i ve been in NZ now for just under 6 weeks and i ve loved every second of it. i m not sure if i had mentioned this before but i spent a full year in a little town called Wanaka back in 2007/2008 going to school there and living with a local family ( my 'Dad' was my sports teacher) and that year easily was the awesomest year of my life and probably in many ways remains tha up till today. so naturally i ve been looking forward heaps to coming back here.

i ve been travelling with fellow 2+2er theSimonman whom i met during my second stay in Malta and we rented a smallish campervan in Christchurch which is in the northeast corner of the south island and spent the first couple days driving down towards Dunedin where i met an old friend from back in 2007. that weekend, they had a beer festival and naturally, simon and i being germans, we had to go check it out but, simon and i being germans, we haed almost every beer we ended up tasting (at least 15) bar two exceptions both of which were dark malty beers, one of which (speight's 5 malt old dark) i drinking at this very moment. its weird, i guess Kiwis like a very flowery, bitter hoppy beer which i hate with every fibre in my body. i guess it only takes one anyway


afterwards we drove to Wanaka which as mentioned above is like a second home to me and we ended up staying almost a week there. one night we had an awesome dinner with my old host family, who are the funniest bunch of little racists i have ever met. back then i never realized just how out of line their jokes were, but their humor even beats my own racism by quite a mile which says a LOT.

we then went on a number of hikes, or, as kiwis call them, tramps.

first warmup was a single day walk up to the rob roy glacier trying out our new gear:


then, satisfied with all the stuff we baught in a local outdoors store (despite me having all the neccesary stuff in a closet back in germany and consciously not taking any of it along expecting super hot summer weather when i got here - its sadly been very cold for the most part) we went on the first of what up until now has been three multiday walks-

The Kepler Track

this walk leads from a large calm lake through loads of rainforests up above the bushline towards a number of mountain peaks offering beautiful views of the surrounding landscapes. i have done this one walk with my outdoor educations class back in the day so thought it would be a good start as i d be experienced going in. i forgot that i was fit back then and came here after 4 years of exactly no sports or health whatsoever plus smoking like theres no tomorrow for more than that time. needless to say day one which was a very steep accend towards the hut close to the peak of mount luxmore almost killed me. its funny what difference a solid mental game can have in long distance anaerobic activities. i remember when i was doing this walk as a teenie i was part of a big group and everybody was pushing each other and we all had fun all the way through the end of the walk. this here was entirely different, me super unfit and soon annoyed by the fact that i wasnt capable of keeping up a solid pace and simonman, very fit and usually walking in front of me and waiting on me regularly. i wasnt at all able to see the upsides on that first day and was whining a ton. mainly because i overestimated the total distance we would do and projected the extra hours and consequential pain i would feel upon me. we made it to the hut about 1.5 hours earlier than anticipated and suddenly i realized that i wasnt as unfit as i thought. the views we were able to enjoy made all the suffering totally worthwhile

day 2 started with a beautiful sunrise


the day was much easier in many ways as a) i knew the challenges a 5 hour day would have and b) because its mainly flat and/or downhill. we did get to see a number of local mountain parrots - Keas - that tend to be very inquisitive when they run into humans and their gear:


and walked up to the peak of mount luxmore but sadly the weather was kinda shtty so the views this time werent as great as they could be otherwise. great experience nonetheless. we ended the day in the second and last hut of the trip and had made a couple friends in a german couple, who we walked the third and final day with, a 32km monster 8 hour walk through mainly flat rainforest.

we followed this hike up with another stay in wanaka. Those of you who may have read my older threads might remember me posting some paintings i made in january 2013. i havent painted since but being back in this beautiful place made me crave painting again and since getting here i have painted a number of things, mainly landscapes some of which turned out pretty good.

Lake wanaka on a windy cloudy day:

and there was a cute wairess working in a cafe i finished the above picture at and i asked her to model for a portrait. took a few pix but she had her eyes clsoed on both so i stalked her on facebook and painted this:

sadly no luck with her

having caught the bug of painting again just after i finished the pic of the waitress i decided i wanted to run up a local mountain (mount roy) to paint the sunset which was about 3 hours away at the time. i ran to our camper told simon to pack up and we rushed to the bottom of it and began going up. little did i know that it was higher than the first day of the Kepler track i still wasnt very solid at dealing with accends so soon i started dying and crying and cursing but i did make it up in time for the sunset. midway through i told simon to go ahead so that in case i was late we d at least have some photos to show for the effort. and soon after we lost track of each other and wouldnt see each otehr again until 3-4 hours later as there are a number of different shortcuts and ways up the hill. i did make it just in time to take some photos:



the big issue was that i ended stumbling down the mountain in darkness for 2 hours and hurt my left knee in the process which was a decent issue heading into our second multiday walk, the Routeburn Track. luckily for me this one was way less steep than the kepler but equally as beautiful, maybe even more so, despite again being very cloudy and rainy throughout:




after this we drove up the westcoast ...


to a place called punakaiki which, imo, has the most amazing sunsets anywhere. my favourite painting i have ever made was off a picture from this place and again the sunset didnt disappoint and i tried to paint the following pic on the spot as it was happening. finished the foreground back in the carpark:


after that one we drove north and took the ferry to the country's capitol, Welington. we met a friend of simon's and had a blast in that town, went to a place called the red rocks ( whcih didnt have (m)any red rocks), got our camper to break down and got stuck in the city, so naturally went on the piss and got massively wasted, talked to some murricans that were camping next to us who turned out to be legit weed farmers in colorado etc. some impressions:


korean BBQ


dancing with indian santa



we eventually got our campervan replaced and made the drive up to Tongariro national park which is home to three beautiful and very different mountains: Mt Ngauruhoe which is also known as Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings, Mount Ruapehu which is an active volcano with three peaks, home to two ski slopes on either side and mount tongariro which is the oldest volcano of the three and the namesake of the national park.

There is a 4-day tramping track called the tongariro circuit which we had booked the 3 huts for but since our camper died we thought we wouldnt be able to make it until we got there on the evening of our anticipated first day and decided we would walk the sugested first and second days in one and do the rest of the track as planned. the region is known for its super unstable weather and it was raining hard that night so we didnt have all that much hope for views but we got supremely lucky with sunshine for almost the duration of the walk. i took some of the best pictures of the trip during those 3 days and painted the picture of Mt Ngauruhoe in the hut using my flashlight from my phone in the end as it got pitch black about 45 min after i started painting the picture and most tramping huts dont have electricity:


Mount doom shortly before sunset




mt ruapehu


emerald lakes


Blue Lake, Emerald Lakes, The Red Crater

We did climb to the peak of mount tongariro but sadly it got super cloudy just then so no pix of that

the day before yesterday we drove from tongariro to taupo which is a town at lake taupo, a Massive blue lake which is i think the 5th largest supervolcano in the world filled with rain and river waters. pretty sick as the lake is truly gigantic in size. theres a big rock quite far from the main city are that has some carvings in the style of the native Maori of new zealand engraved into it whihc one can go view only by boat. we took one of the older beautiful boats out and i ended up painting it right after:
( ugly sentence but u get it)


finally, yesterday we drove up the coromandel peninsula to a tiny place called Whangapoua in hopes of seeing one of the most beautiful beaches of the world according to some travel sources but also endorsed by some friends i talked to in wanaka, sadly today the weather has been aids so i painted the emerald lakes of tongariro today: