Up and down

The last entry has been a while now, but not much has happened in that time. After the Tongariro crossing and all the other hikes and excursions, we were both pretty tired and exhausted. In fact, we were "full" of traveling and had to process all the experiences. Surprisingly, it wasn't just me, but Jonas as well. To our depressed mood, a storm with heavy rain and strong winds added, so we were stuck in a hostel and couldn't continue because the roads were closed due to flooding. When we finally could continue after 2 days, it kept raining non-stop. So we couldn't go to a few campsites as planned to save some money... The motivation sank deeper and deeper. In the end, we decided to drive directly to Auckland and go to the Chinese Embassy to apply for our visa. Which turned out to be much more difficult than expected. To make matters worse, we parked in a parking lot of a fast food chain and after just 10 minutes of absence, we found a wheel clamp on our tire and had to pay $150. Depressed, we went back to our prison cell (that's how I named our hostel room -> the second worst hostel we stayed at in New Zealand), an Indian concrete bunker!

But it didn't help and the next day we set off to explore the last corner of the North Island. We climbed a huge kilometer-long sand dune and finally had some fun sliding through the warm sand. In the pictures, it may look like we took a little detour to the Sahara. We continued to the northernmost point, the "Cape Reinga". Here, there was another beautiful lighthouse and countless tourists to admire.

On the way back to Auckland, we drove over Ninety-mile beach, a beach where you can drive a car when the tide is low. Jonas finally shone like a little child again as he slid through the sand at a hundred miles an hour and pushed the car to its limits.

Later, we stopped at a cave (Waipu cave) where you could climb in and see glow worms. Jonas finally got his money's worth again and I crawled on all fours through the mud and slippery rocks in the pitch-dark cave. But when we finally arrived at the end, the feeling was incredible. It was pitch black and above us, thousands of little glow worms sparkled. A great compensation for all the hardships =) We couldn't take the same way back because the stones were too slippery. Jonas didn't hesitate for a second and marched to the small river that led through the cave and could also be used to go back. I flatly refused to go into the water as I had read before that there were many eels in the river and some had even been bitten. Unfortunately, I had no choice but to either sit in the cave or go through the water, as the other way definitely couldn't be passed from this direction. Close my eyes and go for it!!! But hey, I wasn't bitten by any eel and didn't even see a single one =) This was basically one of our last little adventures in New Zealand, as we decided at short notice to drive back to Auckland. But more on that in the next article!