Christmas and New Year is the big holiday season in New Zealand as it's summer here. Christian and Nicole (friends from school!) came over to explore NZ for three weeks. After an initial week on their own on the North Island Steffi and I took a plane down to Wellington to join them and explore the South Island together. We had heaps of fun together on our tight schedule which mainly consisted of 'hiking, driving, hiking, driving...'.

After taking the ferry over we did a kayak trip in the Marlborough sounds, followed by a 1.5 day hike in the Abel Tasman National Park. We had excellent weather which made the scenery even prettier. While hiking we had a couple of stops at the beatiful beaches and surprisingly warm water for a short swim in the sea.

On our way south we stopped for a day in Arthurs pass where we did the Bealey Track, a 900m ascend with great views on a nice day. Given that it was not a nice day, we still had pretty good views ;)

Another 6 hours drive further south we stopped in the Southern Alps near Mount Cook, the highest mountain in NZ (3800m) and hiked up to Muellers hut which is on 1800m (a 1000m ascend from the village). The track started with exactly 1810 steps, which were already pretty steep and took us about half way. Afterwards it could rather be described as climbing. We didn't need any special equipment, but it was quite a steep scramble up. The final part was covered in snow, which didn't make it easier to walk up. Getting down this was the most fun part though, because we could just slide down on our buttocks ;) Up there it was surprisingly warm - we sat outside in the snow with just a T-Shirt and had excellent views over the Alps. After a night in the Mueller hut we made our way back down all those steps which caused a lot of sore muscles as we learned on the next trek...

... which was one of the 'Great Walks' - the Kepler Track in the Fjordland region. It's a four day tramp, so we stayed in huts for three nights on our way. Fjordland is very green, but that's only because it rains on 200 days a year. While we were there they actually had severe rainfall which caused some trouble on the last days, especially on the second day when we crossed two mountains so that it was really windy and the rain turned into snow and hail. It was still a lot of fun and actually quite exciting to see the river growing so quickly with all those waterfalls. The downside is that there's less pictures for you guys. But still, I can prove that we did have some nice periods ;)

Our last two stops were the very touristy (and equally beautiful) Milford sound where we did a boat cruise in fine weather (Milford is number three of the places with the most rainfall worldwide). Afterwards we had a day in Queenstown with some sight-seeing, shopping and chilling out.

This was our first trip to the South Island in 5 years (we've been living in Auckland for a year now) and it did show us (again) how beautiful New Zealand is. It is also very safe: we've had two cases where hikers got into trouble (a seriously twisted ankle on Mueller hut with bad weather forecast and some hypothermia due to heavy rain and strong winds on the Kepler track). Both got our of their misery by rescue helicopters - which were actually paid for by the government! Thanks Nicole for the planning and Christian for letting us win the Bean Game all the time ;)