OH MY GOD, this place is so beautiful, I want to cry! As a matter of fact I did, various times actually (Young Joe Young, my bus driver in the North Island would have slapped me now - he hates the word "actually", "elbow" and "sorry") in the last 10 days. I knew that NZ is a beautiful place and I'd heard that people fell in love with it in no time, but I had no idea how much it would blow me away!!
I have been on the road for 11 days, and in these 1.5 weeks I have seen more amazing things, sights, landscapes, and done more awesome stuff, then I could have imagined. The "Magic Bus" (a hop-on-hop-off-bus, travelling the North and South island) only picked me up in Auckland on 25 Feb, and it feels like I have been travelling for weeks! There is so much I'd like to share, it's ridiculous.
On my first day, I visited "Hobbiton", the original film set of parts of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy! I say "parts" because Peter Jackson shot exactly 47 sec (!) there between Hobbit holes, lakes, trees and meadows - spending 750 mio USD!!! But hey, who gives a shit, the trilogy earned him 40 bio USD (or sth ridiculous like that) in the end. At the end of the tour we witnessed a tanned hunk shearing a sheep - only for us :o). Yes, I took pictures. Yes, you CAN see his enormous bizeps. No, I only took those pics for educational reasons! A good start to an amazing trip through the most stunning place I have ever come across. I spent an evening at a Maori event which included fab food, cooked in an earth oven (man, I ate loads!), a bunch of singing and swinging Maoris (not my cup of tea) and a traditional Haka, the challenging dance-thingy the All Blacks do before they smash the other teams, haha. That evening I met an Irish couple, and the guy was the spitting image (and perfect impersonator) of Dougal of "Father Ted" fame. For all those of you who know Father Ted: I shall try and put up a video of that Irish bloke on Facebook.
Next day I watched a geezer (that's how our driver pronounced it) go off. It was of course a geysir, the Lady Knox one at Waiotapu. Man, it stank! Of rotten eggs, i.e. sulphur, and for a moment I was worried my hair could take on that smell. Then came the afternoon, and my biggest adventure so far ... I jumped out of a plane!!! YES, I sky dived, I did it, I jumped out of a bloody plane at 12.000 feet, fell through the rain and wind, strapped to a German instructor! We flew above a stunning lake, saw mountains, clouds, the land under my feet so far away ... and we kept gliding ... it was the most awesome thing I have ever done! I was laughing whilst in the air, I cried on the ground. I was so overwhelmed, I didn't know where to put myself :o). That's another demon slashed, muahaha!!
PS: Stay tuned, guys, I will update this blog more regularly now. More stories to follow 2moro, as we will be staying in an unbelievably boring place called Methven. Sounds like the birthplace of Gandalf ... but at least I will have time to go online :o). xxx
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