Hi everybody!
Back again in Australia. Martin picked me up from the airport in Sydney and we are travelling through the outback to Adelaide now. Two weeks are already over and a lot of things happend.
First of all we gave Martin's car a new outfit and got rid of the funny blue colour and the eyebrows at the frontlights.
After that we went west through the Blue Mountains to the Warrumbungle NP, an area with former vulcanic activity and beautiful landscape (see the first two pictures).
That's as well the place where we found the kangaroo with the joey in it's bag, very cute!
Afterwards we went on to White Cliffs, an opal town in the middle of nowhere. It's amazing, when you look around it's like standing on the moon. A lot of holes around (all the entrance-holes to the mines) and little hills out of white little rocks and dirt out of the mines. We got an private guided tour from Ron through his opal mine (picture 4, sorry I forgot to turn it). It's interesting, there lifestyle is completely different to what we know. He is digging since ~37 years and still motivated to find opals and he is indeed able to earn enough money for him and his family. The night in White Cliffs we stayed at the Underground Motel (it wasn't that expensive...), it's a 'dug-out'. All people living there have there homes digged in little hills, so they are living in underground houses. And theses dug-outs are really comfortable, they have ~22 degrees all time of the year and that's much better then the ~38 degrees we've had outside.
At the moment we're in Broken Hill, and nearby is a little 'ghosttown' called Silverton. More than 140 movies have been filmed here, for example "Mad Max" and the "Flying Doctor Service" series. It's a former silvermines town, but now there are only some artists living there. One is painting funny things, one is the emu-head, among others painted on the two VW-Beetle (last picture).
Now we are heading to Adelaide via Barossa Valley, where we'll taste some of the wines there.
Cheers!

NZ part 2 - Tramping pictures

Impressions of the amazing landscape around the Nelson Lakes NP. For the text see post below.
Parts of the tramp were quite a bit strenuously but it was worth doing it, the views were really great!

NZ part 2

Hi everybody!
My time in NZ is nearly over and it was a really great time! One month is definitely not enough and I'm sure I'll come back!! I've only seen the South-Island and not even the fiordland...
After my last blog-update I went on by bus for about another week. From Wanaka I was heading to the westcoast and had my first experience on an glacier. There are two glaciers which are going down to ~300m (!) above sealevel and both are growing very quickly (about half a meter a day). I went on the Franz Joseph galcier which is supposed to be the more beautiful (and therefore the more expensive one if you take a guided tour...) and it was really great! Amazing formations like holes, little caves and canyons out of white and blue ice.
Afterwards I went back to Christchurch to meet Jana and we drove to the north of the island to Paynes Ford near Golden Bay to go rock climbing. We camped on the 'Hangdog Climbers Campground' and it was a very familiar and nice atmosphere, a lot of friendly and funny people. The climbingrocks are just nearby the campground as well as the great swimmingholes from the river (third picture).
After this great weekend Jana had to go back to work and I started to discover New Zealand's mountains. Together with Jon, a canadien guy who I met on the Hangdog campground, I went for 6 days through the mountains of the Nelson Lakes National Park. It was amazing!! We've had so many breathtaking and stunning views, that I took over a 100 pictures during the tramp... it was really hard to decide which I should post.
We slept in huts and met a lot of interesting people. It was kind of a shock to come back to the civilisation, it's so quiet and peaceful to be in the mountains. (Pictures are in the next post.)
After this very, very nice tramp I went to Picton for 3 days and walked along the 'Queen-Charlotte-Sound'. It seems as if it's a big lake, but it's the ocean coming in the land and building a 'sound'. (Last picture in this post.)
Now I'm in Christchurch again at Jana's and Julian's place and I'll fly back to Australia on Sunday.
Cheers! Martina