2 more weeks...

The anticipation to visiting Aotearoa (The Land of the Long White Cloud), as the Maori people call New Zealand, is reaching the zenith. The last entries on the to-do list are dealt with, e.g. reserving a rental car for the ride Klagenfurt to Vienna and back, organizing the last equipment and clothes, printing travel maps of the North and South island in A1 format to conveniently note our journeys stopovers etc.

Basically everything is running smooth, although we had an unwelcome surprise: As a regular Economy class traveler the baggage allowance is limited to 20kg / Person. Of course it is possible to have excess baggage, but who wants to spend EUR 40 / kg of excess ...definitely not us! Added to this, there is our embosomed pop-up tent "Wurfi" (which as about 5kg in weight) and the cases and bag packs, which also have some dead weight. All in all, we have about 14kg free for personal stuff, which is not too much for four weeks. That means, we gotta leave our surfboards, scuba tanks, free weights, gaming console and other essentialities of daily life at home To have the possibility to measure our luggage weight on a per gram basis, we cannot just use our personal scales, furthermore our super-strong kitchen scales have to pay for it.

Sketching a brief overview of our route:

Starting at Auckland we escape from the city hustle and bustle relatively rapid to have a good time resting at the white beaches of Coromandel peninsula shortly afterwards. After a few days of chilling and overcoming the jet lag at beach, sun and sea, we head back into the heart of the country to the volcanic fields around Rotorua, where there are not only geysers and volcanoes to visit but also a wicked rafting tour on a small surfboard to experience - If you think that's weird, lean back and stay tuned

On the way to the capitol Wellington we will be black water rafting through the glow worm caves and climb Mount Doom right after in record time. If anybody is interested to dump his LOTR ring, please feel free to contact us Using the ferry and our hopefully still roadworthy car we will cross over to the South island...

After these exertions we will target the beach again, this time to the golden beaches of Abel Tasman National park, where we will make first contact with New Zealands dolphins and penguins while canoing. In Kaikoura we will have wales and dolphins as close as being able to touch them (Catchword: Dolphin swimming - Woohoo!). After a quad and mountain biking tour in Hanmer Springs, we are traveling across Mt. Arthur's Pass to the Franz Josef glacier which is surrounded by a rain forest and being located right next to the sea.

In Queenstown it's going to be pretty awesome one more time at rafting and a jet boat ride through whitewater and a bungy jump With a small ship we are going to sail through the famous sounds of the south island and chug with the rental car via the south tip of New Zealand back to the north, to Christchurch (where our flight back to Auckland departs). In the far far north we will stop by the most awesome beaches and go on a small sailing trip on an old bark. Basically, Ladies and Gentlemen, that's it - If you think a boring holiday is bound to occur, you are totally right

Kind regards and have great day,
Franz, Stephan, Thomas