Meeting our old friend on the other side of the earth was a great experience J We spend a great time in Napier together! After remembering old times, rolling the dies and “analyzing” live in NZ we choused the small streets direction south through a green hilly landscape with thousands of white dots on it, called cheeps… lovely… curvy and after some hours we reached a place called “Castlepoint” in the end of nowhere with incredible nice rocks at the sea side and another light house to explore. Some nice walkways made us stay and enjoying the surrounding…

Continuing direction Wellington we contacted Lynnie, who welcomed us so hearty at her lovely home in Matara – next to Wellington in the lovely country site close to the see… She offered us her car to have a look at the see side. We had a sunset walk at the beach close to the house. When we arrived back some friends of Lynnie were already waiting for us to show us how to feed the eels at their small rive which runs smothlz next to their farm and after that an amazing dinner was waiting for us… when suddenly an EARTHQUAKE!!! was shaking us! It was just for a second but very intensive, no biggy for the locals (actually they are living on the ring of fire)! What an experience!

Today we had a closer look at the capital of NZ: Wellington – we went down the hill with the cable car after we had a look at the cable car museum. When walking the sea site we accidentally joined a Harley Davidson meeting where we saw one more Indian from 1943, we went to the annual market fare of Wellington and in the end we enjoyed some hours in the great Te Papa Museum. Te Papa we recommend to everybody passing Wellington!!! It is one of the most interesting, interactive and best-equipped museums we have ever seen and we could easily spend there more hours, even days! GO and have a look whenever you can! And the best thing is that it is for free!

One more day left in Wellington, before we will take the ferry to the South Island….

Due to some questions/complaints i raised the quality of the picture to 1024×1024 max resolution … let me know if it is better now….

First: Sascha is doing much better! He can close his eye again and sometimes he can manage to whistle already ;-) We LOVE it!!!

Last Saturday we left with Josie, Chris and Marty and had a great ride to the north cup (via Roturua) We had great breaks in lovely places and in the of the day we met up with some other  friends of them in Opotiki at the east coast to spend the night together in a pub. Next morning we left direction East Cape – we had an amazing sunny warm day, riding the gravel roads and walking up the light house. We continued direction Gisborne when we got stucked late afternoon in Tologa Bay because all the gas stations run out of gas… we took it as it was, spend a nice evening in the back packers and playing pool with the locals.

On Monday we had to say good bye each to other in Whakatane – we loved to go together with these guys, we spend an unforgettable time together and we are quite sure we will meet again… THANK YOU ALL!!!

Now it was time for us to go ahead our own way. Our new goal was Lake Taupo. We spend there only one night because we were keen to ride the road to Turangi direction Napier through the mountains and to meet up with our old friend Steve. We enjoyed the ride up to an altitude of 985m – brrrrrr. It really went cold but it was GOOOOOOOOD ;-)  And happy in the evening to stay in Steve`s warm flat in Napier…