Unpacked

I'm at the place which is supposed to be home for the next long time. It is strange.
I think it will take some time getting used to this. I probably already have a temporary job. I sort of know where things are. I've been out rowing on the fjord. There's a nice park for running.
I can paint the walls whichever colour I choose. There's a kitchen. The shops are weird though. They're so Danish....
But there's rye bread. The sun shines and we have rainbows and August thunder.

We'll continue in Danish over at Hjem til Aalborg.

There might come a few last updates here.
Pictures. Book progress. Stuff like that. Next adventure.

Finality

I'm leaving tomorrow. My bike's all packed in a box and I hope the girls in the lfight companies were right about me just strolling over to qantas and paying 120 aussie dollars for them to fly the big box home to Denmark. We'll see tomorrow. It's very interesting.
It's also very strange to be leaving, it felt so familiar to come back, or home to New Zealand. It's autumnal and recognisable and mountainous and might as well be Scandinavia, just with nikau palms and cabbage trees.

But I do look forward to home, to see my friends, my family, have a job, eat Danish rye bread and liquorice, hold hands with the loved one every day and sleep in the same bed every night, to not share dorm rooms with snooring strangers, to have more than two sets of clothes. It's also slightly scary. What if I forget how wonderful this was and don't go out again? If I just get a nine to five and have kids and tell about back when mum was cool and biked New Zealand and sailed to Fiji?
I don't think I will forget though. I'll probably remember so hard that there is no option but going out again.

Again, again again, I have to come back to this place.

Things to do in Fiji with your significant other

in a rather random order. 

Hike to the peak in Ovalau

Swim in the pool by the waterfall in Ovalau

Watch the local rugby tournament

 Go to Cangalai

Snorkel there

 Doggus sleepus is a very common animal in the fijian village

 Go to the market

Take a bus to Nananu-i-ra

Kayak  in a bath tub

 Watch the sunset from sunset point. Look for the green flash.

Go diving

Take a boat to the Yasawas

 Catch snakes with the locals

This is a banana flower

Get married on the beach

Our vicar's called Rabua (pronounced Rambua) and wears either all red or all white.

Kiss

This is for my parents and friends and such

Promising to forsake all other flesh and support and inspire in all eternity. That´s a long time.

 Lovo wedding dinner

Chill in the hammock

 Drink kava

Drink champagne under the full moon

Next day feed your husband to the sharks

Or just go for a hike 

Tomorrow's the day

Skipper alerted the immigration and harbour authorities, weather's been checked, kerosene oven's been fixed (I accidentally set it on fire), sailsetting's been practiced, extra warm sweater and seasickness pills been bought (and more chocolate) and we just want to leave. 10 o´clock tomorrow morning.

The girl who shouted wolf

Then the wind came and we´re still in Nelson and keep having last dinners and last drinks. 45 knots is to much wind for a new crew.
We hope the tasman storm will die down on Friday. We also hope that Fijian weather wont be too bad, they've had a pretty big storm and some nasty floodings.

There's gotten more crew aboard to a total of sixten, and the additions are Peggy from Holland, Dennis from Germany, Jef (or Jan-Erik as his real name is, though that dosn't sound as cool as Jef), and Hayden from Wellington. They're pretty young in many ways and it looks like it won't just be learing how to sail, but also conducting a psychological experiment of personalities as well. I do suppose we'll be allright, but I also suppose there will be some clashes on the way.

Anyhow, I will suddenly drop off the map, and that means I'm sailing to Fiji. If you want to know for sure that I've gone, check with Jes.

Hoist anchor, sailor!

We're going tomorrow. We're buying the last stuff today, scrubbing the deck, doing man over board practice and muster stations. I got a new cabin mate, Peggy from Netherlands. She seems very nice. I hope we can agree on our tiny space.
We had the last beer yesterday evening and everyone did like real sailors, getting drunk, dancing, flirting, someone ran out on a bill, someone got sick on the way home, someone got punched by a lady friend, someone showed their boat to a french guy, someone got lost and fell asleep on a different boat, and someone is still missing in action.

It's going to be fantastic. See you in a month.

Out to the big blue ocean

There's a fun story at the end

I was originally planning to write some posts ahead and have them appearing here. It didn't really happen; we've been to busy getting everything ready before sailing. Hence this space will be empty for the next month or so - there is no net on the ocean. I promise to return on Fiji and write fascinating tales of the sea and the islands. Deal?

Oh, the funny story: our kitchen sink outlet got plugged the other day. It turned out to be a dead fish, which had swam in there to gobble on our flushed out leftovers. I pulled it out of the outlet by the tail, sitting on our land raft.

Port Nelson

Nelson is a pretty sweet little place, with happy hippie kiwis, loads of backpackers, a nice atmosphere, a bustling and still industrial harbour, cute cafes, parks to hang in, walks to do, museums to visit. Quite the change from Havelock's population of 400 people.

We've been doing the tourist thing, the art museum is more recommendable than the local history, the japanese park isnice, so is the look-out point, and otherwise we recommend just strolling around. Accent on the park was the first place to be friendly and have beds, and we're quite happy.

And concerning that port that I mentioned, I've been looking for a ship to crew to go to Fiji in May. Trying out findacrew turned up a lot of lonely 40 and 50+ skippers looking for a queeze in the cabin of their nutshell boat, while I'm rather looking for a decent stable ship and an experienced captain who want sto swap sailing experience for good cooking and no further benefits.

Instead of looking for the needle in the virtual haystack I got lucky in real life and found the boat Alvei docked in the business side of the harbour. She's a schooner type, and her captains sails her as a non profit cooperative sailing school more or less. They're bound for Fiji beginning of April and need some more to crew the boat. I think I'm going to jump at that chance, and have already found a place to store my bike - the nice guys at Stewarts bike shops are saving the day once again. That means of course that the biking is postponed a bit, and I'll return to NZ sometime after Fiji in June or July. It'll be quite interesting to see what the weather is like then and if biking is even a remotely comfy option of transport.

Me and Madeleine will though first go for a little roadtrip, packing only the very basic - I feel rather intimidated by leaving both tent and sleeping bag behind, but there are hostels where we are gong and the plan is to hitch ride, which is a lot easier when you carry less. We've got a couple of days in Abel Tasman to kayak and tramp on daytours, then heading up to Collingwood and the Farewell sandspit, seeing where luck takes us , then head back to Nelson early next week. I'll board ship then and practice knots, setting sails, navigation and such on and Madeleine is going further down south to explore New Zealand.

Pictures from Havelock

 

We try the picture theme once again

the possum hunting posse; Alan, Shane and Rob

getting ready to fly

flying!

the skipper. It's pretty far down

We calmed down after the excitement of flying (and crashing, all is well with the people involved, but not the glider) by playing cards, drinking beer, wine and cider to each own desire and sillygoosing around.

Geographic inspiration - places to go before I die

They have a huge stack of old national geographics at the hostel, some dating back to the fifties, but the bulk is from back when mama was a boy* and USSR and East Germany still existed. Ihave ofcourse poured over them, read about all sorts of animals from wolves over whales and head lice, natural phenomonons ranging from hot springs over desert dunes and perma frosts, as well as exotic people and places - the older ones with horrifying and horrifyingly amusing views on the wild africans/new guineans/native americans/Arab deserts/USSR collectivefarms/Patagonia etc.
It's still pretty inspiring, and aparting form wanting a subscription badly (pretty hard when you don't have a permanent adress) there's a million places I want to go. Then there's all the people going through here with some pretty fantastic stories to tell. They've given a few ideas as well.

• Bike around the Baltic Sea
• Bike & hike Eastern Europe
• Bike the UK; Dover to Dunnet/Easter Head (that's the northernmost point in Scotland according to Wikipedia)
• Kayak the Donau
• Go by motorbike (cause I'm not THAT sporty) from Patagonia and all the way up through Latin America
• Bike USA from coast to coast
• Get a work holiday visa to Canada because you can get that until you're 35, and be a lumberjack and travel by train
• Sail the Pacific
• Travel on the transsiberian railroad
• Africa - the places where you don't risk ending up in a war/civil war/pirate lair/gold mining conflict
• Bike the East Coast of Australia
• Ski from Kemi, Finland to Kirkenes, Norway with Papa Bear
• Learn dog sledding on Svalbard
• Greenland!
• Climb mountains in Central Asia
• To be expanded

How about you guys?


*Anglified Danish joke. Does it work in English?

Other things to do in Havelock

Sorry guy, I know the whole blogging thing came to a screeching halt here in Havelock and it's only me to blame. The internet has not agreed with picture upload, but it's not like I couldn't have written about what we have been doing and it's not like I've just been making beds and vacuuming kitchen floors.

so here goes the list of things to do in Havelock:

• go see the glow worms at night, bring a torch, up the street by the war memorial opposite of the hotel, find the track that's signposted 'track to water fall', head up there, continue, further, then you see a few glow worms, further still, and there's millions of them. About 20 minutes to walk and for free unlike so many other places.
• Check out the museums. The fish museum is five dollars and actually quite nice. The local history one is free and peculiar. It also features a lemon- and an orange tree in the garde, which may be of greater interest.
• Have fudge at the fudge place
• Drink beer in the bar of the hotel and play pool
• Go kayaking in the sounds
• Go hang gliding over Havelock (don't crash)
• Bike out to beaches to gather cockles, you dig them up from the sand at the tidal beach. They hide just a few centimeters down.
• Pool up your friends, load them into a truck,bring a power torch and a gun and go for a possum hunt in the hills
• Go deer/pig hunting by boat.
• Pick apples off road side trees
• Bike up all gravel roads you can find
• Hitch out to Pelorous Bridge to hike around
• Read loads of books and old National Geographic
• Do the Nydia or Queen Charlotte track (this is the only one I haven't done myself)
• Play cards and monopoly with other travellers
• Tell tall tales and have tea and apple crumble made from those self picked apples

Deer hunter illustrated

Ok, if you're vegetarian you might want to look away, there will be pictures of large dead animals coming up. But it did have a good life in the forests of Marlborough sounds before we shot it, and we are going to eat it. Deers are pestst in New Zealand anyway, they don't originally belong to the NZ fauna, either does pigs or possums, which is why anybody may go ahead and shoot them.
If you do want to see the dead animals click on the post.

the young ones are locked up, so they don't jump boat

The rest keeps an eye out for piggies

admirable views, technically we're on a part of the Queen Charlotte track. We took good care not to shoot any german tourists. Though they do tend to be nice and fat

Deer hunter

Pig unting is big in New Zealand. I've seen loads of trucks driving by with men in big parkas, boots, beer bottles, and  a bunch of barking dogs and some dead pigs on the back of the truck.  They have at least three magazines solely dealing with pig hunting, pig dogs, guns, pig hunting tours etc. Of course I had to try that.
I mentioned to Shane, who owns the hostel I'm woofing at that I'd like to go pig hunting since it's such a kiwi thing. He immediately picked up the phone, called his brother in law and a arranged a pig hunting tour wo days after. Pigs are hunted with dogs, who roost up the animal and hold it until the hunter takes up on them, and then you usually stab the pig, because if you shoot, you might hit a dog and a good pig dog is quite valuable.

We went into the sounds by boat, up the track, and had the dogs nosing around while we were using the hunting voices and getting explanations on New Zealand wild life and what you can and cannot eat. We didn't find any pig, and agreed that it had been a nice tour anyway, and me, Shane and Madeleine headed back towards the boat. Two minutes after we hear two gun shots and  Billy called over the radio to tell that he shot a stag. We milled back down the track and there was a big beautiful eight pointer. Me and Madeleine waited there, while the guys got a hold of the dogs, that had taken off after a pig, and while waiting we entertained ourselves with a through study of the deer and quite a few pictures.

Guys back again, the biology lesson started, with us holding legs and Billy opening up the animal. Then the fitness challenge commenced, pulling the deer by the horns down to the beach and the boat and up in the boat.
Well back at Picton we had beer to celebrate, went back to Billy's place, weighed the stag in at 236 pound and drove back to Havelock, where we proudly showed off our deer to everyone who was still awake at the hostel. Then we had some more beer.

Behovet for køretøj II

Oprindelig stod der noget med at rejse let, miljøvenlig og billig i min header. Så kom jeg ned til New Zealand og fandt ud af at det er et af de steder i verden hvor der forurenes mest per capita. Vedrørende privat forbrug er det i høj grad fordi alle skal have deres eget hus og deres egen bil. Jeg konstaterede ret hurtigt at det ikke er muligt at komme rundt uden eget køretøj; landet er simpelthen beregnet til biltrafik og forudsætter at alle har en bil, lejer en bil, låner en bil, eller på anden måde fremskaffer en bil. Også turisterne, og dem der ikke vil det kan få lov at køre rundt med hinanden på backpackerbusser, hvis primære kunder er unge og ude på ballade - læs tre måneders-ruter, få muligheder for individuelle turer, selvstændig tænknig og undgåelse af aftenens obligatoriske pubcrwl eller miss Wet tshirt konkurrense. Og alt det der kan vel være meget skægt,men det var immervæk ikke lige derfor jeg kom.

Umiddelbart faldt jeg for den ligefremme løsning; at få et kørekort og en bil. Der er bare lige det at det er dyrt, måske ikke i forhold til derhjemme, men i forhold til mit budget, at det er ret besværligt at få et kørekort, mest fordi man skal have en codriver, og efter mødet med de første mange backpackere, indså jeg at jeg ikke aner hvad jeg skal stille op med 20-årige tyskere, der aldrig før har været væk fra mor og far. Man kan selvfølgelig godt slæbe dem med på en ugelang vandretur, men jeg har en fornemmelse af at man kunne få en temmelig blandet fornøjelse ud af det.

Jeg ville jo egentlig ud i naturen og opleve alt mulig spændende, ud selv og gøre det helt alene og møde spændende mennesker og se noget smukt og anderledes. I stedet synes jeg at jeg har ventet, ventet på at der kom en bil der ville samle mig op, på at der kom en bus, der skulle samme vej som mig, på at der kom nogen, jeg kunne køre med, og aldrig nogensinde var det ligesom rigtigt det jeg ville.

Så sad der en fuld skotte i Flying Nun´s baggård og sagde de forløsende ord: "Ah'm goin a feeneesh work an'en ah'm a buy a moonteenbike an 'en Ah'm goo wherever Ah bloody wunnu goo."

Jeg ved ikke om skotten har købt sig en mountainbike og cykler glad rundt i New Zealand med en flaske whiskey i baglommen, men jeg er i gang med at købe en mountainbike.

Det involverer også noget ventning, for jeg befinder mig stadig i Gisborne, og det er en ret lille by og her er kun to cykelbikse. Jeg gik hen til den lille, som er ejet af en amerikaner, der fandt mit projekt særdeles sympatisk. Vi snakkede lidt om at cykle og jeg kiggede på mange cykler og vi fandt en, der nok kunne passe til mit behov, og som man nok godt kunne finde ud af at gi' noget rabat på. Så skal jeg vælge det nødvendige tilbehør, trailer og de forskellige småting, der er nødvendige til en cykeltur New Zealand rundt. Det tager lidt tid, og det er lidt kedeligt at vente på, men tanken om at tage herfra ved egen kraft er ret fantastisk. Nu venter jeg på det rigtige.

Jeg kommer muligvis til at fortryde hver gang det regner, men så må jeg finde mig et hostel og tørre mit tøj. Så svært er det egentlig ikke. Man skal ha en cykel og et par gode ben. Så kan man komme lige derhen, hvor man vil.

Nina Bikes NZ

I'm going to buy a bicycle. Coming to New Zealand, I somehow expected it to have immaculate public transport, since Lonely Planet (traders in dreams and outdated information as they are)claimed buses are an excellent option to get arund NZ. They are allright from city to city and even a few towns. But honestly, my dear Kiwis, it's not really your towns I came for, it's pretty much everything else; in other words the nature. And to that there is no public transport.

Quickly I found myself wanting to go to places, whereto I couldn't get. The immediate solution was hitch-hiking, which is ok for shorter tours, but to me it seems a bit of a shady and complicated way to get around when it's for the better part of six months. I strongly considereded doing like any other backpacker and buy a car, only with the minor hitch that I do not have a license to conduct a car. Licenses are there to be gotten though, and I even got as far as buying the road code and reading it, before it struck me that I can just do it like the Dane I am and get a bicycle. This was inspired by a rather drunk Scottish lad in the backyard of the Flying Nun who uttered some of the most profound wisdom ever found at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey: "Ah'm gooin a feeneesh work an'en ah'm a buy a moonteenbike an 'en Ah'm goo wherever Ah bloody wunnu goo."

Much cheaper than a car - at least long term - and environmentally friendly, at a pace I like and with every opportunity to stop where I like and meet the courious natives, so biking it was. Hence I'm now In Gisborne, looking at a pretty babyblue mountainbike form Bikey's bikeshop and deciding which rack, trailer, water bottle holder and other essential necessities I really do need. Soon the great "Nina bikes New Zealand"-tour will commence. It'll be interesting, I'm sure.

Te Urewera & Waikaremoana i billeder

Meget få biler at blaffe med, men solskin

første sø

solnedgang fra Sandy bay

Urskov

Hytte i urskov

mosklædte træer i urskov

udsigten fra toppen.

find stien

Waikaremoana

hængebro

sø i tåge

vandfald

campingpladsens køkken

forhenværende vildsvin

vandfald

bregner overalt

Belønningen

jovist var jeg der også. Så glad bliver man af at vandre.