We arrived in Sidney last night which means that once again a big part of the trip is over and that I am more than half way through the whole journey now. New Zealand was really beautiful and also eventful on all levels. A lot of first times, new challenges and new experiences.

We travelled for 10 days with the group you can see in the pictures. As I already described in the last blog entry, it was a good mix of young and middle aged people which made it really interesting because the dynamic in the group was really different than if it would have been a group of only our age. Different talks and different point of views.

After Franz Josef, the last blog entry, we went to Queenstown, the adrenaline capital of New Zealand. We had three days to hike, relax, shop and party. After that we went to the fjord land in the South of the Island. We spent a night on a cruise ship in the doubtful sounds fjord. Beautiful landscape and the very mystic atmosphere made the journey really unique. We kayaked and swam in the cold fjord and had wonderful food.

After that day we went to some place of which I don't remember the name between doubtful sounds and the east coast where we stayed one night in a really old hotel. We were kind of bored and played yazhee when it suddenly started to snow!!! In the middle of the summer not even high in the mountains it snowed so hard that we could build a snowman. I was all excited because I didn't have snow this winter, so we ran out and took funny pictures in swimsuits and had a snowball battle whereas Kirstin and Esther couldn't really understand my excitement and went to bed hoping that the snow will be gone the next day. They had escaped to New Zealand from cold Germany in order not to have snow anymore. It didn't stop snowing and the whole next day we drove through a winter wonderland with mountain bikes.

We also went rafting that afternoon which was exciting and scary but really fun. The water was freezing but we had no time to think about that as we were busy to 'paddle forward', 'paddle backwards', 'hold on', 'get in', 'jump left', 'jump right', 'paddle harder' and I don't know which more commandos our guide screamed at us in order to get through the rapids.

The day after we arrived back in Christchurch where Kirstin, Esther and me left the group. We said good bye to everyone and felt really lonely after that because we had spent so much time together. Luckily we weren't alone but had us three. Kirstin left next morning to Fiji islands and Esther and me went to Kaikoura, north of Christchurch, a layed-back little beach town. We relaxed and didn't do much but one thing we had heard of, that you have to do when you are in Kaikoura: swimming with the dolphins. Apparently there is a population of 2000 dusky dolphins off the shores of Kaikoura and it's one of the few places in the world, where you can swim with completely wild dolphins. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. The morning we went, there were 500 dolphins swimming together which is exceptional even for Kaikoura. They came so close that we were scared they would actually bump into you. It was amazing. And they were really curious and watched who or what you were and what the hell were you doing out there. Really awesome!

We had a couple of days left after that and decided to go and see the Abel Tasman national park. We took the bus to Nelson where we went hiking for one day on the Abel Tasman trek. It is a 4 day trek in the wilderness, to where they take you out by boat and then you walk back and sleep in little huts along the trek. I think that was one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand, really blue water and paradise beaches, amazing coastline. Just one negative thing: the sand flies. Those little b******s are ten times worse than mosquitoes, you don't see them and they eat you alive. The bites itch thousand times longer and worse than mosquito bites, really bad. Sometimes it feels as if it would be better to cut off our feet so the bites would stop itching. Seriously! Esther nods while I am reading this part to her, I am not exaggerating J.

As I said, we are in Sidney now and are keen to see what Australia has to offer. I watched the movie 'finding Nemo' on the flight to Sidney, I think now I am prepared what life forms are to be found in the waters of Australia J.