surfermaus

Finally, we are in Kiwiland!
But unfortunatelly, we have bad luck with the weather. Since our arrival it rained EVERY day. But after some minutes, it can happen, that the sun is shining..but also just for a couple of minues ..sometimes. So, crazy weather here in New Zealand!
But not only the weather is crazy- also the people.
They are wearing flip flos (or no shoes) and shorties when it's raining. Besides, we can't understand them. Actually, I don"t think they speak English. It's really hard to understand our busdriver when he talks for hours about any activities.. But they are all one of the friendliest people we ever met. It reminds me a little bit of Sweden, but just nicer :) At our arrival day we met a man at the train station in Auckland who went with us to the lockers (gave us money for it), went on with us to the bus station and showed us everything. At the end he gave us his phone number if we have any problems...!!! We weren't sure about all this friendliness and if our things are still in the lockers when we get back. But they were!!! And everybody is like that here...happy and friendly..although it is raining almost the whole day.

We are going with the Kiwi bus, which is a little bit of an extrem activity tour with almost only young (which means really young) people from the UK. So you can do every day something like Skydiving, bungy jumping, Zorbing (rolling with a big ball filled with water down the hill), ludging (like summer sledging (Sommerrodeln), black water rafting (sitting on a tube and floating through a cave), white water rafting, helicopter flights,...
So, that's also one things why the KIWIS are really crazy people here. Let"s see what we have done when we finish our trip :)

Highlights so far:
- Waitomo caves: walking through 65 meters down under earth with beautiful formations of Stalagmites and stalagtites.
- Hobbiton: We saw Gollum, or at least the statue. By the way, the landscape looks everywhere like in the Lord of the Rings. Small green hills, sheeps, cows, rivers and beautiful trees, farnes and so different plants I have never seen before
- Redforest: a big big forest with huuuge trees. WE felt like in the rainforest!
- Rotorua: the thermal city of NZ with steaming holes everywhere. Highlight: Geysirs injecting 10 meters in the air!!!
- Kiwi bird: Very, very cute! A round (fat) bird without wings with a long pecker (Schnabel). I like it!
- Maori show: very, very interesting with the Haka dance (warrior dance) and a great meal.

Now we are in Taupo and can see Mount Doom (=Lord of the rings) from here. Unfortunately, the great day walk is closed (like every activities and walks we wanted to do so far), which makes us very sad. It should be one of the best day walks ever going on the red crater (where the ring was thrown inside) of the Volcano passing forests, lakes,....
We couldn't do the Black Water Rafting as well because of the flooding cave. Hopefully it's getting better that we can do a Helicopter flight.

So far...
What's happening in Austria? Any interesting news or everything quite? Inform us. We are looking forward to your mails.

xoxo from the other side of the world,
Frodo and Gollum (you can decide who is who)