New Zealand; whow!

Welcome to New Zealand,

After a short flight we arrived in Christchurch. This city was hit by an earthquake a few years ago (2011), and at this moment most of the city is still in rebuilding or simply in taking down damaged buildings stage only. A good example is the church (picture), since the quake it's still standing in a support frame. As we follow the evening news broadcastings sometimes, it turned out the church itself does not want to repair this church, but build a new one instead. While locals do want to rebuild and repair, leading to debate between them. Timing of repairing or rebuilding is also a big issue in this city. For example: the old shopping centre was also destroyed beyond repair. As these locations are not considered critical (even after 3 years...) the shops are in containers (picture).
Directly after the earthquake rescue workers had a system to prevent double search efforts in the same building. They would mark search sites with a tag (picture), still visible around town, stating the search unit, the date of the search and labeling 'clear' or numbers of wounded and/or body count. A circle around this tag indicates the search is completed.
All in all it gives a very strange feeling to be in this city.

Traveling trough New Zealand we totally agree with what people say: basically it does not matter where you go, you will end up on a very beautiful spot and adding ourselves: and bump into lots and lots of sheep :-) (picture). There are well over 40 million sheeps, resulting in 10 sheeps for every inhabitant. These beautiful spots are why we decided to eat breakfast outside almost every day. Check out some of these stunning breakfast views (pictures).

On the beach near Otago Peninsula we found seals and sea lions. Although your brave reporters stayed more than the suggested 10 meters away, we where still attacked by a charging male seal; we had a bit of a beach exercise run (picture of the sitting male seal just before the run). Thus resulting staying well out of the way of the even bigger male sea lions (picture of 2 sleeping on beach).

In Milford Sound we went for a boat trip (picture). We where very lucky with the weather, a nice sunny day, knowing that it rains about 180 days a year. Some of the dolphins decided to swim along the boat (picture). On the rocks we spotted more sun bathing baby-seals (picture).
The national park placed a picture worth name plate in a nearby 'mirror' lake (picture).

Next stop: Fox Glacier, the ice is melting more and more with every year, resulting in an hour walk from the carpark (where ice was still in place 5 years ago), but great view ones again (picture).
As we already mentioned there are not that many people in New Zealand (4 mio in total), resulting in places where it is economical not feasible to build 2 lane bridges. That is still ok, but the 1 lane bridge that's also the railroad track was worth a picture.

In Abel Tasman national park we did a sea canoe trip. First we got some on land training (picture). That seemed like a funny joke, but trying to get from the beach over the incoming wind creating huge waves, we where sort of glad we paid some sort of attention... Taking a break on a beach that was conveniently placed in the shelter of another island we took a well deserved rest (canoe on beach picture). Later one of us had a lot of trouble to get into the picture while at full sea, but managed in the end (pictures).
Another day we took a speedboat (picture), where dropped at the beach and walked 12 km back to another boat pickup point (picture). This gave very cool beach bay views and some small walking bridges (pictures).

In Whanganui National Park we did another canoe trip (this time in a river). As we where in an open canoe (pictures), we expected an easy ride down the river. Guess again... Several white river parts further we did pass, wet but alive. However, we found that fall creates cold water...

Tongariro National Park gave a view on volcano mount Ngaurohoe (used in lord of the rings movie as mount doom) (picture). Next stop was Rotorua. Here we found that all cities have their own problems, check out the warning sign (picture).
City surroundings again stunning, we went to a park with a geyser. Magma creating a combination of steam and water pressure sets the geyser off. Oh, lets not forget the catalyst, simple soap.
This was discovered by people wanting to wash themselves in the nice warm water pool. Must have been very scary, one moment taking a bath, the next the whole thing erupts. But now it creates a super nice 10:15am timed geyser eruption (picture).
Next to it several other hot pools in all sorts of color because of the different chemical reactions and some boiling mud pools. Whole area including Rotorua city smelling like rotting eggs. All these warm water pools, however, creates very nice spa centers that we of course had to enjoy. One of us also enjoyed a lesson in the Hakka (picture), the traditional dance from the Maori to scare enemies. Also often used at the start of Rugby matches.

Our New Zealand trip ended in Auckland (picture), leaving us singing:
"""and we are going to San--Fran--cis-co"""