Hello fellow travellers,
This is part three of the blog-series covering my six months journey through the world. Still in New Zealand, we arrived in Wellington and headed south. Back home in Austria you imagine the south to be warm. Shorts and flip-flops. Magheritas and sunglasses. Salud!
On the other side of the world, we are approaching the Antarctic. And Austrian temperatures. Hats and thick socks. Spiced Tea and rain jackets. Nastrovje!
If you are interested in the other blogposts you can find them here:
Part 1:
https://steemit.com/travel/@icountedzero/six-months-of-freedom-new-zealand-part1
Leaving the loud crowd of gannets north we headed straight down south to Wellington - the capital of New Zealand. It is a lush and green, sleepy little town with couteous inhabitants (approx. 400.000) and a "world famous" cable car. We spent a few days lurking around in the city and enjoyed ourselfes (and the lack of things to do).
While the city itself charmed us with just the right amout of boredom, we where deeply impressed by the New Zealand national Museum "Te Papa". The museum with free admission offer five floors buzzing with interactive, state-of-the-art exhibits displaying the history of New Zealand in all its facettes. The exhibition "Gallipoli - The scale of our war" tells dramatically the entanglements of New Zealand during the First World War. Including a walk-in, interactive bunker under fire and a replica latrine. Kudos Kiwis, we salute you for this marvel of a museum.
A special feature of the local vegetation are, among other things, ferns. New Zealand has not chosen the silver fern as a national plant for nothing, and the upcoming vote on a new flag motif, the "Silver Fern" probably on the national flag immortalize. In Austria we associate rather small, green and inconspicuous plants with ferns but the ferns here are another thing.
After a few days in Wellington we were finally able to conquer 92km ride through the cook straight. Our trusty ride had a front row seat when we leisurely sailed down to the southern island. (~3.5 hours, ~ 200 NZD)
Just a few kilometers south lies the small town of Kaikoura which is famous for activities like whale-watching and dolphin-swimming. Starting at 150 NZD these we out of our league and so we decided to take a hike and breath in the clear sea breeze. (Kudos if you can locate all 39 seals hidden in the picture)
Our next stop was Christchurch, the capital of the south. The city of 380,000 was severely shattered in early 2011 by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake, and much of the downtown area still looks pretty beaten up. Reconstruction seems to be a long process so the rather pragmatic inhabitants opened a new shopping center built with construction containers.
The architect Shigeru Ban completed the new "cardboard cathedral" in the center of the city after only to years of construction. In order to be able to complete the "temporary" building as quickly as possible, he mainly used wood, plastic and cardboard as building material. The bright, modern construction was able to impress even us pagans.
The city of Oamaru is all about penguins. At least for us it was all about penguins. And a pretty crazy museum. Two species of penguins inhabit the city and its surroundings. There is a beach that offers a high chance to spot the delusive yellow eyed penguin. It took ous three hours sitting in the cold to spot one little guy being purged in by the sea. Alltough it was a rather short encounter we were absolutely amazed. (The blue eyed penguin swarms the streets of Oamaru at night and you really have to be careful to no run them over. Still i was no able to catch one with my camera.)
Riding through Oamaru we spotted a sign saying "worlds first and only steampunk museum". Instantly we were intrigued and oh boy, it was quite unique. (Skulls, rockets and steam what could go wrong?) We met the owner just in front of the museum and at first i was not sure if he was part of the exhibit - this guy really breathes steampunk. We followed his kind invitation and we were not disappointed.
"COME ON IN, THERE IS LOT'S OF CRAZY SHIT IN THERE, FUCKING INSANE!" (If you like rusty machines that look like they could explode any minute you really should make a visit. If you don't like them you sould make a visit anyway. If you have the chance to meet the owner you REALLY need to talk to him. He is out of this world. Try to count how often he is able to use the F- word in a basic conversation. FUCKING amazing. Really. We liked him and his authenticity. FUCK!)
On our way down south we stopped to visit the Moeraki boulders, a set of strangely round stone boulders sitting on the beach that are only visible during low tide. Looks like mother nature tried to play a game of Boccia.
In the upcoming posts we will head further south to visit the largest chocolate fountain in the southern hemisspehre. (We really love that. Nobody says the largest, biggest, tallest ... in the northern hemissphere where we come from, but down south this seems to be a thing.) We will take a stroll on the steepest road in the southern hemisspehre where the inhabitants of Dunedin throw down TONS of chewing gum every year just for absolutely no reason at all, and take a ride on the famous downhill tracks of queenstown.
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Thank you for reading.
Florian