on the way from Taupo to Rotorua you drive on the 'thermal highway'. The earth's crust is made up of a patchwork of interlocking plates. Here on the northern island of New Zealand the edge of the indian-australian plate is pressing on top of the pacific plate. So there is much tension showing in steaming geysers, colourful lakes, volcanic craters and bubbling mudholes.

It is extraordinary:

it looks like this from the highway







The champagne-pool

a volcanic crater filled with bubbling hot water mixed with minerals like gold, silver, mercury, sulphur, arsenic etc.












It's banks are bright orange.












devils bath

lime-green water
I never imagined

Lady Knox Geyser 

Located in Orakei Korako is a lake-terrace called the 'map of africa' I can't discover,

but nevertheless stunning










Well, and then the time has come to head home.
A last farewell from a black swan on Lake Rotorua

and a collection of seashells at the Pacific Ocean














I've been looking forward to swap the Pacific Ocean with the Baltic Sea - as there is a big, big difference - it's home.

Good bye big, wide world, you are so gorgous and versatile. There would never be enough time to discover you entirely. But my impressions of the last few months are far beyond expectations.

I am happy and filled up with my new experiences.

And deeply grateful for this opportunity.

Back to the northern islands - 920 km. The right time to leave Queenstown, because they expect snow in a 2 weeks time ...  














church of the Good Shepard at lake Tekapo
a very popular setting for picture-taking
the very blue water is made of rockdust grinded by glaciers

Waitaki district on the way from Queenstown to Christchurch 

impressive by it's simplicity 

Akaroa, a peninsula south of christchurch - it is supposed to be very beautiful. Nils and I find - it is wet 

Kaikoura - a town at the pacific ocean, inhabited by whalers in history. Today it is a town of whale-, albatross- and dolphinwatchers. Tourists like myself

and here is the first snow on the mountains, early this year





apropos - dolphins - I have seen some dusky dolphins, different to the bottlenose flippers in bay of islands

 



and there were hundreds of them




















and in close-up 

dusky dolphins, very playful, one of 40 kinds of dolphins







































back to the northern island - Wellington

it is at least 5 degrees warmer than on the southern island