A nomad's heart

Alright. First, let me apologize for not writing on this blog for such a long time. I know, there is no real excuse for neglecting you, but I have been really busy lately. I have been, as usual, travelling around, doing loads of supid things, meeting new people and discovering new places, but that had not kept me from writing to you in the past.

For those wondering:
-No, I am not dead, so YES, I am still alive.
- No, I did not get lost in the desert or on a little island and decided I wanted to settle in.
- No, I did not get eaten alive by orcs in New Zealand's mountains or by dingos, crocs or sharks in Australia.
- No, I did not get married!

The thing that kept me from writing to you is of a different kind.

When you travel around, a good book (next to your ipod) is your best friend, but it can also become your worst enemy. Why is that so? Why is it important to have a good book with you when you travel? Because if you don't, you might get reeeeeeeeeeally bored more often than you might think. Sitting on a beach, sitting on a bus and looking out of the window, waiting for a bus/train/cab, being alone in a cafe because you do not know anyone in town yet etc. might be very nice at first, but after a ewhile, you can't stand just staring out of the window any longer. So having a good book at hand will make your time so much nicer. But if the book you are reading is too good, it becomes your trip's worst enemy. Why is that? Well simply because if that is the case, all you think about and all you want to do is read that bloody book. You don't really care about meeting new people anymore, because they keep you from finishing your chapter. You don't really enjoy the scenery because your eyes are fixed on a passage in the book instead of staring out of the window at all the wonderful things passing by. You don't care about writing because all you care about is reading what someone else wrote. And the worst possible scenario is when that very good book is very, very big (well, in fact, it can be worse: you might discover a whole series of very thick very good books. If that happens, your trip is screwed!). That is what happened to me. I was lucky/unlucky enough to stumble upon a couple of very good books, and one in particular ate away at all of the free time I gave myself. I didn't stop travelling and I didn't stop meeting new people, because I forced myself to leave that book behind as much as i physically could but it always found its way back into my hands and it stopped me from writing to you. What book was it? Well, the name of the book you should now all hate because it kept me from writing to you is ''Mao, the unknown story'' by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday: a 1100 pages whopper that does not let you go once it has got you! It is a fascinating book, very well researched and absolutely crucial to read for anyone who has an interest history and politics. The Times called it ''An atom bomb of a book''. It certainly blew me away!

Next to that I was also reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Great stuff, don't neglect the classics!)

I have thus been selfish and have spent my free time reading instead of spending it writing to you. I will make it up by giving you an account of what has happened during my last couple of weeks in the beautiful country that is New Zealand and in the weeks I have spent on the amazing continent that is Australia. I will even put in a couple of extra stories and additional info to make it up to you. As I have given away my kiwi guide back in Christchurch, the info is going to be what I remember and what I wrote down for myself. (Christine, your next guide will be on me.) I just believe a guide should be used as much as possible and I did not have any use for it anymore. The american guy who got it, on the other hand, is going to put it to good use.

Good, now that we got that out of the way, let's get started. Where did I leave you last time? Ah, yes, in crazy Queenstown, after a couple of crazy and absolutely amazing jumps, and before hitting town properly.

Queenstown is a great place. It is a little town (8000 people) with a lot to offer. Located on a lake, surrounded by a range of mountains diving right into the lake, Queenstown is the perfect place for taking a few days off your travels and for enjoying the many things offered by the town and its surroundings. Especially after all the adrenalin rushes you may experience around there. From downhill mountainbiking to paragliding, to rafting and jetboating, to luging and frisbee golfing, to partying and pubcrawling, or just simply lying in the sun at the lake; you can do it all in Queenstown.

The first thing I did, and which I wanted to do for a long time, was buying a Pennyboard: the perfect skateboard for any traveller. With its very small board made out of plastic (not wood) with longboard axes and wheels, its design has not changed a bit since it was first made in Australia in the 80's. It is light although robust, fast and reliable and is a ton of fun. Ok, you have to get used to its size (it really is very very small) but once that's done, you're in for a treat. I thus spent the next couple of days in Queenstown chilling at the lake and trying to master my new board while the sun was up, before hitting the bars at night with my Kiwiexperience crew. I definitely had a good time there, but I did not want to spend the remainder of my time in New Zealand just spending money in Queenstown, so I decided to hop on the bus again and to go and discover the far south of New Zealand for a couple of days with the Bottom Bus.

First surprise when getting onto the Bottom Bus: It isn't actually a proper bus, but just a large van. So many people get tied down in Queenstown that no one actually realizes that there are still things to discover further south. It's a shame, because there definitely are loads of magical things to see down there.
So. there we go: 4 people on the bus. Yours truly, two Swedish girls I had met in Auckland and then again in Franz Josef and the driver, Mike, who has been living in a never ending summer for the past couple of years, driving the bottom bus in NZ during Kiwi-summer and working on kids camps during summer in the US. Great guy.

Our destination that first day was Dunedin, on the south eastern corner of New Zealand, the city where Mike is originally from. To get there, we drove through beautiful landscapes and loads of little villages. Lost in the middle of a Lord of the Rings scenery, they make you feel like you are in the Provence, in southern France, rather than on the most southern part of an island lost in the South Pacific. We made the mandatory stop in some of them for an ice cream and a pie before heading on towards Dunedin where we arrived in the early afternoon.

Dunedin is a weird, but great city.

Why weird? Because it was built by Scotsmen! And it was not built by Scotsmen in a random way, it was built with the blueprint of Edinburgh in mind (Dunedin means Edinburgh in Gaelic). The result is spectacular and yes, often a bit weird. For example, the steepest street in the world is found, no, not in San Francisco or somewhere in the Himalaya, but in Dunedin. Baldwin Street is an engineer's nightmare, and a car's doom. Don't you EVER park your car in Baldwin street, it might not be there in the morning. Why was it even built? Because on the map of Edinburgh, there is a street in that particular spot, so there has to be a street in the same spot on the Dunedin map (scottish thinking?). And because the landscape is completely different from Edinburgh, the result is a street where you cannot park your car.

As the capital city of the Otago province, Dunedin is worth the trip. First, the Otago peninsula, just across the harbour, is reep with wildlife: fur seals, sea lions, penguins, the only mainland breading colony of royal albatros' etc. Then the city itself is booming. It is home to the University of Canterbury, and most importantly, home to the Speights brewery, which are both equally important in making Dunedin New Zealand's main student city. Two funny facts about the Speights brewery: it was founded BEFORE the University was founded (that's the way it should be) and Speights is brewed with holy water. Say what? Beer brewed with holy water? Yes, indeed. The water used to brew Speights beer comes from a source that runs under the Cathedral in Dunedin, and is therefore considered to be holy. So, next time you're drunk on Speights, don't feel bad, the Lord will forgive you: you're drunk on holy beer.

After Dunedin, we headed towards Invercargill, on the southernmost tip of New Zealand. Our first stop of the day was in Curio bay, in the Catlins, where we went Sea Lion hunting. We found a couple of them chilling on the beach before continuing our trip through sheepland. The Catlins are like one single field full of sheep, with beaches on either side. The wildlife on the coast is absolutely great, and really wild, but as soon as you leave the beach, all you see is sheep, sheep and sheep. When immigrants arrived to the Catlins on their boats, they were always surprised to discover that New Zealand was so full of rocks while they had heard that it was such a fertile country. When the rocks on the hills started moving, the immigrants realized that those were not actually rocks, but thousands and thousands of sheep. Now I know how they could have been mistaken. It's just FULL of sheep. And they smell...

Where do the Catlins take their name from? Well, like most of the time, from... a dude called Catlin! Catlin was a merchant going from whalery to whalery with his ship and who got to know the area between Dunedin and Invercargill very well. He bought the whole part nowadays know as the Catlins from the local maori in order to farm it. As usual,he screwed the indigenous and paid a ridiculous price for it. A couple of years later, after a law was passed in order to protect maori land possessions, he ended up in court and lost the land he had just bought because the price was not adequate. He left never to return, and although the land was not his anymore, it kept his name.

In the Catlins, we stopped at a fossilized forest where the world's rarest penguins breed: the Yellow Eyed Penguins. I looooooooove penguins. They are so fucked up, they don't really know what they are anymore. Bird? Fish? Charlie Chaplin? Seeing them hop around on a beach is one of the funniest sights I can imagine. They are absolutely adorable! The fossilized forest, is not, as I imagined it with my child's brain, a real forest with fossilized trees, but rather a swamp with fallen trees that was fossilized and is now a big rock with rocky trees laid into it. Still a fantastic place, with the waves crashing at it and the penguins hopping around. Another absolutely great thing about the place is that, when you look out onto the ocean, you realize that there is absolutely nothing between you and Antarctica but miles and miles of water. I will probably never go further south than here. I'm less than 5000 km from the South Pole...

Before getting to Invercargill, we made a last stop at the Lost Gypsy Gallery, an old bus transformed by a great fella into a museum full of handmade automats, little trains, and weird little gizmos. Apparently I was not the only grown up child around. Lovely!

We arrived in Invercargill under pouring rain and headed straight for the hostel. The 60.000 ppl. town looks like one giant suburb, with not many buildings being higher than 2 storeys, and with no trees to brighten up the perpendicular streets. Victoria Park and its aviary are nice, but that's about all I found to enjoy my time in Invercargill. As I was only staying for one night, I did not feel too bad about it.

On the next morning, I had a nice surprise when getting back on the bus: look who's there! Laura! We kept on bumping into one another and it was always a good surprise. On our program that day: survive the torrential rain, meet up with the Milford Explorer and discover Te Anau and Milford Sounds in the World Heritage listed Fiordland National Park.

Te Anau, as the gate to the Fiordland and the departure point of the major Fiordland trekking routes feels like a base camp on Mount Everest (I have never ever been there, but that's the way I picture it all in my mind) or an old trapper town during the gold rush, with everyone running around only thinking about how best to prepare the forthcoming expedition into the wild. Everything revolves around trekking, from gear to food, from information offices to guided tours, everyone seems to be thinking about only one thing: getting into the park. There is somthing absolutely great about that kind of buzz. The only sad thing is that most people seem to forget to look at what's around them right there in Te Anau, and don't even see the scenery that is offering itself to them: majestic views over the lake and the mountains. The exact same things they so eagerly want to see inside the park. But out here, they don't even seem to know they exist. Well let's hope they are going to enjoy the scenery inside once they are trekking...

From Te Anau, the only way to go is West, to the Southern Alps and the Fiords that line the coast and most importantly, to Milford Sound (which is in fact a Fiord, by the way, and not a Sound). What is the difference between a Fiord and a Sound? A Fiord is a valley that reaches the ocean and has been dug out by a glacier, whereas a Sound is a valley reaching the ocean that has been dug by a river. So, although Milford Sound is called Milford Sound, it should in fact be called Milford Fiord. Nobody feels like changing all the roadsigns, that's all.

So, from Te Anau, the bus took us West into the Southern Alps, through lush rainforest and over countless rivers, all the way up to the Homer tunnel dug into the side of a peak, with no lights in it, going downhill, showing just bare rocks, 1200m long and just large enough to let the bus through. It may be important to note that the road from Te anau to Milford Sound is one of the most dangerous roads in the world, with snow, avalanches and rockslides closing it down more often than you would like when driving through it. When you emerge from the tunnel, you are in for a treat, and we were actually quite lucky to have bad weather. The tunnel opens up on the Thousand Waterfalls Valley, a narrow valley compressed by vertical cliffs on both sides, getting wider the further you go and with just one street serpenting down into the unknown, disappearing into the clouds below. Because of the rain, there were waterfalls all over the cliffs. With these waterfalls, the mist and clouds, the low green vegetation and the total isolation you are in, you feel like you just arrived in the last corner of the earth, preserved from the outside by the protection of the mountains.This place has something mystical about it. If there is one place you might expect to encounter dinosaurs, then it is here. When you get out of the bus, you tread carefully, as if you had just entered one of Nature's temples. The only sound comes from the Kea Parrots soaring above you and crying out like a warning for you to be quiet and respect the place you are in. There is no denying it, this place is special.

Once we had exited the valley further down, we continued our way through the rainforest before arriving at Milford Sound properly. The town of Milford Sound is actually just a harbour with about 200 people living there, all of them working on the half a dozen ships which carry tourists like myself through the scenery of the fiords. With Mountains over 1000m high diving straight down into the Fiord, shrouded in low clouds, with no sound around except for the boat's engine, with groups of dolphins frolicking around in the dark green water, and more waterfalls than you can count, there is absolutely NO WAY this place would not affect you. It must be a different spectacle on a sunny day, maybe a more spectacular sight because you can see the top of the mountains around you, but it probably never feels more wild and remote than under the rain with the low clouds closing in around you and taking you out of this world. It just makes you shut up for a while and immerge yourself into something bigger than you.

After two hours on the water, we had to make our way back through the same amazing scenery, got stuck in a sheep migration (the proof that we were still in New Zealand) and finally got completely stuck on a one lane bridge.
No, there was no traffic jam on the bridge at first: our bus had a breakdown in the middle of the bridge. When the bus first satalled, we thought the driver was pranking us. When he stalled a second time, we laughed out loud. When the driver could not start the engine, we were like: ''Yeah, right! Classic!''. When he ran out the door to get his boss on the phone, we couldn't stop laughing, because we knew this was a real breakdown!
No way past us, no way back or forth. Absolutely glorious, I felt like applauding. We then realized that this just had to happen today: Friday the 13th is definitely no myth.
We got off the bridge in the end, a jeep backing up all the way from the other side and towing the bus from the bridge, for us to wait for the mechanic on the side of the road for an hour. Thankfully, we were pretty close to Queenstown at that point.

Back in Queenstown, I checked into a different, smaller (and cheaper) hostel before heading up to Christchurch a couple of days later. Again, Queenstown lived up to its reputation and I had a blast of a time there, met loads of great people, from argentinians to chinese and indian professional chess players (those guys were weird, let me tell you!) and spent a lot of time with the last survivors of our Kiwiexperience crew, most of them having left NZ by then.

So, after countless frisbee golf sessions, wet tshirt contests and pool nights, I got back onto the bus one last time to go to Christchurch, which had again been hit by a solid earthquake a couple of days earlier. For those of you who might ignore it, Christchurch has, for the past year and a half, been regularly hit by very serious earthquakes, and the whole city center has been completely demolished. There are now army checkpoints for people wanting to enter the city center, which has been completely evacuated. The last serious earthquake had been a couple of months earlier, and the people living in and around Christchurch had hoped it was the last, when a magnitude 6 earthquake took down the buildings that were still standing in the center at the end of december. There is'nt much to see in the city center anymore, except for rubble and buildings that are going to get torn down. It is heartbraking to walk around the fenced off city center, peering into the desolate and empty streets of the red zone. But the Christchurch Kiwis are tough and they won't let a couple of earthquakes get them down! The city is still very much alive, and people just meet in different areas. There are still festivals and museums, bars and street artists where you might not expect them. I will definitely come back to Christchurch at some point in my life, to see how the city has been rebuilt and to witness how alive it will certainly still be in the future.

On a more personal note, Christchurch was my last stop in New Zealand and I managed to sell my tent there, before hopping onto a plane that was to take me to Auckland for a dreadful night sleeping on a bench at the airport before heading to Cairns, Australia, and new adventures.

It would be a crime for me to close the New Zealand chapter without giving you a little lecture about the history of Aotearoa, the Land of the Great White Cloud.
Once upon a time on an island far far away (I love stories starting with ''Once upon a time''. They always turn out great. Just look at Shrek...) there was a dude who had organized a massive BBQ in his backyard. With all his pals, his and their families, they spent a great day, watching and playing rugby, eating and, of course, boozing. Once the dude (let's call him Ulysses or the Dude, his Dudeness, il Duderino, the Dudemeister...) and his friends were completely drunk (kids, don't try this at home), they got into an argument about what was beyond the horizon, where none of them had ever been. Some argued that there probably was nothing out there except miles and miles of open sea, monsters and certain death, while others thought you would simply drop into an endless void once you reached the horizon. One fella was even so drunk as to suggest that the earth was actually spherical and that, if you kept on going long enough, you would get back to where you started... (Man, how drunk was HE???) The Dude, whom the alcolhol intake had made cockier than usual declared he would go and find out!
The next day, with a colossal hangover, Ulysses loaded all his stuff onto his waka, his canoe, and with his entire family, headed off into the unknown. Watching the island he used to called home disappear in the distance, he swore to himself that if he ever was to come back, he would either quit drinking or learn to shut his mouth when drunk.

The Dude's journey was an epic one. He crossed entire oceans, survived terrific storms and hungry beasts. The waves kept pounding his waka, the ocean trying to tear it to shreds and swallow them whole, making them disappear as if they had never existed. But the Ulysses and his family's skill and their courage kept them going further and further south. Long after they had left their island, the Duderino's wife noticed a cloud in the far distance which did not move and seemed to stay in the same spot all the time. She called out to her husband to steer towards it, certain to find land where the big cloud was. The Dude being a reasonable guy, he knew better than to start an argument with his wife while being stuck on a canoe in the middle of the ocean and steered to where she was pointing at. The clever lady was, of course, right. The cloud she had seen not moving was a sign of land being beneath it.
Let me explain. The sun keeps on shining on the ocean's surface, heating up the water and the air overhead, loading it with waterparticles. These waterparticles, as long as they are not forced up high into the sky, do not condense and do not form clouds. They can be moved up high into the air, where the cooler temperatures make them condense and form clouds, for 2 possible reasons:
- The sun is really strong and keeps on shining on the ocean, creating more and more hot and humid air, which pushes upwards because it has nowhere else to go, thus cooling off, turning into clouds and finally into rain.
- The second possiblility is that the hot and humid air, travelling with the wind on the surface of the ocean, runs into an obstacle and is thus pushed up and condenses, again forming clouds and rain. What is the only possible obstacle that could possibly be big enough to have the wind push the hot and humid air up? Land, preferably with high mountains. Because the land does, by definition, not move, the hot air keeps on bumping into it on the same spot, thus forming a stationary cloud. So when the Dude's wife saw that cloud, not moving for days on end, she concluded rightfully, that there had to be land underneath it. Clever girl.

(If you have not understood what I just explained or want further explanations, go and ask your geography professor. This is a history class, goddammit!)

So, about a thousand years ago, man first set foot on what is now known as New Zealand. This territory was the last on earth to be discovered and settled by humans. When the Dude and his family thus set foot on it, coming from the polynesian islands, the place was absolutely untouched, covered by lush green forests, with no great predators, because far away from any other great landmass, plenty of giant flightless birds and untouched fishing grounds. It was a real garden of Eden. Il Duderino had that he had made it and wanted to let his pals back home know. The only problem was that back then, there were no cell phones, no satellite phones, no internet which means no text messages, no emails, no Facebook status updates, no twitter (my god, no internet porn!! How did people waste their time back then?!?) and this new country was definitely way too far for any smoke signals to reach home. So the Dude packed his family back onto the waka, and backed it up the couple of thousand miles to where he had just come from. (This almost resulted in a divorce, because he got stuck in reverse and the waka being a very big waka kept on doing ''bip bip bip'' all the way.)
Once back on his home island, Ulysses had another big BBQ, where he got absolutely trashed again, but this time, when he told his friends what he had seen down south, they all decided to go and discover this place for themselves, settling there in the process. This great migration was later on accelerated because of gang wars in the neighbourghood. In order to escape the drive by shoots (imagine lying on the beach, chilling and fishing with your girl when suddenly a waka paddles by and the guys on it start aiming their bows at you. You really don't want to raise your kids in such a place!) more and more people started to migrate down to what they called Aotearoa, the Land of the Great White Cloud.
Do not be mistaken about this name though. The land was not given that name because of the cloud that helped discover it, but because from far away, even on a cloudless day, you could see the snow on the peaks of the high mountains of New Zealand, which looks like a... great white cloud. Snow not really being the most familiar of elements for people living on a tropical island in the pacific, I believe there is no reason to hold a grudge against the Dude and his pals for misinterpreting what they saw. I actually like this name and where it comes from, it is rather poetic, ain't it?
For more than 600 years, the Dude and his descendents lived happily in their new domain, hunting being easy after rotting out the only thing that could possibly threaten them: the wolrd's largest ever existing eagle, with a wingspan of over 3m. How were they driven to extinction? Well this eagle preyed mainly on one animal, an ostrich sized flightless bird, which was, for the clever new inhabitants of Aotearoa, pretty easy to catch. With this live prey, they set traps to attract and kill the eagles. In the eagle family, the male knowing what was best for him, the female was the family's main hunter. So, it more or less reduced the necessary killing by half. Once the female birds had been caught and killed, there was no possible survival for the species, even if there were still plenty of males around.
So, their hunting being easy, and being the only ones around, the inhabitants of Aotearoa had a hell of a good time, interrupted from time to time by intertribal beef, but that never lasted too long to kill the mood.
In the early 1600's, though, their morning (hungover) rest was interrupted one good day by something unheard off: a trumpet. At that time, indeed, a very famous dutch band called the Rolling Goudas was touring the South Pacific. It's frontman and manager, Capitain Abel Tasman was very serious when it came to working, and even when there was no visible crowd around for the next gig, he insisted on practising every morning. His trumpet solo didn't go unnoticed, but the locals did not bother as long as it was not repeated the next day. Alas, Abel Tasman insisted on playing every morning, and being torn out of their sleep again the next day, the hungover and very foul mooded locals attacked the Rolling Goudas' touring caravan and killed three of the roadies. Scared shitless by such a rude crowd of hooligans, Abel Tasman set sail never to be seen again, but only after giving Aotearoa the name under which it is today known in the western world: New Zealand. Abel Tasman, the first european to catch sight of New Zealand actually never set foot on it.

The locals were left alone for another 150 years, when another rockband called East indian trading Company Dancing Corps (aka EC/DC), on their australian Endeavour tour with their new frontman Capitain James Cook decided to conquer a new crowd. Being more diplomatic than the dutch some 150 years earlier, they managed to circumnavigate/tour both islands and gave new names to most of the venues they played at. From then on, more and more bands came to play in Aotearoa and some even decided to open up studios and concerthalls there.

The locals did not always appreciate the new musical genre introduced by these foreign bands. Serious clashes ensued and the locals being great musicans thenmselves, they were not easily signed by the market leading Majors. But commercial popmusic soon got the upper hand, and local music slowly drifted to the underground. Although, contrarily to most places where the Majors had decided to establish themselves while completely destroying the local market (the Americas, Australia, South Africa...), in New Zealand, they were less brutal in their dealings with local artists. This may be due to the fact that, from their first encounter on, they had gotten a taste of the excellency of local music and the ferocious attachement of the local population to its roots and land. A good relationship, with its highs and very deep lows, has thus been constructed since. Queen Latifah II later apologized and the future looks brigther than ever before for the cohabitation of local maori music and overseas popmusic. By the way, the term ''Maori'' was only introduced to designate the locals as a nation when they got into contact with the first europeans. Before that, there was no such thing as a Maori nation or population, but only local tribes.

This ends my New Zealand trip. I will try to write down and post my adventures on the australian east coast very soon. I have just spent a month travelling down from Cairns and Cape Tribulation to Melbourne. I am finishing these last lines while on the plane to Bali. I'll drink a cool beer on an indonesian beach while thinking of you guys very soon.

Peace!

From Franz Josef, I made it up to Lake Wanaka, my last stop before Queenstown. After the wild west Coast, Wanaka seemed like a little haven of quiet and leisure. A beautiful lake niched between mountains, a little town where you really get the feeling you are on vacation and blue skies. Postcard perfect. The perfect place to chill out for an afternoon before getting to Queenstown, New Zealand's (the World's?) Adrenaline capital the following morning. And a perfect place to make fun of half of the people on the bus, who serioulsy believed our driver when he said that there were dolphins in the lake, and that there were feedings everyday at 5pm. Even the ducks were making fun of them!

If you are are looking to do something to get your adrenaline pumping, you will find it in Queenstown. If you don't find it here, then it probably has not been invented yet, but you will certainly find the people willing to give it a go here. Queenstown is (among other things) the birthplace of Bungy Jumping, and that is the main reason why I came all the way down. If you are willing to throw yourself from a bridge, a cliff or a helicopter, then you're in the right place.
To warm up, before going for the serious stuff, I decided to jump off the Kawarau Bridge, where the first commercial bungy jump was done. The bridge is 43 meters above the Kawarau river and is Bungy Mecca. It is pretty easy to check in, pay and get onto the bridge, just waiting for a guy to strap a rubber cord around your ankles and tell you: ''Alright mate, how low do you want to go?'' The only reasonable answer is, of course, ''Give me all you got!'' It gets harder later on.
I astonished myself at how calm I was when I put on the harness and got my ankles strapped to the cord. It all changed when I got to the front of the platform. When you look down at a river almost 50 meters below and the guy behind you says ''Alright then, let's try to get these nipples wet then'' you start asking yourself why you are there...
Compared to bungy jumping, skydiving is easy. You don't really see the ground below you, you don't even jump yourself. You let the guy strapped to your back do all the work. It's an absolutely amazing rush, but you don't really feel like you're doing anything yourself, like the choice is yours to make once you are on the plane.
When you are on the platform for a bungy jump and you have to leap off by yourself, you can actually see exactly where you are going to crash if the rope snaps, you are suddenly all alone and there is absolutely nothing to hold on to anymore. The only thing that will help you jump is the fact that you have already paid. But that little moment when you tip forward and you feel that you cannot go back anymore, that you will not be able to get back onto the platform, whatever you may try to do, is worth every last penny. YOU make the decision, YOU decide to throw yourself off a bridge, YOU make your move. Nobody is going to do it for yourself and that is what makes bungy jumping so amazing. You really have to overcome yourself.
Once you leap off the platform, you just feel alive. SOOOOOOO alive! And every trace of fear is gone. It is absolutely amazing.
Oh, and yes, my nipples got wet... They dunked me in all the way. I probably deserved it.

After jumping off the Kawarau Bridge in the morning, I had to step it up a little in the afternoon. Canyon Swing, here I come!
Queenstown's Canyon Swing is the highest cliff jump in the world: a 109m high cliff, 60m freefall and a 200m arc. The funny thing about that little activity is that, because you are on a swing, your legs are free, and you can jump off the platform anyway you like before plunging down next to a sheer cliff and being taken over by the swing and flying over the canyon after a couple of seconds of sheer terror. I decided to give it all i had and went for what they call the ''gainer''. You run off the platform forward and as soon as your feet leave the ground, you throw yourself backwards to do a backflip. Because you have 60m of freefall waiting for you, you have more than enough time to complete your flip before you start swinging away from the cliff. Nice stuff! Can I go again, please?

Because pretty much everyone in Queenstown does that sort of crazy things during the day, every day, everyone parties hard at night to get rid of that adrenaline excedent. That is exactly what we did with all the people I had lost along the way and found again at the Queenstown Nomads Hostel. It was a looooong night, which ended in a drunk talk session with a dozen of aussies at 4 am. I probably should have gone to bed earlier than that, because what awaited me the next morning was the grown up stuff, which makes the Canyon Swing look like Kindergarten fun: The Nevis Bungy Jump, Australasia's highest bungy jump. 134m (more than three times Kawarau Bridge), 8 seconds of freefall, and yes, even my shit was scared... and it is even worse when you're hungover.

When you sign the disclaimer at AJ Hackett before doing the Nevis, you feel like you're selling your soul. There is no way back after that. They weigh you (twice, to be sure that they don't get it wrong) and then you get onto the nacelle which is going to take you to your doom. A platform hanging over a gorge of nude rock, with a little stream running 150 meters under it, not even a meter deep, which means that if there is a cock up, you're done, hasta la vista...
It definitely does not help to increase your (hungover) mood when you learn that the same morning, a bungy cord snapped in Zimbabwe at the Victoria Falls, on one of the highest bungy jumps in the world (Nevis is n°4).
134m is a long way down. When you stand on THAT platform, you get a taste of what a gazelle must feel when she sees a lion barging towards her, his jaws wide open, with huge white shining teeth waiting to tear her to shreds. Sheer Terror (with a capital T)!!!
And again, no one is going to push you off the platform. YOU decide to jump, because YOU were born without a normally functioning brain.
What a rush! 8 seconds of freefall before the cord even starts streching. You don't even remember to scream for the first few seconds, as you plunge down, because your brain just shut down. No one ever screams immediately. It takes a couple of seconds to realize you are plummeting down towards rocks 150m below. Once your brain takes in the info, yes, you scream. You scream a lot. And you scream like a little girl...
Jesus, it will take a lot of partying in Queenstown to get rid of that excess adrenaline!

I left Chris, Rich and Dylan with a heavy heart and got on my way to the Abel Tasman National Park. I had initially planned to spend 4 nights in the park, but my reservation of campsites did not go through as I hoped and I finally ended up with only one night inside the park.
As I started planning my trip with the DOC (Department of Conservation) officer in Nelson, there were still four campsites free. Five minutes later, when we had planned it all, checked the tides for difficult crossings etc, there was only one site free, for one single night. Some bastard had just booked all the remaining sites.Tough luck. That did not stop me from walking the entire lenght of the park though, I just had to do longer walks every day and do them faster in order to see it all.

I started off on tuesday morning, leaving some of my stuff at the hostel in Kaiteriteri and taking just the necessary: tent, food, a lot of water, some clothes, my camera and a lot of sunscreen and insect repellent. In order to get to Awaroa, on the northernmost part of the park, I had to take the aquataxi all the way up before tramping all the way down in the next two days. A surprise awaited me when I boarded the boat: a girl's bachelor party, with girlfriends, mommy and granny. They were all completely excited and probably already a little drunk (9am) and it took them 30 seconds to nickname me ''Philippe the Stripper''. Wishful thinking. I swear I kept all my clothes on. The only thing I took off were my sunglasses, showing them my black eye. That just made them even more euphoric, ranting about how much they looooooooooved bad boys. Bloody hell, Awaroa seems so far away...

Once I had left the hens behind me, I could dive in head first into the pristine jungle that covers most of the Abel Tasman National Park. The park is situated on the nortwestern corner of the South Island and stretches for about fifthy km along the coast, including majestic white sand beaches and a marine reserve. Steep hills and white cliffs covered by lush green fern jungle diving into the ocean and opening up on deserted beaches. That was the scenery awaiting me for the next two days. The weather was perfect, blue skies, no clouds and a little wind to cool off. I tramped alone for 6 hours the first day, for 8 hours the second, slept on a campside next to one of the most amazing beaches I have ever seen, had an encounter with a lone wild fur seal on a beach, all by myself, watched cormorans fish and build their nest, went snorkeling and just sat on the beach watching the sky changing colors, from bright blue to metal grey, to pink, to orange, to pale yellow and finally to dark blue and black. Just watching time pass by.

On the second day, I went all the way down to Marahau, the southernmost point of the park, and caught a ride back to Kaiteriteri. After a nice hot shower and a warm meal, I had the nice surprise to find some of my Kiwi Experience mates at the hostel. This had to be celebratede with a couple of pints before they left again in the morning. I decided to stay in Kaiteriteri until the 1st of January and just chill a bit and recover from the North Island action of the previous week and the tramp in Abel Tasman.

In hindsight, I was actually pretty lucky with not getting all the nights I wanted in Abel Tasman. It made me avert torrentiel rain for 3 days and I still saw the entirety of Abel Tasman.
The weather being completely shitty for the days leading up to new years eve, I just hung out at the Kaiteri Lodge, reading and enjoying the family held cafe next door, with the owner playing live music every night. Fish'n'Chips, a good book, a pint of Whale Ale and live music in a nice hot pub while the storm hits the outside. How much better could it possibly get?
I spent new year's eve at the Beached Whale Cafe in Kaiteriteri. It was a relatively quiet night, even though it went on forever. I got very little sleep before getting back on the Kiwi Experience bus the next morning,heading off to Wesport, down south on the West Coast.
Westport is the second largest town on the West Coast, and it is small, very small. I just stayed one night before continuing to Punakaiki. It was a shitty night, with two insufferable scandinavians yelling all night long. Just shut up and go to bed! Waking up was brutal too, as I crashed my forehead into the (very low) top bunk. This trip is starting to take a toll on me.
On arrival in Punakaiki, I was absolutely blown away. If Wesport was dull and without charm, Punakaiki was its complete opposite. There are only a dozen of houses in Punakaiki, 2 hostels and one pub. But what a place!!
Situated on the beach between sheer jungle covered cliffs on one side and the raging Tasman Sea on the other, just next to the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes, Punakaiki is a magical place. In order to see how magical exactly, I went for a long walk on the beach before going on an afternoon hike with Koos from the Netherlands and Jan from Germany. We naturally went for a pint at the local pub afterwards. The night was really quiet and I went to bed early after having dinner on the Hostel's balcony, with the sun setting over the Tasman Sea.
I had something very special planned for my second day in Punakaiki. Forging my own knife. There is a little place next to Punakaiki called Barrytown and, yes, it's even smaller than Punakaiki but it has the great advantage of being the place Robyn and Steven call home. This Kiwi couple makes a living through allowing people to forge their own knife guided by Steven's expert hands. And they are both characters too. Before turning his hobby of forging knives into a business, Steven was a women's underwear designer. They are amazing people, extremely friendly and with a very particular sense of humour. I spent one of the best days of my life in their company and in that of the 10 other people at the forge that day. I never thought i would be able to create the beautiful, robust and religiously sharp knife I took back to Punakaiki. Why ''religiously'' sharp? Because according to Steven there are three types of sharpness: blunt, sharp and ''Jesus, this is sharp!''.

I left Punakaiki the next day, getting back on the big green bus and heading to Lake Mahinapua, where the only construction is Hotel Mahinapua, owned by 87 year old Les, New Zealand's oldest publican. Les prepared his legendary steak for us after we had been to the Lake to cool off a little. We spent the night at the ''hotel's'' bar, which is actually a shack but is amazing fun.

We all left Lake Mahinapua with a hangover, which is the only way in which you should leave that place, heading towards Franz Josef and the Franz Josef Glacier. On our way there, we stopped at the Wild Foods Restaurant in Pukekura, which is actually also a museum held by the real Crocodile Dundee (sorry to all of you Aussies out there, but yes, the real deal is kiwi...). He showed us footage of the days where Kiwis used to capture deer by jumping on their back from a Helicopter. Complete madmen! I also saw the best bumpersticker ever at that place: ''Jesus loves you. Everyone else thinks you're an asshole.'' Glorious!
After a quiet night at the Rainforest Hostel in Franz Josef, I took a guided tour of the Glacier itself, walking almost all the way up and even going under the Glacier itself. I was an exhausting day, with torrential rain all day long but it was definitely worth the effort. Franz josef is one of the only Glaciers on the planet that comes down all the way down to into the Jungle, the few others being in Patagonia. We even had an encounter with a couple of Kea, the only alpine parrot in the world. It is a pretty strange thing to see a parrot walk on a Glacier...

The day after my visit to the doctor, I went all the way up to Cape Reinga, New Zealand's Northernmost point. To get to Cape Reinga, the bus I had booked had to drive up 90 miles beach, which runs along the northwestern coast. It was a strange feeling to be in a bus barging down a beach doing 100 kph. Our nutjob of a driver (Spike) stopped at one of the biggest sand dunes I've ever seen and let us test our sandboarding skills before continuing our way up to the Cape.
Cape Reinga is a very special place. It is the most sacred place the Maoris have in New Zealand. Even without this spiritual aspect, Cape Reinga still is a very special place. It is the place where the Tasman Sea to the West and the Pacific Ocean to the East collide. One can actually really see the collision between the green Tasman on one side and the blue Pacific on the other.
The following day, before going back to Auckland in the afternoon, I went on a very special tour through the Bay of Islands. This tour is special in the sense that the operator takes you hunting for dolphins. Not to shoot them, of course, but to try to swim with them. I thus had the opportunity to swim with wild dolphins for about 20 minutes. I cannot find the words to express how that felt. It was an absolutely unique experience.

In Auckland, I booked a bus that was going to take me from Auckland to Wellington, stopping at different places along the way. It is on that bus that I met the people I travelled with for the rest of the week. Laura from Germany, Richard, Chris, James, Jamie, Nick from the UK, Hannah from Scotland, Karin from Switzerland, Mark from the US, Sean from Ireland, Rodrigo from Brazil, the two Louisa's from Sweden and our Kiwi driver/guide/entertainer Dylan.
First, we went down to the Coromandel Peninsula and Hot Water Beach, where we managed to dig our very own little pool next to the hot springs that come up through the sand before having a BBQ on the camping site we were staying at. On our way, a couple of us stopped near cathedral cove to take part in a sea kayaking trip.

The day following the Hot Water Beach stop, we went to Waitomo to do some Black water rafting. What is Black water rafting, you may ask? Black water rafting is a combination of Canyoning and Speleology and it is tons of fun! Once we were inside the caves, we turned off our lights, and the top of the cave lit up like a summer night sky. Millions of glowworms were hanging from the ceiling and made it an amazing sight to look at, knowing we were 45 meters underground. Our guide later rightfully explained that these ''glowworms'' we found were so pretty actually are ''cannibalistic maggots with radioactive poo''. It still felt like magic.
After a night in Waitomo at the local pub, we continued our journey to Rotorua, the smelliest city in New Zealand. The volcanic sulfure laden air makes the whole city smell like rotten eggs. Despite the smell, Rotorua was definitely one of the best stops yet. We attended a cultural maori dinner and were introduced to traditional maori chants and dances.
After Rotorua, we went straight to Taupo, the north island's adrenaline capital city. The time to conquer skydiving had finally come. 15,000 feet, 1 minute freefall and a smile on my face for the remainder of the day. The other reason why i had a smile on my face was maybe because in Taupo Thursday night means Ladies' night. This means free drinks for girls all night long. Now don't go thinking bad stuff already. Kiwis just happen to be very openminded when it comes to the definition of what a lady is supposed to be. In New Zealand, every person wearing a dress or skirt is considered a Lady. The result was messy.
Getting up the following morning was thus even harder than initially thought: alarm clock at 5 am, departure at 5.30, arrival at the Tongariro Nationa Park at 7.30. Goal: do the Tongariro crossing, the world's best daywalk. Tongariro is absolutely magnificient: 3 volcanoes, sulfure lakes, breathtaking landscapes and even a rainforest crossing. It took us 8 hours to do the crossing, climbing a very special volcano on the way: Mt Ngauruhoe. This volcano is better known to all of you little hobbits as Mt Doom. The toughest climb I ever did, but the view was worth the effort.
After Taupo, where we left half of the group, we headed down to River Valley to do some rafting and to spend Christmas eve at the River Valley Lodge. At the Lodge, a drunk Irishman who was working there suckerpunched me. I have a black eye and he lost his job.
From River Valley we headed down to Wellington, Kiwi Capital, and spent the day at Te Papa Museum before having a little Christmas dinner in the park. The day ended with a bottle of wine at the beach with 3 girls from the Czech Republic we had met in Taupo and kept in touch with.
Today was a big travel day again. Hannah and Karin stayed in Wellington for an extra night while the rest of us headed off to Nelson and Kaiteriteri on the South Island.

Tomorrow, I will leave the group and go to the Abel Tasman National Park to tramp for a few days before going back to Kaiteriteri for New Year's eve. I'm looking forward to having a little time on my own.

Merry Christmas, Dudes and Dudettes!

I came up to the Bay of Islands under thundering rain and booked my diving course yesterday. The only thing I had to do before starting my diving course on monday was to pass a medical and get cleared. I saw a doctor this afternoon. Sentence: Heart murmur. I have to get an ultrasound in order to know how bad it is. The only problem is there is no ultrasound anywhere near Paihia, the closest one being back in Auckland. Drive course cancelled. Full refund. The really worrying thing is that my GP back home missed that murmur for the past 24 years. What else did he miss?

So there is a change of plans. Instead of staying in Paihia for a week at the Foo Fighter fans' place (i found them, had a couple of pints with them and they offered for me to stay at their place for the rest of the week), I will simply go to Cape Reinga tomorrow before going back to Auckland on sunday and head down south to Coromandel on monday.

Yesterday night's best story:

I am sitting in a bar reading a book, waiting for the others, when a tipsy young british lady comes to me and asks:
''Hi, is that red star on your hat the red star from Heineken?''
''Hhm, sorry love, it's just a souvenir from Beijing. I don't know if Mao was a big beer drinker...''