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Two new albums from the great mountains of NZ
Pictures from Mt. Aspiring NP:



Pictures from Mt. Cook (including a flight on a helicopter)

Christchurch and Dunedin

As soon as we got to Judith's house, our HIT home in Christchurch, we felt lucky. The house was covered with warm wood inside, and Judith was so welcoming that we could just feel at home.
Judith is a lovely lady! She is a semi-retired Physics and Science teacher and was very surprised by our excited reaction. "I usually get a different reaction when people hear Physics…" she said. We can definitely relate to that. We ate dinner together and talked a little about science and a little about religion.

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Two new albums published:
Queenstown:



Lilya's bungy jump in Queenstown:

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Pictures from the Catlines in south New Zealand:

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Picture from the cruise in the Milford Sound, After Oren's parents joined us

Picton and Blenheim

After few hours on the ferry from Wellington that included two movies and a nice view but a gloomy weather we arrived to Picton, the gate to the North Island. The ferry service also included a transfer to any point in Picton. This is how we arrived to the house of Margaret and Graham, another lovely HIT couple. Margaret works at a partial job and Graham is a musician. He is also blind. But that doesn't seem to stop him. Their beautiful garden won a local competition and even got to the news. Other than that they had a really cozy and warm country style kitchen with lots of fresh vegetables from their garden. Just like the one Lilya wants to have one day.

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Another great album. Pictures from the Routeburn Trek:

Wellington

Hitching from Taranaki to Wellington was a real treat! It took us 5 different hitches to get there, but we managed to get to Wellington in the early afternoon. One of the hitches we took was with a big truck. The driver was a little bored doing the road back and forth on his own so he invited us into his huge cabin. It was just a day after Oren declared that he wants to go on a ride with a truck, so we figured that NZ has completely turned on our side, and our next days are guaranteed to be good. The last hitch we took was defiantly in the top most 5! We got down in Whanganui and loaded our backpacks back to their place (on our shoulders). We took the sign "Wellington" and just played with it while walking to the junction, when a guy stopped and asked: "Do you need to Wellington?". Now we were sure. Ranginui (Father sky) and Papatuanuku (Mother earth) are united, and they are on our side. We promised to try and get the best pictures of NZ we can, for them.

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Arguably one of the best albums we had, here is the the picture album from the Milford trek:

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Pictures from Gore and Te Anau:

Teranaki and Ebenezer Farm

We always thought that the best way to travel in a foreign country is by meeting local people and seeing the country through their eyes, and not through the eyes of the "Lonely Planet". In most countries you don't get to do that mostly because of the language barrier and lots of cultural and economic differences. New Zealand, with its friendly people, gave us this unique opportunity.
Since most of our money was spent on gallons of fuel while travelling across Australia, we decided that in New Zealand we will hitchhike and stay in as much HIT (will be explained later) houses as possible. At first, the decision was completely economical. In retrospect, that was one of the best decisions of our trip.

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Pictures from Dunedin

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Pictures from the farmers show in Blenheim:



and from Christchurch:

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As you dedicated readers probably noticed, we have some delays in our posting. This is due to the fact that there are some other stuff we have to do while traveling around the world except writing. These chores include unimportant and boring things like hiking, sailing on boats, sightseeing, meeting new people and old people and taking heaps of photos. Therefore we decided to publish the photos that we sorted as soon as they are out of the oven, without waiting for the posts. Since we know, and see from the heaps of responses, that all of you read our posts with admirable devotion, we are humbly offer our deepest apologies.
Here are some pictures from Wellington, which does absolutely no justice to this wonderful city. Next albums will be published in the following days.