Kat's travels and adventures

I decided to hop off in Blenheim, hoping to find a harvest job here. Its busy season right now, and chances are high. I’m staying in a workers hostel again. This one   coorporates with some local wineries and factorys and thus gets some exclusive aswell as spontaneous job offers. With not much happening on the weekend, I finally got some time to relax and get better after my cold. On Sunday I went out for a walk across town, curious to see the Opawa river and buying some groceries. Sadly, the river is very hard to access as it is mostly on people’s properties. On my way back I gladly found the local judo club!! I'll join their training this evening as they only train once a week.   Three horses on a paddock on the way to Opawa river were really curious about what I'm doing...  I am usually not a big fan of black&white pictures in general, and on my own photos 99% of the time but I really like this one!   One of the shettys of the pony club next door has got a

Whale hello there :) Kaikoura is the last scenic spot on the Kiwi Experience tour, afterwards the way goes up to Auckland again.  As the incident in Christchurch happened quite late, my time in Kaikoura was very carefree. After the rush of checking in, I went to the whale watching tour. As I was still petty sick that day and I’m not a good swimmer anyway, I didn’t want to do the dolphin encounter/swimming tour. At the end of the whale watching tour I was extremely exhausted from just watching that I probably would have rather drowned than swimmed in the dolphin encounter. Despite from getting very, very motionsick on the boat and this (not normal for me) was about the second time ever I got motionsick on a boat, it was awesome! We not only saw two sperm whales what the tour is all about, but also a group of Hector’s dolphins (literally one of the cutest animal species ever!!) and various species of birds and a few fur seals doing weird stuff. Hector’s Dolphin is the worlds smal

 Haere mai to Christchurch! We arrived in Christchurch on 13th of March  in the early afternoon and unlike me most people only had one night in Christchurch, so I joined a lady from Uruguay walking and exploring Christchurch, seeing the monuments and parks and everything.  Christchurch is very spread out city after the earthquakes. The last big earthquakes were back in 2010 and Feb 2011, and they are still reconstructing the buildings that suffered major damage, eg the cathedral. After those two earthquakes the city council decided to spread out the city so less buildings will be in the centre of the next earthquake and less damage.    They started recording earthquakes in Christchurch in the mid 1800s and since then they had a earthquake of minimum 5 in magnitude every 5-10 years. That was the very special atmosphere I realized during my stay. Christchurch is located right above the tectonic plates and earthquake after earthquake hits, but they are still strong mind

Haere mai again! Tuesday was the day my travels were not longer southbond but northbond back up again. Lake Tekapo is an about 2 to 3 hour drive north-east from Queenstown and located on the way to Christchurch.  Famous for the dark night sky reserve, I knew that had to be what I do! I’ve always enjoyed the   astrophysical days&nights at school, organized by the physical insitute of Frankfurt <3 And I didn’t see the milky way here yet, not to mention knowing the constellations of the southern hemisphere. If you believe it or not, Orion is doing at headstand from northern hemisphere’s perspective!!  Sadly we didn’t got to see the observatory and only had a few short looks through the telescopes, but it was interesting to listen. Also, how could I not mention the laserpointers the stargazing crew had, that was soo cool! They could point far into the night sky O.o Most people from the Kiwi bus didn’t want to do it, there was a tour for the same price that just looked i