NEW ZEALAND! Hurray!

Hello hello, New Zealand calling. It took us only three re-packings at Sydney airport to finally fit the strict limit of 20kg pp and not a single gram over plus strict 7kg of hand luggage...  Kate was labelled a ‘collector’ because of few leaves in her travel diary and had to unpack her whole backpack to make sure she is not trying to smuggle some risks to NZ. It won’t help you either if the person at the check in counter is new and follows all the procedures strictly to the point. It took poor Hen a while to explain the whole visa situation and prove that he is not an illegal immigrant...

However, we made it to Christchurch which is a wonderful small town (population of about 350 th), really spectacular and full of life. The next day we decided to save our backs for the coming months and hire a car. 

These pictures will make any climber jealous... No more comments are needed... We just happened to pass by and couldn't resist to spend some time here playing around... Big thanks to two local chicks - Nicola and Leanne - who shared their boulder mat and showed us around. Btw, we met Ryan conquering some V5 problem :-) The world is so small. Love it. 

 Welcome to the Paradise. Oh yes, we know that you are sooo jealous now :-)

 V4 on the left, V5 and V6 on the right. 

 Hen fighting some V2. 

Happy :-) 

 Kate on V5 ;-)

Which one... Gosh, life if full of hard choices!

 Nicola and Leanne. Super climbing chicks!

The reflection in this photo is from a little pool where the lovely cows used to go to the toilet, Kate's comment was: "New Zealand in a pool of shit!" Suits quite well I guess.

 

Kea parrots are GANGSTERS! It's impossible to be at two places at one moment and these little feathered creatures seem to be well aware of it. So while you are trying to protect your breakfast against one (big!) bird the two or possibly four of his friends are either vandalising any rubber part of your car or stealing something from the boot they could eventually fly off with (so far one musli bar stolen).  And did we mention that we have about nine big holes in our tent?!

But they are so beautiful and funny... 

That's my T-shirt!

We got back from our first hike in the Arthurs Pass NP (population of about 62 people J,

 

wonderful three days in Taruahuna and Hawdon passes, Tarn col and enormously wide river beds. It’s so wild here... New Zealanders are very friendly people and all it took us to get a hitch was to yell at a bunch of kayakers ‘is anybody heading to Arthurs Pass?’ J 

 Edward's Hut

 Six kg of photo gear pays off :-)

 Tarn Col

NZ is in the middle of a big discussion about the 1080 poison and we plan to write some more about it little later. We asked one of the DOC staff for her opinion and were told that the employees are not allowed to share their personal opinion on this subject...

  

Also, somebody asked about the earthquake in the Cantenburry area. Yes, the damages are surprising even in Christchurch. In the remote areas of the wild nature it caused many earth slides and avalanches, rock falls on the roads. However NZ seems to be dealing with it very quickly and Europeans wouldn’t guess that the whole tragedy has happened only a couple of months back. Truly impressive. 

Henner is now called the duck murderer after admiring NZ trees looking as Tolkien's Ents and driving straight through Donald's family...