My trip down south

Webalbum

I'm finally back from my Trip around the Southisland, It's been two really exciting and experience packed months. Of course that's a lot to tell and show, but I keep it short, any questions, just send me a mail.
I uploaded a few pictures to a picasa webalbum, every photo has a caption and a location on the map, so you can follow my journey on a map, google earth and my photos.

Just to explain my route:

I started in Wellington, obviously, taking the ferry to Picton, organised a Wwoof in Havelock, with Shane and Asha at the Bluemoon Backpackers, really good fun, lot of handy skills that I learned, and Shane introduced me to hanggliding.
My second Wwood was at Shandes cousins place in Richmond, Clint introduced me to local beer, and the art of steel recycling, learend a lot, had fun with the tools, even though I seem to have been really hard on Clints gear, half of his tools had to be replaced... sry for that, but I guess they were already 50 years old anyway...
After this, I went around the corner in Richmond, to Karen, who happened to need somebody to prepare her garden and house for her wedding, very interesting stay, learned a bit about cooking, music, the stress even a event manager can have organising her own wedding, and I met Agnes, an Austrian wwoofer and 2 danish wwoofers,Bo and Signe, always good to meet new people.
After that I got an invitation from Shane to come back to Havelock to a weekend of hanggliding, the weather wasn't particularly good, so we spent most of the time cutting a new takeoff spot just outside Havelock.
I got a ride to Christchurch with one of the pilots, spent a night in Christchurch and took the Tranzalpine (a train) in the morning to Greymouth. Awesome train ride, a lot shorter than the Overlander, but nicer landscape!
In Greymouth I stayed a day, and went on to Blackball, to wwoof for a 4th time, at the formerly Blackball Hilton, a Hotel,our very nice owners, Pat and Jane, I worked in the Hotel and on their other property, the old Police station. A very interesting stay, on the one hand learning about hotel business, on the other hand, learning about the history of the Westcoast and Blackball.
My next stay was in Franz Josef, took the bus, saw the glaciers there, really impressive. After this I only had one other stay in Queenstown (very touristy, but nice landscape though), before I got to Invercargill, the most underrated and most southern city in NZ, really nice parks and old townhouses down there, awesome weather, I really enjoyed it. The same day I took the KNightrider (really...but it seems David Hasselhoff went bold and fat since the 80ies) to Dunedin, stayed a night in Jens flat, catched up with Shawn, Amber and Amy and left the next day with James and Adrew, 2 hangglider pilots, that lived just round the corner from Jen. They took me up to Mt. Ida, to meet up with Shane, spent a weekend camping and gliding (even tried it myself!). I spent my last week in Havelock, working for Shane again and took eventually the Interislander back to Wellington.
During my trip I met a lot of nice and interesting people, learnt a lot of skills, and had a great time, cheers for that!