Exactly two weeks ago I left Denmark, right after the first 15cms of snowfall and the start of the -10 degrees spell, so the drive to the airport was a bit longer and more adventurous. The good thing was that I did arrive on time, and I even got to skate a bit (with the car on black ice though! Happily only a tiny bit) before taking off to summer. The trip – well, what can I say… it’s extremely long, but I kind of knew that. My body wasn’t prepared for it though, I found it extremely difficult to sit still those first 12 hours to Singapore. After that, it was actually quite fine. I managed to find a ‘naproom’ for 8 hours in the airport in Singapore, and then it was only nine hours left. And I landed in beautiful summer weather in Christchurch – full sun, a little over 20 degrees, and lots of flowers (the smells!! Fantastic).

Driving on the left

After a week in Dunedin, all the way to the south, to acclimatize and meet some interesting people at a conference, I rented a car and started life on the other side of the road. That actually went pretty well – it only took a few minutes to get used to it (to look the right way for the back mirror, for example). And as long as I kept in mind to drive on the left when crossing a road or turning, it was fine. The car had lane-keep assist which was annoying at times (when you try to get out of the way of an extra wide transport) but also turned out to be quite useful when driving along the many beautiful views and slowly veering to the side… Where is autopilot when you need it?

A bathroom with a view

I first drove to Manapouri where I had booked the most amazing AirbnB I’ve ever been in. It was spacious and had amazing views over the lawn, the lake, and then the Fiordland mountains on the other side. I could sit in bed (or on a gigantic black leather BarcaLounger) and enjoy the view. I could even be in the bathtub and look at the mountains! That’s definitely the most amazing bathroom I’ve been in. Very relaxing.

Majestic views

I stayed there for two nights so I could take a boat trip to the Doubtful Sound, which Captain Cook named because he wasn’t sure whether it led anywhere. He was wrong, it’s actually quite a long fjord, and absolutely beautiful. I was lucky that we had had rain the night before so there were plenty of waterfalls, yet the weather was sunny with clouds (only a bit windy). It’s really remote though – we first took a boat over the Manapouri lake, then a bus over the Wilmot Pass (because the lake is at 200m above sea level, which is why they built the largest hydroelectric power station in New Zealand there, so the water can fall 193m down through turbines), and then finally you get to be on the boat in the majestic Doubtful Sound. There were amazing views all around, going all the way out to the sea. There was no human habitation or signs in sight, and we even got to see some rare bottlenose dolphins (though only from a distance, they are endangered and only recovering slightly).

A 180 million year old petrified tree

So it was hard to top that, but I did have a few nice remaining days along the south coast of New Zealand. I drove down to Riverton, then via Curio Bay and Nugget Point back to the airport in Dunedin. Having some really great weather, the views were amazing here too. I especially liked Curio Bay with it’s very rare 180 million year old forest – you can see trees that have fallen over and turned to stone back when a volcano spewed some ash and created the rare circumstances for wood to be preserved so long. I missed the chance to see the world’s rarest penguin there, but I did get the chance the day after, at Nugget Point, which teemed with wildlife – on the way there, I saw fur seals trying to mate, and a sea lioness with a pup of only 2 days old!

The most endangered penguin in the world

Since I was staying close by, I was already in the bay around 13.00, knowing the one yellow eyed penguin that was supposed to arrive would only do so around 18.00 or later (there is currently only one pair breeding in the bay, and the other penguin is guarding the chick). But it was actually a good place to spend an afternoon – I had a beautiful view on the bay where two dolphins were bobbing around, and I sat in a bit of sun and out of the storm (which would have made sitting anywhere else a no-go). And what do you know, the penguin actually turned up! And it was half an hour earlier than the day before, at 17.15, so that was really nice. And so cute, how it arrived riding a wave, then getting on its feet and waggling over the sand to the rocky beach, where it jumped from stone to stone and then disappeared up to its nest – which apparently is 50 meters up on the cliff. Quite amazing…