Things we learned:

The huge carrot and other fantastic sights.

New Zealand is an amazing country. The beautiful landscapes, unusual plants, wonderful animals and the friendly people are the attractions of this country.

A lot of Lord of the Rings fans travel around here too of course, even though there is little to see from the original sets beside Hobbington, which is a zoo apparently.

Even though it has too much to offer every little thing in New Zealand is made into an attraction. Every gurgling river that drops more than 1m is displayed as a waterfall and there are some really bizarre attractions: a fence hung with bras, another one with toothbrushes attached and a huge carrot standing around somewhere.

We stood in front of the bra-fence and thought how this had become an attraction with all the amazing landscape surrounding it.

The toothbrush fence even made it into a really funny New Zealand sitcom: The flight of the Conchords. “It’s amazing: a fence entirely full of toothbrushes. At least 50 or so. Your have to see it to believe it”

You just have to love New Zealanders for this.

Stuff we saw:

We saw a farmer trying to hold the fence for the sheep to cross the road. So we came an helped.

lots of sheep

hey buddy!

you can make 200 pairs of socks out of this fella’

top of the view

thats the sheeps view

more sheep and cows

the roads winds beautifully through the landscape

more cows… they seem to like it here

cutdown season for the trees

windy road -> happy Andy

Napiers is a nice little town

access to beach in Napiers

sea is always nice

Getting to know the plane, a well maintained C172. Cassandra the Flight Instructor is with us on the flight.

Drain the plane

Pre-Flight check

Go throug the check-lists

nice views from the passengers seat

into the blue of the ocean

happy Andy

what a view

a lot of blue

along the coast it goes

happy Andy

Cape Kidnappers

nice landscapes from a different angle

on final approach

“Cleared to land 01”

some oltimers on a little rally

nice old cars and transporters

nice shape

the walk to Cape Kidnappers

the cliffs did look very stable

Christmas tree in NZ

nice view

Stuff we did:

We wanted to cross to the coast. Napier and Cape Kidnapper caught our attention.

The road there is a thin line on our map. So, we made sure it is not a grave road before we turned into it.

It is 100km and it took us 3 hours. Let’s just say there were plenty of reasons to stop. Stunning views, lots of sheep and cows, some nice birds and an amazing landscape all the way.

We found an ok campsite an took a cabin to escape the pollen.

The next day we took a little spin on a Cessna 172.

I took a Flight Instructor since I didn’t want to do the whole license approval for NZ. It was an amazing feeling to steer the plane to the coast and crossing the shore flying into an all blue: blue sky on the top and a deep blue ocean below.

What an amazing time. “Pinch-me-moment”

We found an outstanding campsite at the beach for the night.

The next day we slept in (something I could write almost every day, but this day it actually had a little consequence: we didn’t make it all the way to cape kidnappers. The incoming tide made it impossible to do the hike along the shore to the amazing cape that we saw from above the day before.