North Island Adventure

In the morning, Matze rode his bike to the German embassy to have his ID card pin reset, which he had probably never saved anywhere. Everything went really quickly and we still had enough time to buy a few donuts from a vegan bakery, which we polished off on a bench right next to the harbor parking lot after falling into Lea's arms. We walked around the city and tried some delicious beers. While we were sitting on the terrace, the weather suddenly went from sunny and 24 degrees to stormy, rainy and 15 degrees - Wellington's infamous standard weather. Shivering, we moved on to the “Champagneria”, where we enjoyed a fantastic lunch. We shared two platters with all sorts of delicacies, including crispy artichokes, vegan “foie gras” and home-baked bread. Luckily our Airbnb had a heater, so we soon stopped feeling cold. The next morning we visited New Zealand's largest museum, “Te Papa”, and headed north at lunchtime. Leas kept her car for now; she had been toying with the idea of selling it in Wellington, but then uploaded it to social networks quite late and only received feedback late. Being alone with another woman was very good for me and Matze was able to listen to techno music as loudly as he drove in front of us in our Ford, which he was not otherwise allowed to do with me in the passenger seat. Our next stop was Palmerston, where we went for a walk and enjoyed a long picnic in a pleasant 22 degrees. Later that afternoon we split from Lea to go for a bike ride in Okahuna and then stay overnight at the nearby campsite overlooking the snow-capped peak of Mount Ruapehu. Lea drove on to her former Woofing host family a little further north. The next morning we met at the junction to Mount Tongariro. Lea had brought along another hiker who had been helping Lea's former host family for a few days. Matze dropped us off at the starting point of the “Tongariro Crossing” and parked our car at the end point, from where a shuttle took him back to the starting point. Although we had a head start of almost an hour, Matze caught up with us after just over half an hour. The still volcanically active landscape seems unreal, that's how I imagine the surface on the moon. There are vast plains and craters in shades of red and gray in which alien-looking rocks lie scattered loosely, as if they had just fallen from the sky. The last eruption in the area, which contains three volcanoes, happened in 2012. No one was harmed during the last eruptions, as the eruptions since the 1980s have only been minor and good early warning systems now exist. Lisa, our French hiking addition, kept up well with Matze's pace and Lea also did significantly better than she had told us in advance. Matze and I even had time to take a detour to a slightly higher peak from which we had an even better view of the national park. Luckily, my fear of heights was largely tolerable, which was certainly due to the large number of other hikers. On the descent to the emerald-green thermal volcanic crater lakes, we slid more over scree than controlled walking, but we sank deep enough that a dangerous fall wasn't particularly likely. After almost 20 kilometers and 6/7 hours of running, we reached the parking lot and drove to the French host family in Owhango. Since they didn't have enough bedrooms for 4 guests, Lea slept in her car and we slept in our roof tent, but we all ate dinner together. In exchange for hospitality, we helped Zita and Gerome in their beautiful large garden the next day. Zita was an artist and had designed much of the interior of the house herself, including the outdoor shower. She could blow glass, make mosaics, lay tiles and also paint very beautifully. She occasionally received guests via Airbnb in a separate cabin in the garden. Gerome worked as a ranger in the nearby national park, one of his main tasks was tracking/monitoring the local kiwi population and raising and releasing young animals. For two days we enjoyed the beautiful weather and the quiet artistic ambience. We actually had to drive on to Auckland as quickly as possible so that Lea could sell her car there as planned. A lucky coincidence for our time pressure was that Lisa was interested in Lea's car and after some negotiation the two found an agreement. One less thing to worry about for our traveling trio! We were now able to visit a few more places on the west coast. First we drove to the foot of Mount Taranaki and did a little hike. The beautiful, very evenly shaped mountain was surrounded by clouds most of the time, but every now and then we could enjoy the view of the snow-covered summit. We spent the night in a cozy gingerbread house-style Airbnb with a view of this same mountain in the romantic evening light. The next morning we set off for New Plymouth, a cute town with lots of beautiful graffiti, nice breweries and beautifully blooming New Zealand “Christmas trees”, in Maori “Pohutukawa”. We couldn't have imagined the weather to be more beautiful and we enjoyed the warmth and sun. In the evening, when the sun had disappeared, we went to the Christmas spectacle in the Botanical Garden. Lots of beautiful lights, smoke cannons and varied vegetation created a mystical atmosphere, there was even a show with music. We arrived late at a remote campsite, which I had organized in the old fashioned way by email. On the way there I narrowly missed a not particularly intelligent possum. We were the only guests and so I had the spacious pool all to myself the next morning. Next we visited Raglan, a small town with an infamous surfing beach and hip little cafes. I went swimming with Lea in the light of the evening sun; the water was around 20 degrees. The next morning, as I walked to the surfing beach and mingled with the surfers in the waves, I realized that I had really missed the waves and the salty spray. I visited the Hamilton Gardens with the themed gardens a second time (first time in 2018), there have since been additions. Later we tried two breweries, one of which had very tasty Czech-style beers. Late in the evening we moved into our Airbnb in Glen Eden, a district of Auckland that is quite close to the city. I was able to book it relatively cheaply for 3 people, but the owner then told me that there was no extra bed. Finally, Lea and I slept in the bed inside and Matze made himself comfortable in the van in the parking lot of the apartment complex. We took a leisurely hike along various small bays and had a delicious burger at “Gorilla”, a completely vegan restaurant with lots of homemade delicacies. On the morning of December 23rd. we took Lea to the airport and said goodbye. I've increasingly hated farewells in recent years, but at least this one wasn't for too long, because Lea wanted to visit us in Australia in May. We bought a few things before heading west because we wanted to continue on to the New Year Festival afterwards. Just in time for dinner we arrived at the Bennetts (Tracy&Jason), whom we had met three weeks ago through woofing. They had another pair of helpers there at the moment, the French Marianne and Valerian. We played table tennis and pool with Jason's sons Joel and Troy, they were incredibly precise in their actions and made life difficult for us. The next morning we created the vegan version of a traditional German potato salad and at lunchtime Jason's ex-wife Fee arrived with their daughter Tove, who brought her partner and their little lap dog “Halloumi”. I found it very nice that everyone maintained such good contact with each other. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding between Tracy, Fee and Charlie, Fee's son. Charlie and his partner had bought a puppy and he had told his mother that he wanted to bring it with him, but she hadn't passed this on to Tracy. Since the Bennetts are not fans of dogs in the house and Tove's dog Halloumi was only allowed inside with her on her lap or in the basket, Tracy reacted with great enthusiasm when the puppy came rushing towards her from Charlie's. Charlie and his girlfriend drove back home without talking to Tracy, his mother Fee blamed herself and of course Tracy wasn't doing particularly well either. Since the rest of us had all sat inside (it had been raining heavily since the morning) the drama had completely passed us by. Lunch together had to wait for a while, but eventually Charlie and his girlfriend came back - without the puppies. The shared meal, to which everyone contributed something, tasted fabulous. Afterwards there was a “Greek Gifting Game”, in plain English, Christmas elves, for which everyone had organized a gift worth around 20 dollars. We had decided to submit a quiz that we had already completed several times and we had also found a foldable waterproof hiking backpack in a gift shop. Part of the profits of the producing company (“Wild Kiwi”) went to a kiwi breeding program. Other gifts in the game included a homemade giant bubble set (Troy was an independent children's entertainer), a 30-minute head massage, a crochet set, a mini fan... In the end, Matze got hold of a Harry Potter backpack (he actually would have liked our foldable backpack, I was against taking our own gift) for myself and I secured a beautiful self-designed diary from Marianne. In the evening we all watched a film in Jason's home theater. Around midday the next day the two Frenchmen said goodbye, they drove to Auckland to sell their car and soon fly back to France. We actually all had a lunch date together, but then something happened that threw everything off course: Tove's little dog ran out the door and then simply disappeared. Tove had spent the night at her mother's house and that's probably why Halloumi didn't return. So everyone went to Tove first to help with the search, unfortunately without success. Later we visited Jason's sister, who was visiting from Sydney and looking after a friend's house. Tracy and Tove's brother then went off again to search further, there were a few tips and sightings on Facebook, unfortunately none of it came to fruition. We now had to make our way to the “Lost in Paradise” festival, which I had signed us up for as volunteers a few weeks ago. Unfortunately the weather hadn't settled down yet and we struggled a bit to maintain our optimism. When we arrived at the entrance described (properties in this area are almost as confusingly large as those in the Australian outback), it initially looked quite impassable, but our Ford still somehow struggled up the muddy hill. At first we could only see a few cars and the scaffolding of a fairly large stage, probably the main stage. The actual organizer Adrian, with whom we have only been in contact via Facebook, was not yet there himself. Finally a person came by on a tractor who owned the property and introduced himself as “Digga”.. a cow farmer. I had just gone to the car to get my phone and possibly a towel, I had found a kookaburra hopping around on the ground that I wanted to keep behind the fence to safety until I could get reception somewhere so I could possibly figure out how could help him. I saw the tractor driving towards the bird, Matze was standing nearby and I shouted to him to stop the tractor. I saw Matze gesturing, the farmer making a small arc at the last moment, the bird fluttering frantically... It disappeared under the huge tire. My throat tightened, I felt sick and I felt anger rising within me. I just wanted to get away from this place, this thoughtless farmer who didn't look anywhere near depressed. After a few very agitated minutes, in which I honestly blamed Matze for the coincidence, I took a deep breath and told him that we could walk up to the techno stage with the others. I know he had been looking forward to the festival for weeks and I felt bad canceling our help at the last second. Luckily, I met two people who understood me all too well, Emma and Piet. They both loved animals just as much as we did and took me in their arms. The rest of the day we set up the techno stage with the two of them and some of their friends, including painting bamboo canes and setting up a covered seating area. The weather was sunny and warm, only when we all ate together in the evening did it cool down significantly. Is, a round and very cheerful Japanese woman, took care of the food for all the helpers and DJs who were already there. She and her partner Milan lived full-time in a large self-constructed mobile home and moved from festival to festival to work. Aiden, the organizer, arrived during the day with his wife Eve and his 2-year-old daughter Ayla. He seemed nice, but rather confused and there were few concrete instructions from him. Milan was the one who had the most insight into setting up the main stage and all the other volunteers asked him what to do. But Aiden often came running frantically and wanted things to be different. Matze and I struggled a bit with this disorganization. Unfortunately, from the second day onwards the weather went steadily downhill; a stream flowed through our covered communal seating area, so we had to dig ditches to divert the masses of water. At the opening around 3 p.m. on December 30th, when Emma put on a great, relaxed techno set on the main stage, it was just dry and we parked our van with the other volunteers. One of Milan's friends had arrived with 2 barrels full of home-brewed beer and a gazebo. I cooked for everyone and had a long chat with Fanny, a Finn who was our age and had also spent a year in Australia. Shortly before dusk it rained and many people didn't even show up because of the apocalyptic weather forecast. The next day it rained almost constantly and the wind was so strong that several tents and gazebos were blown away. Two of the three stages were unusable and I also had a stomach ache (maybe just stress). We then left the van shortly before midnight to join the others on the main stage in the rain. On the 1st the sun came out around midday, Piet and Emma pulled themselves together and we rebuilt the techno stage and seating area that had been damaged by the wind. When DJ Alek, who had been there since the first day and had traveled from Perth, played the opening set on the stage in the afternoon, our mood and the general mood had improved significantly. Piet and Emma in particular had invested so much time in their stage decoration (among other things, they had made a UFO out of several hundred CDs puzzled into a mosaic shape), it would have been a real shame if none of it had been used in the end. We celebrated on the techno stage (until then there had only been one style of music!!) until 5 in the morning and had a very nice last day on January 2nd, we dismantled the techno stage and said goodbye to Emma, Piet and the techno troupe. The “Chill Out” tent was finally dry and Aiden’s wife Eve put on a very nice techno set. In one half of the tent, for which the Saudi Arabian Bader was responsible, there was a comfortable seating area with cushions, plates of food were passed around and it felt good to know almost everyone present by now. The next day we dismantled the rest and said goodbye in the early afternoon. The dismantling had felt much more orderly, but that was mainly because there was less asking and it's always easier to work with gravity rather than against it. We didn't drive too far that day; we swam in one of the beautifully blue Kai Iwi lakes, which were surrounded by dunes in the hinterland. In the early evening we took a short hike to the second largest kauri in New Zealand, which has a trunk circumference of 14 meters and is estimated to be 2000 years old - so it was there before the first people sailed to New Zealand! To avoid taking a detour inland, we took the ferry from the sleepy town of Rawene to cross Hokianga Bay. We visited the weekend market in Kaitaia and marveled at the museum's carved amber sculptures made from fossilized kauri resin. It was mainly excavated from swampy areas in the Nordland district. Cowries are found in abundance in this part of New Zealand, unfortunately almost 95% of New Zealand's kauri forests were logged in the 1900s. A large part of it was shipped to Australia, and ships and houses were also built. Today, many of these ancient, majestic trees that are still standing are being wiped out by a root bacterium. The government has now set up disinfection stations on almost all hikes through kauri forests, where you can brush and spray your shoes before and after the hike. In addition, wooden walkways are built in many places so that hikers have limited contact with the ground near the trees. We hiked to a gigantic sand dune in Ahipara, which unfortunately turned out to be so steep and high that I had an acute attack of vertigo halfway up. On the way along the beach we saw gannets shooting like torpedoes into the sea to catch fish. I visited the elegant, long-necked white-sand-colored birds at one of their nesting sites near Hastings 6 years ago. This hike had been closed since last summer's floods, so we hadn't had any luck seeing any. Since I had done a small group tour to the northern tip of New Zealand on my solo trip through New Zealand, I wasn't that keen on driving the endless road again and Matze said he didn't really have to go to Cape Reinga. We visited the idyllic Matai Bay, where we hiked to a viewpoint and spent the evening at a cute free campsite right on the beach. On the way south we climbed Old St Pauls Rock, from which we had a magnificent view over Whangaroa Bay. On the way to Kerikeri we visited the place where the first European settlement in New Zealand was established in 1815. Today you can only see a few flat places where the school, the church and the houses of the three local families once stood. We visited Russell, which used to be the “hell hole” of the Bay of Islands, the place where many sailors went after their long days at sea to drink themselves into oblivion and enjoy the company of the numerous easy girls. Russell itself had beautiful historic limestone and straw cottages, art galleries and beer gardens. There weren't really any good places to spend the night in the van, which is why we drove a little further into the desert. The next morning we took a hike to the historic Whangamumu whaling station. I spotted a large stick insect and his/her (?) partner on a tree. We spent the next week in Paihia with Jane, an almost 70-year-old lady who had lived in her beautiful sea-facing house for almost 40 years. For a few years she and her husband had their own hotel next door, unfortunately he died four years ago and she sold the hotel. The subsequent owners tore down the impressive building and sold individual plots to real estate companies, presumably at a very good profit. This was quite a blow for Jane, but she didn't want to leave her house. There were now subtenants, but she was doing quite well financially anyway. Jane had a passion for cycling and had just returned from a nine month cycle tour of Europe a few weeks ago. Two of her daughters lived outside New Zealand and she met them on the same occasion. A few years ago she discovered non-violent communication and was now a member of several online groups, in the course of which she turned to veganism. Conversations with her were initially difficult, especially for Matze, as he usually uses very direct language. Despite all our differences in character, we had many similar points of view. Since our time with her, we are definitely more aware of when we want to make impulsive judgments about other people and we question our choice of words more often, especially with each other. We trimmed some plants, reconstructed paths in the garden and helped Jane muck out. In our free time we visited a traveling circus and enjoyed the pleasant sea water temperature. We also cleaned up the car and took some photos - it was now time to advertise the car for sale on Facebook. We wanted to try it there first because other portals charged money and we didn't know if they worked better or if it would be worth it. After saying goodbye to Jane and our fabulously luxurious bedroom with a sea view, we continued on to Whangarei. The weather was once again mixed in classic New Zealand style, but we made the best of it. After a great hike up Mount Aubrey on a peninsula with a spectacular sunset, you were soaked by a heavy downpour on the descent. That didn't dampen our generally good mood, as the temperature remained around 20 degrees. On January 19th We arrived at Mat's property, with our full names Mathias and Deutscher. We met him at the New Year festival and he invited us to his place. Coincidentally, he had also signed up to host the “afterparty” that was now taking place. This meant we saw some of our fellow volunteer team members again! Milan, Is, Tobi and DJ Alek were happy and we pitched in right away, as we hadn't bought any tickets for this party (in hindsight, probably no one did). True to the New Year's event, it rained during construction, luckily not quite as heavily. Mat's property felt magical, there were impressive cliffs, lots of small caves and gorges. The stage was framed by this in a clearing with a small, single tree. Mat had done a fantastic job with the lighting and we had the banners and screen up for Eve's projection in impressive time. Which was probably because we didn't wait for instructions from Aiden, but rather took everything into our own hands. We enjoyed a really nice celebration with a very family feeling and a fantastic light show, discovered firefly enclaves and experienced a very interesting change from night to day on the large deck next to our camp. We didn't start dismantling until the afternoon and stayed with Tobi until the next morning. Our car had sunk so deep into the mud on the meadow that Mat had to pull us out with the tractor. We visited the Abbey Caves, which turned out to be quite a slippery affair, with some parts of us wading through tailbone-deep water. Being offline for the two days definitely did us a lot of good mentally. Since I advertised the car, we had collected clicks but, despite a price reduction, we hadn't received a single message. The resulting unrest grew in the following days. Matze's flight was already booked for February 1st, that was the day his visa expired, and in the worst case scenario I had to come along. Finally, on the 21st, an inquiry came, and then another immediately afterwards. As feedback continued to come from interested parties, I felt cautious optimism. However, both wanted a current WOF, which is the equivalent of the TÜV. Matze had hoped that we could avoid this, he was worried because we had a small leak near the differential (which had only been replaced 10,000 kilometers ago!!). It's quite possible that it was just a faulty "sprocket seal", but that would definitely cost us time and money and of course it was Friday. So we luckily headed for some mechanics that seemed rather “simple” and were successful on the third one: the car was able to go straight to WOF. We passed the time in a nearby park for about an hour, but we couldn't really relax. When I stood at the mechanic's reception and found out that we hadn't passed, my heart sank. But when I found out about the defects that had been found, my mood suddenly lifted: the headlights were faded and needed to be polished and the rear license plate light (I had to ask, I wasn't even aware that such a thing existed) didn't work. Is it possible to fix this today? I asked cautiously and almost hugged the receptionist with joy when she said yes. When I got the coveted piece of paper in my hand half an hour later for just $30 extra, I could hardly believe our luck. The next lunchtime we met with the first interested parties. Lucas and his girlfriend were German, they had two nice big bikes that were probably worth as much as our car. They liked that we had all kinds of gadgets, they didn't want to put everything into a car themselves because they would only be in the country for 3 months. Luckily Lucas had experience with big old bulky cars and his other half didn't seem too put off by our not particularly "instagrammable" vehicle. Later, an American couple also looked at our Black Beauty. We were halfway to Tracy's, who had agreed to be a kitchen helper for her vegan cooking weekend, when I received word from the German couple that they wanted the car! They negotiated the price down a bit but we were prepared for that. We had reached our goal of being about equal to the sales price with the purchase of the car, the purchase of the interior (of course without including Matze's many hours of work) and repairs. They already knew that we would be out of town for the next few days and it didn't bother them because they had booked a room for the next few days anyway. We finally agreed to do the handover on Monday morning. Happy about this great news, we enjoyed the weekend as hosts but also participants in the wellness weekend. We actually spent a lot of our time in the kitchen, but in our free time we took part in yoga, meditation and a hike. As expected, the dishes designed by Tracy wowed the 10 participants. The lovable, colorful group quickly developed open and supportive communication, it was nice to see that. Tracy thanked us profusely for our help. As much as she enjoyed running these multi-day events, it was also visibly stressful for her and without volunteers it wouldn't be financially viable. On Sunday afternoon after the final circle we got things sorted out and in time for dinner we stood at the door of Emma and Piet (the lovely techno noodles from our New Year's festival), who lived halfway to Auckland from the retreat. The two of them had two super nice roommates, one of whom was German. Emma had made fantastic falafel and I had leftover Tracy's phenomenal rice salad with me. We talked for a long time and then played “Scattergories,” which is a version of City, Country, River, except that the categories are completely redefined using cards every round. Emma and Piet's house in the middle of the New Zealand rainforest was super cozy and stylish, they had high walls and a brick wall in the living room. We would have liked to stay a little longer, but we had to go to the car handover. We were a little behind on tidying up (would you have thought that?!), but this was also because it had been pouring all day yesterday and it was therefore not possible to clear everything out and repack it in peace without that Things and the interior of the car got wet. We treated ourselves to an Airbnb near hip Ponsonby for two nights and our host kindly printed out the purchase contract for us. That was the idea of the buyer Lucas, we have never written a formal document when purchasing a car, but it certainly can't hurt. We stood by the car for a while because neither of them was able to send the money via Paypal. Maybe their Paypal was set up to not allow money to be sent abroad (they didn't have a New Zealand account), they were seriously trying to find a solution but it was midnight in Germany so they couldn't call either. We agreed that they would send us the money using “send”, a very well-rated provider with a good exchange rate for such transactions. Our super lovely Airbnb host, who originally came from the USA, put in a lot of effort and told us that we could now move in. We had just made ourselves comfortable on the cute terrace in front of our room when the scales fell from my eyes: Why hadn't we actually thought of having the money sent directly to our German account via bank transfer? Later in the afternoon we walked down into the city, it was a local holiday and by chance we came across some amazing street artists - I had totally forgotten that I had come across the “Street Artist Festival” on Facebook a few days ago. A very great pair of mimics that would have suited the wine festival in Radebeul turned out to be German and we chatted with them for a while after their show. It was weird not having a car anymore, but in a way it was liberating, at least in the city. The next morning we met Lucas at VTNZ, which is the New Zealand driving license and car registration office. After all the necessary documents to change ownership had been filled out, we then saw our car drive away. I was a little depressed by this, despite the terrible teething problems we had really enjoyed the last few weeks and slept fantastically the whole time. The next morning we had to move out of the cozy Airbnb. Luckily, our successors wouldn't arrive until late in the evening, so we could leave everything we had on the covered terrace for the time being. Bader picked us up in the afternoon and took us to his favorite beach. We spent our last evening in New Zealand at his place in Mount Wellington, drinking a few beers and listening to music. The next lunchtime we flew back to Brisbane. Matze had used 27 of the maximum 30 kilograms the backpack was allowed to weigh and could barely walk, whereas my suitcase was almost lightweight at 21 kilograms.