You keep what you kill

Singapore. Back after 13yrs. Finally. I love this city, walking from restaurant to restaurant, exploring food stalls, eating the day away. Definitely my cup of tea. And the botanic gardens, the bird park, the bay gardens, etc. Perfect spot for a long layover, especially at 35 degrees. :-) and even the super skeptical and at times slightly xenophobic reisebegleitung likes it (although she's currently sorting through the contents of her Tom kha ghai soup, fishing out mushrooms she doesn't like, to quote: "Pilze sollten immer nur einen Hut haben, Pilze mit zwei hüten übereinander sollte man nicht essen." irgendwo gibt es bestimmt ein Buch mit mecklenburgischen Lebensweisheiten.). So we're roaming about the city, will go back to the airport round sunset, go for a swim at the rooftop pool (another reason why Changi is simply the best airport) and then hop onto the A380 for the second leg to Frankfurt.

We decided to spend our last couple of days on Waihi beach and stayed at a brilliant bed and breakfast aptly named Beachfront Bed and Breakfast. Great place, lovely hosts, perfect location. Probably the best stay of this holiday. So I spent some more time playing with Harald, walking and running on the beach, soaking in the nearby Athenree hot pools, and of course exploring the gorgeous Kahangarake Gorge. Although it's on the infamous 101 AA list, we didn't really meet too many people there. Nice hiking through the forest, exploring some old gold mining relics, which pleased the reisebegleitung to no end. Well the relics, not so much the walking. :-) the flat white cafe does good cakes and a surprisingly good veggie burger, the Waitete restaurant and ice creamery does good ice cream for non European standards (run by an Austrian guy). For our last night at Waihi we went to have dinner at the Falls Retreat, which is in the middle of nowhere, rustic setting, absolutely great food...

When we driving down the scenic road to Raglan I nearly crashed the car because I was co-performing another Kreator song that had found its way on the playlist. Why is it that so many metal songs contain a line like 'a dark wind is blowing from the east'? Are they all eastophobic? Is that some kind of Western cultural heritage, where all things dark and evil come from the east? Whatever, Kreator certainly is the right soundtrack for approaching the beautiful black sand beaches of Raglan. We climbed Mt Karioi this time, because we caught one of the rare cloudless moments, beautiful views across the coast. We then took off a day earlier than originally planned because I had to find an Internet Café that was open long enough in the evening to allow a Skype call to Germany. And, to be frank, I couldn't stand the stinking backpackers anymore. ;-) we'd stayed at the same place as a couple of years before, still a very nice and well run hostel, Raglan waterfront. We took ano...

We were driving from Napier to Stratford, Taranaki a couple of days ago and that was somewhat frightening. First of all, I saw this billboard on the side of the road for "SS showers". That would be a complicated sell in Germany. Next was a billboard for "SS homes". So I was starting to worry whether we'd ended up in South America or Sachsen through a wormhole or something. Then we made a late breakfast stop in Woodville and I'm not kidding now, the name of the Café was "Café 88". Hmm. Maybe all these stories about AH hiding beneath Antarctica weren't so bullshit after all, just a few sea miles off? But the folks at the cafe were really nice kiwis, so it was maybe just a coincidence. BUT! when we checked into our motel in Stratford, the Dutch owner greeted me with a friendly "Deutschland über alles", so I'm not sure any more. The motel was a great place to stay, only ten dollars more than the hostel, clean, well maintained, friend...

One more pic, than I'm out for today. A nice little mozzie festival on Lake Rotorua. Breath through your nose!

After three fantastic days in Whakatane I feel pretty safe to declare that this is probably really my favorite spot in NZ, Ohope Beach to be precise. 11 perfect, glamourous, lovely, charming, inviting, ... kilometres of sandy empty beach with great surf. What more could one wish for? Well, maybe heaps of great produce from the farms and orchards all around? Decently priced good quality accommodation? Some nice bushwalks? Great views? An active marine volcano on the doorstep? It's all there, and last but certainly not least it's the place with the most sunshine hours in NZ. So definitely LOVE. We drove to over to the West coast today, to enjoy some black sand beaches and have based ourselves in Raglan for a couple of days. Great thing about the hostel here is they offer yoga lessons at 3pm in the afternoon, perfectly aligned with the tide currently. :-) Got some more hot pics for you as well. Sunrise at Ohope Beach this morning, absolutely stunning!

Our plan for spending the rainy day was extremely successful. Soak and swim for a couple of hours in the hot springs, spend the rest running on the beach, swimming in the ocean and eating heaps of real fruit ice-cream, muffins, and fresh berries at both the lovely Blueberry Corner and the even more lovely Julian's Berry Farm. Bliss. If only the soccer results could keep up with that, but it looks like Monday night games next year.

This is really the first year where we don't have any itinerary at all, we just look at the weather forecast and then decide on the next two days or so. Of course this has the potential to turn into a classical TSP scenario, so lucky us that we're atheists and have the brains to deal with this. :-) I still can't get over these damn German Christian fuckers, but I promise this will be the last rant ... maybe. Anyway, after three extremely relaxing days full of beach fun at the Mount we drove down to Rotorua. On my previous nine trips to NZ I have always avoided RotoVegas like the plague, because of the plaguelike hordes you're likely to encounter. But we decided to give it a chance and what a good decision that was. First of all, the accommodation - we stayed at the Funky Green Voyager, a nice hostel close to the town center. Second, if you avoid all the "must see" things then you avoid the hordes and still get to enjoy the scenery. Sounds too easy? Well, som...

We had another one day and a half after Geraldine before our flight to AKL on Sunday (I triple checked the time *g*) and decided to give the region North of CHC a chance, especially since it's not featured in any guidebook or anything. And what a great choice that was. Again we had hit the only sunny spot in a 200k radius and discovered a beautiful stretch of coastline. Nice cliffs, lonely beaches, good surf. Not too bad. Just 45mins from the airport and no one around. We stayed at a Dutch run brand-new and immaculately clean motel on the road to the beach in Amberley and then explored the coast a little bit. The flight to AKL was uneventful, I just love flying domestic in NZ because it's so relaxed, normal, without the bullshit pseudo security hustle and hectic. Fuck airport security in the rest of the world. Fuck you all, especially your fucking ridiculous liquid bullshit fucking regulations. Fuck you. That just had to get out I guess. :-) In AKL the weather was brilliant, ...

Well, so we were walking down Mt John through a forest consisting mainly of fir trees. I think,  at least the branches had needles.  :-)  when, all of a sudden we stumbled upon two girls softly and rhythmically stroking such a fir branch. I tell you, this looked really bizarre and crazy, and the first and only thing that came to my twisted little mind was: they are jerking off the tree! And they looked the part as well, would have fit neatly into certain parts of Berlin, were probably from Schwabenland anyway. We tiptoed past them, not wanting to disturb their intimate moment. It's kinda depressing though that whenever you meet real weirdos while traveling they are almost always from Germany. More of that later. Close to Geraldine is the magnificent Peel forest,  named after the great radio dj. It came to pass that we were walking through this forest when the reisebegleitung had to grip a tree in order to avoid an intimate moment with the extremely muddy ground. Ala...