Hello guys, now I'm writing from Hong Kong but I have so much to write that I will start with what came after the Cook Islands, New Zealand.
We didn't have time to see all New Zealand, but we saw the north of the south Island and Auckland, so that is what I will write about.
New Zealand is an island where you can find landscapes from many parts of the world together, and it's green, large and empty. Ohh yee and the people is veery funny.
We started in Christchurch, in the middle of the south island, east coast, a very british and calm city, and crossed to the west coast. A tranzalpine train crosses the mountains (called Southern Alps, the Lord of the Ring was filmed somewhere around there) and then the landscape changes from big mountains, with lakes, to fields covered with yellow flowers. When we went high it remembered me Norway, when the mountains appeared huge and green it looked like Argentina around Bariloche, and seriously these are some of the most beautiful sceneries I've ever seen.
After the train we continued with another scenic roadtrip, this consisted in the tough Pacific Ocean breaking on a coast of big mountains, reminding of the Californian Big Sur but this time covered with a tropical green vegetation. We ended up in a town of two roads that crossed each other, three restaurants and one of the best backpackers hostels we have seen in New Zealand, called "The Lazy Cow". This hostel was small and owned by a really friendly woman who presented us to all the other guest and made a delicious lasagne (and this is something you don't usually get as a backpacker). The name of the town was Murchison and the reason to get there was to do rafting in one of the clear esmerald rivers, broken down by some earthquakes. It was however a calm rafting but we enjoyed the views and even swimming in its Spring icy water.
After lovely Murchison we went further north to the Abel Tasman national park. Our plan was to walk around the paths of this park of small mountains covered by tropical greens and surrounded by another amazing tone of turqoise from the Tasman sea. I would like to describe the colour of this sea but I'm not sure I can (so you can google for pictures). As we walked from the beaches to the mountains and saw the water from higher above, the tones changed so that I'll just say that it was worth every pain in the muscles that we had the days after.
We continued with long journeys in buses, some with interesting people, like an old woman that prefered to travel by herself and when younger had been going around half world, being her the only woman. You could see the look of adventure still burning in her eyes. The best about travelling, she said, was the people you meet. And I think she was right.
We saw the Malborough hills covered by vineyards, this is where the flowery Sauvignon Blanc wine from New Zealand is produced. This time we sleeped in a hostel with some kids (on their twenties) that worked in the vineyards, some of them from East Europe.
The last stop of the North Island was Kaikoura. This town offers one of the most impresive landscapes you can find in the North Island and probably in the world, with its almost 3000 meters high mountains by the sea level. Some of them had snow. In the ocean, not far from the coast there is a rift that makes another similar drop into the bottom of the ocean. This is the reason why there is a lot of marine life and even whales! And we SAW whales! Yes we took a short flight in a small aeroplane and we saw the amazing landscape from the air and then we entered the ocean and after a while we saw from the air this huge mammal (sperm whale, 15 meters long) throwing a fountain of water, and finally getting down and showing elegantly its tale.
Finally, we left the South Island without having seing anything, as an old couple going to the airport pointed out to us (they meant the south of the South Island). And we saw less of the North Island, just Auckland. The most populated city of New Zealand, the city of the forty volcanoes. And to not bore you I'll just say that if you go to Auckland, sleep in the coolest street, Ponsonby, try the tiramisu of SPQR, see the national museum, make excursions to the surrounding islands, the volcanoes and see the city from Mount Eden (another volcano, of course).
