Hello everyone,

unfortunately, this will be our last blog entr they because our journey is already over (much faster than he had expected) and we're already back home. We hope that you had a good time following our journey and thanks to those who left a comment or a message.

Lake Tekapo was only an hour drive away from Geraldine which left us enough time to do a two hour expedition to Mt John, on which a observatory was built. The hike wasn't very demaning (at least for us :) ) but the view upon the lake with his almost unreal light-blue colour was absolutely cool. Both of us had never seen such a blue lake before.

On the next day, during breakfast, we met a swiss girl and decided to go together to Mt Cook which is with its 3754m the highest mountain in New Zealand. (Swiss mountains still would make fun of him because of its height.) The man at the information desk (such a honest and great man...) recommended us not to take the regular walk which was flat and full of tourists but to take a walk which "gives us a bit of height so that we would have a better view." We trusted him which was a grave mistake. This track consisted of millions and million billions stairs. The actual number lies around 1300 but it didn't matter because it was anyway a suicide mission. The girl gave up after 15 mins of climbing steps but Oscar and I decided to make it to the top while cursing the information-centre-man who apparentaly wanted to kill us. I reached my limit before Oscar did. He made it up to the plateau while is was walking down again. After the three of us gather again at the bottom of the Mount Everest, we realised that the snow covered mountain and the glaciers looked actually much better from the car park than from that stupid hill.

Dunedin, which is apparently pronounced "Deeeniiidn", was our second to last stop on our journey. We thouth Dunedin to be a small city with about 10'000 residents which turned out to be completely wrong. It was more like 120'000 than 10'000 citizens. The hostels in bigger cities are usually not as good as those in small towns/villages but the hostel we stayed in was quite nice. It was a chalet which used to be hosted by a swiss guy.

The weather in Dunedin was mostly grey and wet. That was unfortunate because the city is said to be one of the nicest cities in New Zealand. On the day we arrived there, we didn't feel like cooking ourselves. So we strolled through through Dunedin, looking for a tasty dinner. We stopped in front of a chinese takeaway because the portions usually are generous and the prices are really good. I wanted to try "Chop Suey" which I heard of many times but never tried it myself. Therfore, I ordered Chop Suey with vegetables instead of the meat alternative. I didn't realise that Chop Suey is just plain, cooked vegetables without anything else. So, I basically ordered vegetables with vegetables which consisted mainly of broccoli and coliflower, both of which I don't particularly like. We were sitting in front of the old railway station of Dunedin, while Oscar enjoyed his dinner and I forced myself to swallow these bad tasting vegetables.

Quite close to Dunedin is centre where you can watch royal albatross in their natural habitat. We watched two of them flying around and one was hatching a dummy egg (poor albatross) about 10 metres away from where we were standing inside a building with darkened windows. The tour was OK but not as exciting as we thought it would be.

Queenstown was already our last destination. This city looked nothing like all the other kiwi cities. It didn't have this american look to it. It was reminded us of a small city that could had been built in Switzerland, rather than New Zealand. Very toursitc but still very beautiful. Oscar was still willing to do his bungee jump off a bridge which was 47m above a river. He wanted to be able to dunk into the river with his arms and his head. Unfortunately, they used a new rope which wasn't yet elastic enough to let a jumper of 81 kg reach the water. Oscar was quite upset about that because the part he was looking forward to the most. So, instead of him being totally excited after his courageous jump, he was complaining about the jump. His bungee jump certificat landed in the bin when we arrived at the hostel.

While we were queuing in front of "Ferg Burger" to buy us dinner, we met two swiss girls who were travelling in New Zealand as well. After all of us had enjoyed our huge burger (best burger I had so far), we walked to a pub with live music. We had a great time with them for they were really fun girls.

For our last day in Queenstown, we booked a trip to Milford Sounds. The coach trip took about 4 hours for one way and as soon as we arrived on the harbor, we stepped on a boat and spent the next hour on the fjord. The weather looked quite grim when we stepped out of our hostel but as soon as we arrived in Milford Sounds, the clouds were gone and the sun was smiling upon us. The landscape in Milford Sounds was just breathtaking. No wonder that about half a million tourists go there every year. It was an amazing day.

As we arrived in Queenstown again, we had our third burger within 3 days. It sounds a bit excessive but ... we are just two lazy cooks.

We spent our last day in New Zealand exactly where we started in the first place, namely Auckland. We watched "Mission Impossible" in an IMAX cinema which was a step up from a normal cinema. The movie was quite average. We spent most of the time in the Alberts Park, which is probably the nicest place in Auckland, before we went to the airport. The journey was quite long but we were a bit more used to traveling and the time went past a bit faster than during the flight to New Zealand.

Thank you New Zealand for being great. Have a good time without us.