february 21 - 25

february 21

we arrived in auckland at 6:00 in the morning after a 12 hours flight, but lost one day in fact of crossing the international date line. the bikes were ok and the customs not so hard as we often heard of. no extra yellow fever vaccination for travellers coming from south america and no desinfection of our tent, but we had to declare all foods and tenting equipment. think its ok, cos new zealand has to take care of its nature.
at 8:00 we made a telephone-call to the hostel, we booked in advance (skyway lodge), to get picked up from the airport. the van arrived 10 minutes later and we were carried to the hostel, which was well organized and run with a lot of restrictions, as we could read on all the warnings on the wall. don´t do this and don´t do that!!!
so we gave the owner the name "the blockward". nevertheless, he was quite helpful, but complained about some bad experiences with german and dutch visitors, who didn´t do their dishes in time! we decided to go as fast as possible to the south island, cos its getting cold in march, so we booked the train-tickets for the "overlander" to wellington, what was very easy compared to book busrides in argentina. we started to assemble the bikes and cos we had a little jetlag, went to bed early.

february 22


after fixing the bikes, we bought a busticket and went to auckland downtown to supply with some camping-stuff. it was hard to recognize that the cheap days were over, when we had a salad (without bread) and a pita-sandwich for lunch. we have to get used to the new prizes and to the traffic, which is lefthanded in new zealand. auckland is just a big city, without a special flair, not like buenos aires or santiago. eva cooked a nice lunch and we repacked our stuff for our biketour.

february 23

we did a 12 hours trainride to wellington, which was scenic but too long after all the long-distance-travelling in busses and plane, so we ended up exhausted in a hostel in wellington, had fish´n´chips and went to bed.

february 24


booked the ferry to the south island and made a short stroll through wellington. the boattrip was nice, because travelling on the sea is very slow and quiet. the weather was sunny and we arrived after 3 hours in picton, where we found a nice campground.

february 25


the hasinos are back on their bikes. we were heading south to christchurch on the eastern side of the island and on the wrong side of the road. feals strange, driving on the left side of the road and to look over the right shoulder to watch the traffic. the roads were in good shape, better than we were, after the long time of backpacking, but we made quite a good distance and climbed the weld-pass to seddon, a tiny, ugly 500 soul-village, which offered a well eqipped and cheap motor camp. it seemed, that all the campgrounds have good kitchens, so we can cook a larger variety of foods, yummy !


after 5 days in new zealand, we miss the always friendly and happy people, we saw in south america. maybe there the sun goes into their hearts and here they use too much sunblocker.