Australien

The next morning we took another bus to Sydney Central Station where we had an appointment for buying a van. At around 12am we were owners of a Mazda E2000, the same car we already owned in New Zealand, only 10 years younger and 100.000km less driven. In general the car was well maintained and the previous owners did a good job with the camping setup. It has a second car battery with is charged by an 50 Watt Solarpanel fixed on the roof, it has an electrical powered sink, LED lights everywhere and a useful box/bed-construction.

Mazda E2000 - 2001, 300.000km

Spare Wheel and 50 Watt Solarpanel

We paid a bit more then we wanted to, but I think it will pay off in comfort. On our way to the Blue Mountains we even realized, it's a Dual Fuel. Beeing able to drive on Petrol and on LPG autogas would save us a whole lot of money, but the Dual Fuel is broken...

We asked a garage to fix it and they ordered a new gas converter for next week. It'll cost us another 600$ but this should pay off by the amount of kilometers we are going to drive within this big country.

Autumn in Blue Mountains

The trees around us look more and more like autumn. They are turning red and colorfull and temperatures are more plesant for climbing then they where in New Zealand. Suns temperatur is just right for drinking a coffee and a Tim Tam Slam wearing only a T-Shirt. In shade it's a lot colder. You have to be careful when starting a new climb, because it's easy to get really cold fingers halfway up the route.

Katinka in Rubber Lover, 25

We are still trying to get back into route climbing shape, as we've been only bouldering for the past few years, but we can already look back on a nice list of climbs we accomplished:

Katinka:
Rubber Lover, 25
Iona, 24, Flash
Nev Herrod, 23, Flash
Split Wave, 23
Jaws, 21, OnSight

Axel:
Rubber Lover, 25, OnSight
Trix Roughly, 26, 2nd Go
Madgde MacDonald, 25, OnSight
Bare Essentials, 26, 2nd Go
...

Today it's raining and it's to foggy to climb in joy. Luckily we made friendship with some Brisbane Australians. They are here for the easter week and have rented a house for their time here. In the moment we're waiting for the laundromat to clean our clothes and nappies while we enjoy sitting in a dry room after a refreshing shower.

read back soon:
www.chalkonrock.com

Business with vans

Selling a car at the end of the backpackers season in New Zealand is no fun!
We were quiet dissapointed by the Auckland Backpackers Carmarket. We expected a place, just like the Backpackers Car Market in Christchurch: A place were you can park for a couple of days and try to sell your vehicle to interested customers, a place were you are allowed to sleep inside your van within the city, a place were you can do laundry, take a shower and use the internet for maintaining your gumtree add.

But Aucklands Car Market is different: You pay them for parking your vehicle on a tiny, inclined property, set the price you're asking and hope for the best. No sleeping in the car is allowed, not a pleasant place to hang out while day, and not many customers passing through ...

Surfing at Muriwai Beach

We drove away and reduced the price on our gumtree add. We did print some infopapers, advertising our van and put them on several blackboards of Auckland hostels and then we left.

We had seen enough of this huge, but not to beautiful city and did not want to spent our last days here. We had 5 days left and wanted to see more of the country!

Muriwai Beach

Our privious hitch-hiker friend Torre had mentioned a beautiful beach, just 40 minutes drive from the city which we wanted to see. At Muriwai Beach we rented a surfboard and enjoyed a long and exhausting day in the sea. We are both very beginners of this sport and barely managed to stand on the surfboard, but it was fun! We ended the day with a delicious sourcream, meat and pasta dinner at the beach while the sun disappeared and our spirit went up again, as we got a first text message of two dutch surfers in search for a van.

The next morning we went back to town and met for a test drive. They liked the car a lot, but were looking for a bargain. We were asking about twice as much as they were willing to pay, so we said goodbye and moved into a hostel which we had booked for our last three nights. We cleaned the van and prepared it to get sold. The next morning we went to a car trading fair, but there were about 10 campervans and over the whole time of 6 hours only 2 of them got sold ... 1 to a low price car dealer.

Car Fair in Sydney

The second car fair which is held every sunday is supposed to be 5times as big, but our motivation level was low, so we decided to text the dutch surfers again and sell it to them. We agreed on a price in the middle, which was a bit of a loss for us. But that's life! And the van still did cost us less than half of what a rental car would have cost us.

After a relaxing last day we got our luggagae packed up again and went to the airport. Usually I know Emirate Airlines as a customer friendly company. They never bothered me about carring to much luggagae or about the crashpads we transport (they are way bigger then a checked luggage is allowed to be!). But this time it was a pain to check in. I head to repack our bags 3 times before they accepted it.

In Sydney our friend Eddie Fowke was already waiting at the pickup bay. He's a photographer and author of a new climbing magazine called "The Circuit - World Cup and Performance climbing Magazine". Take a look at his website if you're interested and let us know what you think :)
The Circuit Climbing

The Circuit Magazine

He was so keen to pick us up at the airport and host us for our first couple of nights in Sydney, as we wanted to buy our next camper van.

The car prices are way higher here in Australia and even tough its a big city there are not to many camper vans around in the moment. Due to Finja we need three seats in the front of the vans, but more than 50% have only two seats.

A well-earned coffee at the Fine Food Store in The Rocks, Sydney

We finally found an other Mazda E2000. 10 years and 100.000km younger, but not as long and as high as the last one. We made a deal and tomorrow first thing in the morning we are driving into Central Sydney to buy the van, prepare it for the next road trip and head to the Blue Mountains.
The plan is to meet up with Roman again and as well with our Christchurch hosts Greg and Jean. Psyched!

read back soon:
www.chalkonrock.com

North Island

We arrived in Wellington at our friends place without any problems, besides evening traffic ...

We could use some real laundromats again, which are always rare if you travel in a van.

After some discussion with Toby, Carina presented us a sightseeing plan for the next day: Start walking at their apartment in Haitaitai, through an awesome park with a beautiful lookout towards the city, then along the Waterfront and through the city towards the botanical gardens. After that we would walk through the city again, or grab a bus if preffered and stop at the "Chippery", a really good Fish&Chips Restaurant.

Wellington

Wellington

So we did! It was a long day, with much to see and tired feet in the evening. And it was worth it! It's indeed a beautiful city, with many green spots and nice beaches to spent the time at. We had some really good icecream and Katinka bougt an awesome pair of leggins for climbing in semi-cold conditions and looking great at the same time ;).

The next day we drove one hour to Turakirae Head, to check out the best local climbing spot. From the carpark it's still an 5km hike, but its flat and you walk along the sea. It's a lovely area but for hard climbing it was just way to warm. All Wellington people kept telling us how rough it can get here, we should always prepare and have a second layer of cloths with us at anytime, since the weather can change all over a sudden. But it never did. We had blue sky, with little to no wind and for the three days we spent in and around Wellington.

V7 in Turakirae Head

As for the climbing, we did send the classic "Black Wall", V6 but nothing harder then that. Anyways ... we might be back at some other time in the future ... 

"Black Wall", V6 - Turakirae Head

After a delicious homebaked pizza we prepared our departure in the morning, run another last laundromat and left our friends behind to drive north. After two days of driving we would stop again at Mount Ngauruhoe, better known as Mount Doom where the ring of "Lord of the Rings" finally gets destroyed. Its a great landscape with vulcanic stone there and we witnessed another awesome sunset while having dinner.

Mt Doom

After a bath in the natural Hotspring around Taupo we continued to the eastcoast and now just got to Auckland. We need to sell our van, since we only have five and a half days left in this country before heading on to Sydney, Australia.

Haku Falls - Hotsprings in Taupo

We knew the travelers season is coming towards an end, but we did not expect so little interest in our van. Now we have hope for the best. We advertised our van at gumtree and craigslist - two online platforms for trading - and we posted aome printouts in backpacker hostels around the city. As a backup, there will be two car trading fairs this weekend, and if this will be without success, we might have to sell it for a little amount to any mechanic around ...

Wish us the best, and keep on reading our blog!

www.chalkonrock.com

Golden Bay

After a long drive we arrived at Golden Bay, the northern end of New Zealands South Island. Especially Katinka was tired, since she was still recovering from beeing sick, so we just got a quick shower at the climbers campground called Hangdog, cooked some dinner and went straight to bed.

The next morning we glanced again at the beauty of the landscape around us and soon went into town for a quick internet session: Now our flights are changed, instead of april 6th we are departing on april 14th from Auckland to Sydney. This means we have 8 additional days in this beautiful country and we are not as much in a hurry as we had been for a couple of days now.

Puanaiki Pancake Rocks

Next we walked to the rocks. Paynes Ford is an nice climbing area with many slopers and pumpy sportroutes. We both did "Send a Gorilla", 23 (~6c+) for warming up and I managed to fell on the very top of "Papageno", 28 (~7c+) twice. I'm not really used to climbing on a rope, so usually the routes are way to long for me and my arms stop working after more then 20 moves in a row.  I gave up, because we wanted to spend the rest of the day driving to Cape Farewell the very northern tip of the Island.

As we walked out of the area, we met Torre again, the hitch-hiker climbing with us in Castle Hill for a couple of days. He was pleased to see us again as well and hitched another ride with us. After a beautiful sunset we had a nice steak for dinner and he tuned our seightseeing todo list. The next morning we went to a beautiful beach, a 20min hike from the parking and we were almost the only tourists around, which was amazing. We enjoyed a lot of sun and sand and when the low tide came, we saw some baby seals. There was a group of 10 seals in a small pool and they were not shy at all.

Baby Seals at Wharariki Beach

They touched our feet and sniffed at us and went back to keep playing with the group. It was a lot of fun to watch them.

The next day we went back to the crag and I finished up my unfinished business, ticking "Papageno", 28 in my first go. It was only a quick climbing session, since we still had to do a fun ropeswing into the river, some internet business and some coffee trinking + town shopping in the morning hours.

Our hitch-hiker Torre jumping down a dune

We had booked our ferry from Picton to Wellington for the next day, but did not want to drive all 4h30m in one rush, so we did the first 2h section in the last light of the day. We found an awesome campground just next to Nelson and continued our drive in the morning.

The Ferry from Picton to Wellington takes 3,5 hours

The rest of the day was easy. We sat on the deck of the ferry for 3,5 hours burning in sun, but cooled down by wind and enjoyed the landscape. Now we are staying at our friends Toby and Carina's apartment in Haitaitai, Wellington and will get a Wellington tour by Carina tomorrow.

more to read soon!
www.chalkonrock.com

Reunion with the others

The last few days in Castle Hill were quite hot. The sun was burning without a single cloud. Climbing around midday was impossible. We had to wait an other few days because we wanted to meet up with my brother Jochen, his wife Miriam and their daughter Paula. Paula is Finjas twin-cousin, since she's born the same day, with a difference of 4,5 hours!

Finja and Paula on the Road.

We picked them up at the airport and they gladly imported a Tetanol vaccination for Finja. We did a Tetanol-Only vaccination back home in germany and hoped to do give her the second boost in Newzealand. After arrival we learned there's no chance to get this specific vaccination here, only a triple vaccination which wouldn't work. Having a correct medicin in our hands we drove straight to the doctor and this business was off from our todo list.

After some shopping and a long 90minutes drive back to the campsite (especially for our visitors who just happend to sit in a plane for 32 hours) we had an delicous Pasta Bolognaise Dinner and a couple of beers together. Finja was psyched to see an other baby and all was good.
The next day we could only do a quick climbing session since a big storm arrived and brought strong ice wind with hail. It was a good chance for the others to rest and sleep agains the jetlag.

Delicious Dinner in our van.

After two days of some climbing together, Katinka and I had finished our last projects and we had seen enough of Castle Hill. With two campervans we wanted to start a roadtrip to Takaka, at Golden Beach at the northern border of the southern island. But Jochen started puking over night and was half dead for a full day. So we had to leave them alone and hit the road. A reunion planned to happen two days later in Paynes Ford, another climbing area near Takaka.

As we hit Greymouth, a big city at the westcoast we checked our emails and our faces went long ... Instead of a change of flight confirmation we got a message from STA-Travels, we can't change our flight for a planned amount of 200Euros, but we should spent 500-600Euros and travel on a bad date as well. Now there was hurry. We had to change our plans. No more climbing in Paynes Ford, but hit the road faster. 5 days left to arrive in Auckland, then another 3 days to sell our van and then the day of departure to Sydney, Australia.

Finjas last project. A slabclimb in Quantum Field.

Today our roadtrip got delayed again. Katinka catched up the same virus, Jochen had the day before. She's half dead and puking every now and then. At least, after sending some eMails back and forth with STA, we now have a backup solution of another flightdate for the cheap price of 200Euros again. Still not sure if we are going to change our flight. We wanted to spent 14 more days here, this backupsolution would give us 8 days here. We'll see what happens.

more to read soon!
www.chalkonrock.com

Castle Hill

Since our last restday, we had returned to Castle Hill to do what more of the sport, our trip was dedicated to: climbing, or more specific bouldering.

Castle Hill is a world class climbing destination with beautiful limestone formations. There's only a few holds, and a lot of slippery feet. Even a really strong climber in other places can stuggle here, since it's very unique style of climbing. You have to press and palm a lot, there are many mantles (blank, round topouts, with no holds) and the rock is really polished and frictionless. I do like this style a lot. I had visited this area 5 years ago and seen many other areas afterwards, but this one still remains in my head as one of my favorite areas worldwide!

"Lady Killer", V4 - Flock Hill

The Area is split into several smaller areas. Quantum Field is the most classic one, with more then 2000 boulderproblems located on a hill about 400x500m size. Here are the most smeary problems and the friction is the worst, which makes it really interesting to fight against gravity.

Katinka climbs aV5 in Quantum Field

Just next to it is Spittle Hill, with similar rock. There are an other 1300 problems, some more holds, but of similar style. Both areas have an approach walk of 5-10 minutes from the car park

Flock Hill

And then there is Flock Hill, a giant bloc field of 2km length. The hike leads through a sun burned hill and after 45 Minutes of steep uphill hiking you are in the middle of nowhere. It's really silent (except the road at the bottom of the valley) and remote. Lot of really awesome rock formations and more holds and better friction awaits the motivated hiking climber.

Finja enjoying Castle Hills Beauty

We did manage to climb problems such as "Monkey and the Magic Peach", V8 (Quantum Field), "Joker", V9 (Spittle Hill), "Prince tui Teka", V9 (Flock Hill) and "Interstellar Overdrive", V11 (Flock Hill). Katinka is enjoying a lot of V5 Problems around here and little Finja loves to sit in the green grass and to play with stone. As she listens to us climpers roaring and screaming in joy or pain, she tries to imitate our noises as soon as we sit her down on some slabs.

West Coast

On our way to the westcoast we stopped for a day in Wanaka. It's a small, but beautiful city just next to a beautiful lake. As you would guess we did not stop for no reason. We knew there are some rocks around the city to climb and thats what we did! We enjoyed some Lakeside Bouldering with boulders up to V7 and after a 20km drive along the lake we arrived at the "Main Cliff". The rock was ok, but it did not impress us enough to grab the rope and the quickdraws to do some ropeclimbing. It's always a struggle to go ropeclimbing just by yourselfe, carring one baby and no babysitter around.

A pass south of Wanaka

We decided to stay around the parking lot and did some bouldering there, which was fun and enough for today.

After some dinner in Wanaka, we enjoyed beeing in one of the few places in Newzealand having fast and free WiFi, did some Skype-Sessions and had a glance on some of the photos I took so far.

Katinka climbing a nice V5 at Lakeside, around Wanaka

The next morning we jumped back into our van and moved on. Finja lost her psyche to sleep and sit in the van all day, so we could only do short sessions of driving (50km max), but every now and then we had to stop anyways, because of the beauty of the country. We did some hikes along the westcoast beach which are beautiful and drove north. Sadly it got more and more touristy. Lots of campervans, expensive looking hostels and no camping signs everywhere. And all over a sudden our van didn't like driving anymore. We heard some backfire from the exhaustion pipe and with a speed of 80km/h our engine turned off. It wasn't to bad, since we could just turn it on again, but it started to happen more often. After a while the engine would turn off every 500m and restarting the engine drained our battery. In the end we got stuck in the middle of nowhere, enough gazoline, but no more battery juice.

Luckily we catched a ride with a local we towed us the last 15km until we reached a small garage in Harihari. There were already other travelers having a overheating problem with their van and they had been waiting in front of the garage for the hole day, since the repair man had a lot of cars to fix. Since we have a little Baby with us, he was really friendly to us and even postponed his lunch break to fix our car. It was not a big deal, only the sparkling plugs were worn out and a few parts needed a replacement. 75$ later the car was back on the road and we could end second day driving in Hokitika, sitting at the beach and cooking some delicious pasta dinner.

Chilling at the beach - Westcoast

After the repair we had picked up the german hitch-hiker Torre. He has been in Newzealand since early dezember and his next Destination was Castle Hill. The same destination we picked as a next stop! We had to do some more shopping and internet business, so we could only hitch him to Hokitika, but the next morning we met him at the Craigieburn Campsite at Castle Hill. He could only have a quick glance on the boulders we were trying to climb within the next couple of weeks, since he had to catch a flight from Christchurch to Melboure in the evening. He planned to leave the country for four days and be back afterwards, only to extend his Newzealand visa.

Westcoast

After to days of climbing in pretty warm conditions, a lot of blue sky and only a little wind, we now sit in the library of Darfield, about 70km from the climbing area and write this blog post. We are only getting started here, so read back in a couple of days! We plan to stay and climb here for about 3 weeks now.

more to read soon!
www.chalkonrock.com