These three months made me used to all this goodness and driving on the left side of the road, so coming back to israel will be harder then ever!
I'll try to write about the last two weeks here without sounding sad.
After having a successful business meeting in Invercargill, I started heading up the east coast, general direction - Christchurch. My first destination was Oamaru, relatively small city which has many old and perfectly preserved buildings. The main attraction at this point was penguins. At evening time, lots of penguins come out of the ocean and do their duffy walk back home across the beach. There were two groups of them: the yellowed eye, which are the most rare penguins in the world. The blue penguins, the smallest ones.
* sorry for not publishing photos of them - had some technical problem...
Oamaru streets - it's much more impressive then what you see here...
The other attraction was the Moeraki boulders - big, almost perfectly round rocks in a beach south to Omaru. This special phenomena was very nice to see, but it's kinda funny how many people go there just to see a bunch of rocks :)
the Moeraki boulders
Traveling north, I arrived Timaru. That's one of those cities I told myself "I could live here...". Big enough to have offer everything I need but not too crowded, sweet township architecture and only 80 km from Christchurch. We stayed there one night in a HIT house and then continued our way north to "peel forest" reserve.
We were offered to stay in a charming farm house for free for a few hours of "help around the house". 20 minutes after we arrived this place, we were taken to cut firewood for the winter. It sounded like a cool work - I didn't care if it's hard. But then, I also didn't think they will enslave us for 5 hours! loading and unloading trucks with logs!!!
We hit the road early on the next morning - just in case they planed "morning chores" like cleaning the fridge or something :)
Next stop - mount cook, the highest and most spectacular mountain in NZ. Luck was not on our side though. We had bad weather and stayed in the worst backpackers in NZ (because it was the only one with vacancy...). The mountain is really amazing though - glad we went there.
lake Tekapo - the color of the water is real!!
fantastic road to the mountain
the only good thing about the backpacker was the huge lounge window view...
After Mt. cook I headed east and spent 2 nights in a HIT house of two sugar-sweet 75 year old couple. They own a big farm with lots of deer, cattle and open fields. They turned their house into laundry center because I had to was all my clothes and it was raining outside (kiwis usually don't have a dryer machine...).
Ion and Eveline's farm. they have the most professional sheppard dogs i have ever seen!
When my clothes got dry and i was good to go, we headed to Banks peninsula - a bit south to Christchurch. Beautiful bays in special shapes, green mountains and of course, lots of sheep. We spent a couple of nights in a cute and relaxed tourist town called Akaora. basically didn't do much over there. Just chilled out with guys in the cool backpackers and drove along the bays.
The real special experience was surprisingly involved with food. On the last evening in Akaroa i heard you can find mussels ("mulim") in a near by bay. We drove there with Barbara (a german girl i met in the backpackers) and started peeling those shells off the rocks!
I cooked the mussels and added them to a sweet cream and coconut milk sauce as a topping for pasta - turned out amazing!!
Banks peninsula bays
Okains bay (where we got the mussels from)
peeling the mussels
Le awesome dinner :)
Now i'm in my last destination.... Christchurch. It's almost painful to write it. The city is huge and beautiful and i'm staying in a big warm HIT house with two charming cats. I had some sight seeing and enjoyed the Valentines day street shows.
valentines day street shows
the cats
I guess that's it. the flight to Australia is on saturday at 7am.
As for the summery:
After 3 months of awesome thrills, special experiences, partly annoying companions, 2 islands, 16000 km of road trip, countless photos, same amount of sheeps, meeting my parents, getting to know that the smartest and sweetest people know what it takes to live a decent life (having it on two isolated islands on the other side of the world), I can only say one thing - you have to be here to believe!
No other words can describe how much I like this place. I could never even imagine such a place before I came here.
As for the complete route in NZ:
north island
south island
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