As I'm sitting on the Airport in Auckland waiting for my flight to Denpasar to strart I decided to write a last resume about my trip. I finished my travels on the North Island and the first bilance is pretty awesome, 3.5 months of travelling made a resultat like this:
Mermaid Pools check
Northland check
Coromandel check
Cape Reinga check
Auckland check
Raglan check
New Plymouth check
Festival of Lights check
Mt. Taranaki check
Mt. Manganoui check
Rotorua check
Taupo check
Bay of Plenty check
Bay of Islands check
Napier check
Hastings check
Longest Place Name check
Palmerston N check
Wellington check ...
Piha Beach missing
Waiheke Isl. missing
Tongariro Crossing missing
East Cape missing
90 miles beach missing
Of course I left some places open to come back another time. Whenever that is.. Fact is: my time here was fucking awesome and I learned so much about how life can be . I had to decide all things myself. There were no mum and dad telling me what to do and there's nobody who can gurantee for anything. That's quite hard in the beginning but working after a while. Furthermore I didn't really work against money so I've spend it all. I checked my finances and somehow it's scary. But I stayed in Couchsurfing places and about 4weeks on farms to work for accommodation and food so I saved a bit. Farming...Experience. Well I think it's nice to do try and we had great fun in Raglan but all in one...it's enough. I'd rather get a paid job!
New Zealand has some great Beaches and impressing National Parks. I never saw myself on a hiking trip - it seemed always too boring even though it's definitely not! Well I tried hitchhiking, bought and sold a car, made many friends and got to know so many people from all over the world (yes even I have to admit that prejudices are bullshit!). I went couchsurfing, smoked, drank, ate good food or the usual backpacker dish: Pasta, enjoyed some cool music with my ladies on one of our road trips and a lot more.
Even though having uncomfortable experiences makes you worried whether that what you do is good or not, I don't regret travelling. It is necessary for myself to learn how to deal with it and to keep on going. "It is a learning process" would my mom say. :) Luckily I made a lot more good experiences that bad ones - it were only 2. But that keeps it real and exciting because it's definitely different to my old life what is actually really good.
Of course I miss friends, family and my boyfriend. Sometimes I plan to fly home earlier. Homesickness - yep, sometimes it overcomes me and ruines the beautiful day. BUT as I learned: don't make plans! It could change quickly and makes you trouble but that's good, it keeps you busy and openminded for new things.
Well, now I'm heading off to Bali. I'll enjoy seeing Kevin and my Family. SWEET ASS :) This will be the first time to stay at one place longer than two weeks since I left home. Creepy! Only a few hours until I'm there but don't even try to ask me about the place I'm gonna be after. That's too far in the future and I decided to go with the flow.
Okay, so let's get this started! Very Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year!
Tuesday morning checkout time: ready to leave Tauranga..! But where? Fabi and I decided to hitchhike around and see something on the North Island. Having a great adventure without any plan. Awesome! While eating breakfast we discussed whether fixing a destination or putting our thumb ot and go with the flow. We opened the map, checked the Highway connections and all the places. We found the west-/ east side should be good, or Coromandel or, Taupo or, or, or. As I've travelled almost all of the North Island apart from the west (Taranaki) and the east (Gisborne) we finally fixed New Plymouth as our destination.
'Good, therefore we need to pass.....Taupo or Rotorua or that or no oh, hmm... Well, let's start.... into direction Taupo. We took a piece of cardboard, wrote Taupo on it and left the hostel! BUT...Where to start? We asked the receptionist for the best place to hitchhike out of Tauranga but without any useful advice we just walked to the next highway and held out the shield. Waiting.. Waiting.. 15minutes.. Ok, bad place, let's keep on walking.. Two cars stopped on their way to Betlehem which was definitely not or direction, too bad. One of them told us we are a bit wrong, should go on and take the left highway towards Hamilton. That place was not good either so we gave it up and tried to walk on. HONK! Our first ride, Rotorua! Yep, perfect :)
We had a nice conversation with this cool business man heading to Rotorua and dropping us off on the Thermal Explorer Highway to Taupo. I heard it's so easy to hitchhike from Rotorua to Taupo because of these tourists wo start their trip down south in Rotorua and explore Lake Taupo after. Well I got frustrated 'cause we were waiting for about 45mins to get a lift. It was a friendly old kiwi who made an extra way for us to see the landscape and a free mudpool (which I have already seen before ;D) He dropped us in central Taupo and the only thing we could think about was food. FOOD FOOD FOOD. We ate in the world's most spectacular (yes, it's said in lonely planet) Mc Donald's and booked a hostel for a night. Too tired to move on :D
The next morning was a bit confusing...we woke up at 9:30 and had to check out at 10:00 but we were so exausted and just booked another night to sleep a bit longer...Hostel was nice, Taupo as well. We enjoyed a Sailing trip on the lake and saw these awesome Maori Carvings.
Ok after that day we had to choose to leave either to the east - Gisborne or to the west - New Plymouth... In the end it didn't matter for me, the place I don't see within that week is the place I'm gonna reach by bus, just to finish my North Island trip. The joice fell to New Plymouth because of a light festival on the 15th of december.
Checkout and then a 2-minute walk on 'the Terrace' in Taupo till we got our first lift. A real cool kiwi guy called Will. He dropped us off in Bulls - don't ask about the name...So Bulls, yeah we found a construction worker and asked for a cardboard but even before we wrote our next destination on it Jeremy stopped to take us to Wanganoui. That was fast! :) He left us opposite of a gas station and we actually had to wait for 15minutes, pretty bad^^ There was a boysgroup coming back from a class trip in Wellington and picked us up. GENIUS, all worked out perfectly. In top of the day was to get a free place to stay at his mates place :) Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
We checked out New Plymouth's coastal walkway which is awesome and took a bath in the ocean. Great! Got a fish 'n chips and relaxed in the city center, booked a bus to Egmont National Park and hiked up the Mount Taranaki for a while. 6hrs walk, so exhausting! Hanging out on the terrace having a beer made a perfect evening. What's better? Yeah, the final with a picnic at the light festival in the park :)
The hitchhiking trip was absolutely awesome :)
Wellington and girls adieu, Tauranga hello! Hard step but necessary. I've spend my last day with my awesome ladies in a national park end enjoyed a real good dinner. It was perfect. Käsespätzle and a Chocolate Tart :) Somebody should say we wouldn't cook...
After my arrival in Tauranga I was waiting for the boys to pick me up - as to expect, they weren't there. I definitely have too much luggage and can't carry all by myself but in this case I had to. And I had to find the way to the backpackers which I didn't look up before. Marina-Style^^
While entering the Backpackers Dario and Fabi hugged me to say hello they wanted to come and pick me up... wow excellent timing^^ :D This backpackers is the dirtiest I've ever seen, that is really disgusting. I thought about taking the vacuum to clean the room myself. Bah! People are great there and so I stayed a week hoping for work. It was raining almost every day so there was no work to do and after the raining days only work for boys. Damn it. I just want to work, no matter what!! Then I decided to leave after the week and suddenly got a job offer.. Pff, nah!
Partying the night and chillaxing the days - that was my weekly programe. Oh I even made a bit of Sport :o went out for a run... I've met some really nice people there, survived the indian invasion in our hostel (well, shouldn't complain because we germans are taking over NZ) and had some fun parties. I saw Mount Maunganui and waited for Tuesday to arrive. Leaving for new adventure :)
Mount Maunganui was supposed to look like this
but I saw it looking like that: not that beautiful but still fine! :)
Mermaid Pools check
