NZ Diary: Day 10

The last day on the south island started with a beautiful, almost too picturesque morning scenery where the mist of the misty mountains (careful! not the last LOTR hint) slowly evaporated to reveal a golden sun that was shining on us from a clear and blue sky right through the hole in the ozone layer.

We said goodbye to the church and to Hoppy and his Weka gang...

...to follow the mist through the mountains on highway 73 heading towards Rohan. And Christchurch.

What you can't see right there are the ork hunting horse riders, all with long hair streaming behind their golden helmets that were responsible for this cloud of dust in the back.

Horses dressed as cows.

A horse dressed as the moon.

In this picture, Rohan again, commonly know by men and dwarfs as the Arthur's Pass National Park.

Helen took my place of reading about interesting New Zealand facts in the car but I quickly got a hold of the book a little bit later and amazed with stunning information. Everybody loved that. So informative. Wow.

Horses dressed as sheep.

Highway 73, New Zealands Route 66, just a few numbers different but really pretty and impressive.

Castle Hill, home of the famous Rocks that were used as cave-homes back in the days by the people of Rohan in the land of the Horsemen.

Start of the Hiding Picture Series, or HPS as it's gonna be called from now on. Can you — dear reader — spot a kitten in the picture?

Horses dressed as water in a lake.

In Christchurch we met with Rosie's mum and said Hi to the donkey that lives with a few sheep friends and other animals on the hill behind the house. After we gave him an apple he told us some interesting stories about Rohan and how the horses and their owners discriminated donkeys over the years and made all of them move away to the east coast...

Mike! The man with the best knowledge about almost anything in NZ, great driver, great joker, great person! Thanks again for everything you did for us!

American Elves on that bridge everybody knows from that movie, holding hands. Not in the picture: Enya singing to underline the mood and make it more dramatic slash romantic.

The South Pacific Ocean. Beautiful and filled with whales, penguins and other amazing creatures.

From Christchurch we drove back along the Pacific coast highway 1 (funny thing is — the same highway is in the states along the Pacific), where I mistook some weird birds for penguins. People are still making fun of me because of that. Back in Picton we took the ferry to Wellington and left the South Island with amazing impressions, slight sunburns, some X-tremeness that will flow through our veins for the rest of our lives and at least 20.000 pictures on our SD cards.
SWEET AS!