Kia Ora all you dear followers!

Get ready for a summary of the last three months in New Zealand, probably one of the most beautiful and diverse countries in the world. It has been so long ago since this blog was updated that I actually have to go through all the photos to see what we have done in the last months. And based on the 1000+ photos we did quite a bit!

As I arrived mid January I had exactly one month to prepare for the arrival of the complete Mol family. Is there a better way to prepare than to spend my days in Auckland, meeting the locals, meeting up with friends met while travelling around Asia and having 8$ beers...

The whole family was reunited again mid February and because of my great preparations we still needed to find ourselves a mode of transport to travel around the country. Did not take us too long before we found a beautiful white Nissan Serena and we were set to go!

First stop was the Northland province to see some of NZs finest beaches and because our parents looked like they needed a bit of sun coming from European winter. After spending about a week laying on the beach, surfing sand dunes, watching sunsets and watching Nils fishing it was time to move on to Hobbiton, the filmset where part of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies were filmed. Armed with umbrellas (you can not actually go into the hobbit holes as the filmset is just the outside, rest was filmed in a studio) we wandered through Hobbiton with our first bit of NZ rain. Yes, even in summer, NZ has many rainy days, which is also on of the reasons the country is this green and beautiful so can't complain for long.

After Hobbiton we moved further south to Rotorua, a village famous for smelling like rotten eggs 24/7. The smell in town is due to the vast amount of geothermal fields, blowholes and other volcanic activity going about in the area. Watched some Maoris perform the local war dance (Haka) and visited geisers and lakes in various colours.

After rushing through Taupo and Napier we arrived in NZs capital Wellington where we got our parents to go out with us, showing them how to drink a couple of beers. From Welly (short for Wellington) we took the ferry to the south island of New Zealand, famous for its natural wonders and more rainy than sunny days year round.. and of course insane driving conditions, Kiwi drivers are like asians but driving cars instead of motorbikes, imagine winding roads through the mountains where the locals still think its safe to drive over 100km an hour through corners while overtaking our still intact Nissan Serena..

On the South Island we first went down to Abel Tasman National Park, one of my personal favorite places in New Zealand! While our parents went with us on a one day hike in the park me and Nils decided it was time to stretch our legs a bit and make it a 2 day hiking session, overnighting in the middle of all this beauty in our tents. On the second day we had to walk for around 14 hours which we surely did in 7 hours, just to make it on time for happy hour

After visiting some more West Coast highlights such as the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks (a rock formation looking like a huge stack of pancakes), Lake Wanaka and Fox Glacier (which we only had a glimpse at because of the rain..) we arrived in Queenstown, NZs adrenaline capital! What an amazing day we had in this funky town, me and Nils both did a bungy jump (our first ever and probably some more to come) and Nils and Betsy did their first paraglide!

More highlights of the South Island (besides the amazing scenery you see while just driving around, this country is seriously amazing for just a drive in your car with new sights around every corner) included the Milford Sound; probably NZs most famous natural attraction, kayaking the Banks Peninsula, watching seals in Kaikoura and we spotted 1 single penguin. Yes, we went to the most famous penguin spot in NZ, got up at 6 am, and we saw exactly 1 penguin, not too bad!

Unfortunately, after 6 amazing weeks travelling around the country, we had to bring our parents back to the airport and are currently working.

YES, after exactly 1 year of travelling we found the most amazing job possible: working in a glasshouse at a capsicum farm (kiwi lingo for paprika). Our days, at this moment, consist of cleaning the glasshouse, going straight to the gym after work (was needed after that year of doing absolutely nothing), eat and sleep early.

New update will arrive as soon as something exciting will happen again, which will probably take a while since we are doing the exact same thing for a minimum of 6 days a week