Christchurch

We are writing this post from Christchurch airport waiting for our flight to Sydney Australia. Christchurch was great, it is full with pubs, restaurants and shops and we had a lot of fun here. We even hooked up with another Israeli couple and spent some of the time together. One of the days we drove to Kaikora (a 3 hours drive north of Christchurch) where we took a “whale watching” cruise. It was really cool; we got to see five sperm whales (that’s a big kind of whale, not the “Free Willy” type) from really close. You get to see only 10% of their body, the rest is under the water, but before they dive they raise there tails and it is one of nature’s pretty moments. The only bad thing in the cruise was that Gali got a little sea sick and spent half of it at the toilets.

Since we are car-less now, until we find something in Australia (maybe a caravan this time) we had to get rid of most of our camping gear. We made a lot of people happy with a lot of free handouts.

To summarize New Zealand: It is an amazing place full with inconceivable amount of nature’s beauty accompanied with nice English speaking people and affordable prices.

Gali & Doron

Queenstown & Dunedin

Hi All,

Queenstown was great, it is a small but very tourist oriented town full with (expensive) things to do. We chose to do an extreme downhill mountain bike course. You go up the hill via a gondola (their “rachbal”) and from there on it is downhill all the way. As it turned out it was a bit above our technical riding level but we had a lot of fun after all.

After Queenstown we headed east to Dunedin, a big city on the south east coast of the south island. Dunedin is described in the Lonely Planet as a European city with many gardens. We had big expectations from it and that is probably the reason why we got a bit disappointed. A cool thing that we did there is a wildlife tour. The tour is a ridden guided tour (they take you on an 8 wheels drive vehicle). We got to see a seals colony, (from much closer than last time) and even two yellow eyed penguins.

Now we are at Christchurch, we found a very cool hostel where we got a complete apartment (kitchen excluded) for very cheap, so we are really happy here. Christchurch is very nice, a lot of good places to eat at and a lot of places to see. We decided to not postpone our flight to Sydney (April 30) and stay here for the meanwhile.

Gali & Doron

Happy Independence Day

Te Anua and Milford

After Wanaka we headed south to Te Anua, the starting point of the Kepler track and many other trips and attractions in the Fiordland area. During our three nights stay there we encounter some bad weather (rain and some snow) for the first time in New Zealand. On the first day there we just hanged out (pool & beer night) at the town which was much nicer than we had expected. On the second day we hiked a bit (we did the beginning of the Kepler track) it was nice except for the sand-flies, for those of you who never been to New Zealnd, sand-flies are small annoying flies that looks like “barchashim”, they have a painful bite and they are totally unaware of the fact that they are suppose to be repelled by pest repelling products (we have three different kinds!).

The day after that we drove (about 2 hours) to Milford, a small village (about 200 people) on the edge of Milford Sound (for the common people, a Sound is very similar to a Fiord). Milford Sound is considered one of New Zealand’s prettiest places and the Milford track requires booking a half a year in advance, since we only started trying to book it about a month ago it was already fully booked. What we ended up doing was a two and a half hours cruise along the sound. It was VERY pretty! It is impossible to capture such beauty with a camera but God knows we tried.

Now we are back in Queenstown, we plan on staying here for the next three days. Tomorrow morning we are going for an extreme downhill bike ride with some bike adventure company, the course is suppose to be very extreme and we hope we are up for the challenge.

We posted some new pictures, check them out.

Gali & Doron

Greymouth & the Glaciers

First of all I must apologize to my wife for causing numerous people thinking she is pregnant. She is not!!!

Greymouth is a small but cool town on the west coast of the south island, we stayed there for 3 days at a place owned by two Israelis immigrants. The place was crowded with “after army” Israeli travelers, it made us feel a little old. Anyway we talked a bit with the owners who said that the immigration process is very easy, it made us think…

After Greymouth we continued going south toward the glaciers. At Franz Josef glacier we took a “Heli-Hike” tour which included a chopper flight to the top of the glacier and an “on ice” two hours walk, it was very nice (and expensive) experience. The next day we kept going south to Fox glacier, this time we watched it from the bottom.

Now we are at Wanaka which is a lakeside town, it is suppose to be full of water sports activities but it is a bit too cold for that now. Since we are a bit tired from traveling we decided to stay here for 3 nights at a decent level hotel not like the hostels we got used to this past month (we miss Bora Bora).

BTW - I am getting better at Golf, I hardly ever miss the ball (-:

Gali & Doron

Abel Tasman, Lake Rotoiti and Westport

Hi guys,

Since we last wrote we left Nelson, a very cool town on the edge of the Abel Tasman region and headed toward Motueka which is a small town close to Marahau (the starting point of the Abel Tasman costal track). The track is 51 Km walk with climbs up to 700m along the coastline of the Abel Tasman bay. It can be done anywhere between 3-5 days. Since we are Rambos we decided to do it in 3. After the first day which included a 19 Km walk carrying ~12K each in a nice but monotonic view, we decided that we got the point and that it’s not that fun. So we spent the night at the first hut and on the second day we caught a water taxi back to our beloved car. Just so we won’t feel like we missed anything we then drove to the track end point and spent the night there in our tent.

BTW, we bought an inflating mattress with an electric inflator / deflator that connect to the car 12v plug. Along with the DVD player we have in our laptop (We are now into “Desperate Housewives”) and the cooking facilities we bought, we only need a portable swimming pool to reach a 5 stars hotel class.

After the Abel Tasman area, we started to head south towards Lake Rotoiti at Nelson Lakes National Park which is not that close to Nelson city. On the way we stopped at a sky diving club and almost took a 13,000 feet tandem jump. The thing that made it just an “almost” was that on the disclaimer they make you sign before you jump, it said in big bold letters that if you are a pregnant woman or suffer from a spinal / back injury then it is not that good of idea to jump. So I guess me and the pregnant women will have to wait a little longer.

Lake Rotoiti was a beautiful place. We stayed 2 nights at St Arnaud in a place called “The yellow house”, a nice backpacker’s hostel. We met there for the first time in NZ Israeli people.

The next place we got to was Westport, it has a cool seals colony, only 15 Km from the town. At last, I got to see some seals!!! Finally, after the disappointment we went through at Wellington (That included 3 hours of walking and complaining about Gali’s shoes), and no seals what so ever, I finally got to see them. The colony had 30 seals at the time we visited. Actually, in a good day, you get to see 100 seals. You can just imagine the urge I had to take some pictures (Around 100 pictures).

BTW - we uploaded new pictures so check them out.

Doron & Gali