in it, so it looks more blue.

bungy jumping river

bungy jumping river 2

On my first day in Queenstown i didn*t do a lot, except of buying some food at the supermarket. Well i walked a bit around the city , which is not quite hard because the city is really pretty small. I tried to find a shop which sells glasses and other optical stuff. But the only shop in town, as i found out later, had already closed.
The nice thing about Queenstown is that it is around the town there are mountains everywhere, and there is a lake at the city. Well i am not sure whether this lake is really a lake, or just a big river, or whether it is actually sea water :-?

Queenstown with mountains in the background

lake in  Queenstown

On the 28th of December, i went to this optical shop, because i had lost my sunglasses somewhere on my journey, and i don*t know where. I thought i might have lost them in the hostel in Auckland, but i called them, and they said, that no sunglasses had been found there. Because the sunglasses had been very expensive and i don*t want to risk to lose them again, i decided to go for a different strategy this time:
Contact Lenses + Regular Sunglasses. If i lose one of them it*s not as annoying and they are easier to replace. So for almost the whole day i was in town to look for some new sunglasses and to buy the contact lenses. The rest of the day i spent in the Peter Pans travel agency in order to update my blog. Im lucky that they have an office here, where i can surf for free :).

In the evening of the 28th i went to some of the local bars with one of my room mates. On of the bars was quite interesting. The bar is called "Cowboys". They give out free cowboy hats in this, so it looks like if you were in a saloon. Another funny thing is that the beer tabs look like revolvers ;) .

revolver beer tabs at the cowboys bar in Queenstown

Another nice thing is that they sell 1 liter glasses of beer in this bar of 10 NZ Dollars, which is quite a good deal, because usually you pay about 7 or 8 Dollars for a normal glass of beer. I had to drink one...  it was just a too good deal. I*m already wearing a pair of the new contact lenses on the photo :) .

me with a 1 liter beer glass :)

On the 29th of December i slept very long. Then i went for a walk with one of my room mates to the top of the hill close to the city. There is also a cable car going up and down. But while the Cable Car costs between 25 and 30 $ for two ways, the walk is for free and probably more fun, and you see more of the nature... So on the way up and also on the top we had a beautiful view over the whole area around Queenstown and the city itself. So this was the first day were i could test my new sun protection equipment (the new sunglasses etc) . But it was not really necessary because there many clouds. Nevertheless the sunglasses are also a good protection against hay fever.

me on the way to the top of the hill at around Queenstown

view from the top of the hill down on Queenstown

 me on the top of the Hill :)

Wanaka - 26.12.

On the morning of the 26th of December we left Franz Josef and traveled further south to Lake Wanaka. On the way to Lake Wanaka we stopped at Lake Matheson, which has really a beautiful scenery, with the mountains in the background, and the water of this lake is also like a mirror as you can see on the picture down below :). A second stop was at the Thunder Creek Falls, a huge waterfall, quite impressive, but if you have been to Milford Sound this is nothing.

Lake Matheson

Thundercreek Falls

So in the evening of this day we arrived at Lake Wanaka, which is really a beautiful and very large lake.
But we were all kind of tired, so we didn*t do more activities that day.
In the morning of the 27th of December i walked to the lake and shot this panorama picture of the lake:

lake Wanaka

Franz Josef - 24.12. -25.12.

On our way to Franz Josef we were driving along this river from time to time. I am not 100% sure, but
i think the river water originally comes from the Franz Josef Glacier.

On the 24th of December we arrived in the small mountain village Franz Josef, where celebrated Christmas Eve. The village reminds you a bit of Switzerland, because if you walk around in that village you have mountains all around you. I think at the evening of the 24th i didn*t do much except of preparing my Christmas dinner.

the Franz Josef village

On the 25th of December i went for a walk to the Franz Josef Glacier with some people of my bus. To get there was about 8 km, and to get back as well so the whole trek was about 16 km in total. I think for this whole walk we probably needed at least about 4 hours.

the Franz Josef Glacier

the Franz Josef Glacier with zoom ;)

When we arrived at the Glacier there were loads of waterfalls at the side. All the water flew into a big mountain river which also crosses the village of Franz Josef. I think lots of the river water also came from the Glacier itself.

Waterfalls at the Glacier

me at the Waterfalls

When we arrived at the foot of the Glacier, we unfortunately were not aloud to go any closer to the Glacier,
because there had been accidents at this Glacier in the past, were people died and so on. I think on one of the signs it said something like that sometimes ice cubes come down with the size of a bus. And its not good if an ice cube like that hits you.
At the point where you cannot go any further, there was some wallpaper of a ranger, which tells you to stop here. Well i found it funny to make some pictures with that ranger.

me and the ranger wallpaper at the beginning of the forbidden area

me and the ranger wallpaper at the beginning of the forbidden area 2

Blackball 23./24.12.

On the 23rd of December we arrived at the Small village Blackball, where we stayed for one night. Blackball is as i say just a very small village with a population of about 300 people. In the past this village had been a miners village, but it is not anymore nowadays. Nevertheless the village itself seems a bit "scary". It*s like a small ghost village in the middle of nowhere. At this evening of the 23rd a local woman showed us a bit around the village. After this small walk around the village, we walked up to a small hill (with some people from the bus), from where we could see the "whole" village.

on top of the hill

me and some mates from the bus on top of the hill :)

On our way back down to the village we passed a house which had a goat in its garden probably as a pet. It looked so funny, because the goat had its own small house, where it was kind of hiding in. I guess it was a bit scared ...

goat hiding inside its house

We payed 30 $ per night in this hotel in blackball and they didn't even want to give us free breakfast. So I made this lovely christmas breakfast for the morning of the 24th :)

Abel Tasman National Park - 21.12.-22.12.

On the 21st of December i left Nelson and went back on the Stray bus to the Abel Tasman National Park. The bus arrived in Nelson 3 hours too late, which is why we arrived in the National Park in the late evening at around 9 pm. At this evening i went for a small walk to the beach inside the National Park which was only about 15 minutes away to walk from our hostel. As you can see on second picture at this evening there was a pretty low tide... with a high tide all this would be under water...

Abel Tasman National Park

beach at Abel Tasman National Park with low tide

On the second day at Abel Tasman National Park i went on a Kayaking trip along the coast of the national Park, there we stopped at a pretty lonely beach, for swimming and a small picnic. I forgot to bring my camera to the boat trip ... ( well i didnt really forget it... i was more worried that i would lose it) ...
so fotos will follow later.


In the evening of my last day at Abel Tasman National Park i went to a burger restaurant near the National Park in the middle of nowhere. They had quite good burgers, also a vegetarian one (which i chose).

burger restaurant at Abel Tasman National Park

After our stay at Abel Tasman National Park on the 23rd of December we went on to the small village Black Ball. On our way we crossed stopped at some points along the west coast of the south island.
One of these places was the home of a seal colony :)
I think there were quite a lot of them, but they were pretty hard to see, because their fur had almost the same color like the rocks they were sitting on, so it was quite hard to spot them. Nevertheless i could take some fotos, and it is easier to see them on the photos :).

home of the seal colony

seal colony

Our second stop on the way to Black ball was a small National Park. The special thing about this park is,
that all the rocks at this area look like pancakes, which is why they look are obviously called the "pancake rocks".

pancake rocks