Jorda rundt oktober 2011 - mars 2012 / Weltreise Oktober 2011 - März 2012


Vi er en familie på fem, som reiser jorda rundt fra oktober 2011 til mars 2012 og med hjelp av denne bloggen vil vi dele opplevelser med venner og familie. Siden vi er flere som skriver innlegg, står navnet til "skribenten" angitt i overskrifta.



Our family of five travelled around the world from October 2011 to March 2012 and in order to be able to share our experiences with family and friends we established this blog. Since we are several "authors" the posts start with a name and are labeled.









Friday, December 30, 2011

Lisa ser masse rart / Lisa sieht alles mögliche

Vi kjørte til en park hvor det fantes åler og man kunne gi dem mat og stryke dem og holde dem i hånden og opp i luften. Det var veldig artig. Det var også en restaurant, der jeg og Niklas kjøpte oss en is og Lea en muffins med rosa og gul glassur på og glitter.
Det fantes en skog der og opp i skogen var det en ridderborg.

På første juledag gikk vi en lang tur og kom til en hule. Den var veldig mørk, men jeg var ikke redd. Det dryppet vann ned fra stalaktiter.

Wir fuhren zu eienem Park , wo es Aale gab, die man füttern, streicheln und in die Hand nehmen konnte. Dort gab es auch ein Restaurant, wo Niklas und ich Eis bestellten und die Lea Muffins mit rosa und gelber Glasur und Glitzerstreusel. Dort gab es auch einen Wald mit Ritterburg.
Am ersten Weihnachtstag machten wir eine lange Tour zu einer Höhle. Die war sehr dunkel, aber ich hatte keine Angst. Das Wasser tropfte von Stalaktiten.


Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Niklas: uke 9 / Woche 9

VI   VAR   I  EN HULE   SOM  HADE  ILDMARKER. DET VAR PÅ JULEAFTEN. DENNE JULEAFTEN VAR EN AV DE BESTE! VI TENNTE ET JULEBÅL OG GRILLET PØLSER.

Wir waren in einer Höhle mit Glühwürmchen. Das war an Heilig Abend. Das war eines der besten Weihnachten! Wir entzündeten ein Feuer und grillten Würstchen.

PS: Sjekk julepynten i bakvinduet!
Seht ihr den Weihnachtsschmuck im Fenster? 

Silja: Christmas



We started the 24th of December with a walk along the beach where we had spent the night(Nine Mile Beach) and then decided to pack up and drive a little further south.
At Fox River we found the perfect place to spend Christmas Eve. Niklas prepared a camp fire for us and I made potatoe salad to go with the sausages we grilled on sticks.
Crafty and creative Lisa could not wait to give out the presents she had made for everyone. Niklas was very pleased with the crochet lasso rope he got, Axel sleeps well with a miniture dream catcher, Lea keeps even warmer with a skarf and I am now the lucky owner of a selection of her best beads. The children got a little gift  from us before we revealed the real gifts to each other:
We had written letters to each other, saying what we appreciate about each other. The kids had also decorated their letters with pictures and ornaments.
We each read the 4 letters we had in our envelope out loud and when we were all done, it had started to get dark and the fire was burning out. We packed up and took a short walk over the historic bridge to a cave where we hoped to see glow worms – and we did!!! Those were really special Christmas lights on a very special Christmas!

On Christmas morning I made French toast, which equipped us for the long hike we undertook that day. We followed the Fox River, crossing it twice, to the Ballroom Overhang from where you can enter a rather deep limestone cave, with beautiful stalacnites and stalactites. Again, Lisa was a more eager caver than the others, who felt that it was creepy despite the headlamps we had brought for everyone. Lisa would then wait in the cave alone (!) until Axel had escorted the rest of us out, carrying Lea on his back.  When he returned, they went even deeper into the cave that had been discovered by a farmer in 1900 and has been visted by tourists ever since.  
It took us six hours to do the whole hike – our longest yet.

We drove on to Punakaiki, where we visited limestoneformations called Pancake Rocks and yet another cave, where we saw glowworms – again! When we passed a beach on the way to the cave our mobile phone suddenly had a signal, so we called our parents/grandparents to say or rather shout «Merry Christmas!» over the sound of the sea and  wahtever other sounds that are created when calling the other side of this planet.
I hope that also you have made your own special Christmas memory this year!

Silja: Wellington - Crossing - South Island

Golden Bay
FINALLY we have internet again! Sorry it took so long!

As I mentioned at the end of the last post: We had a great time with the lovely Valen family in Wellington, which started with a huge Taco-dinner with 14 people around the table on Friday and culminated in a gorgeous feast prepared by Jakob: A lamb casserole with oven potatoes, turnip mash, mozarella-tomato-rocket-salad. The talent for cooking obviously runs in the family, since son Johannes made a great chocolate cake, served with cream, strawberries and blueberries for dessert.

The next day we were all a bit sad to leave the Valen-family, Wellington and the North Island. When we said our good-byes, Ruth gave Lea a cuddly seal cub, which she has been holding ever since!

In front of the Split Apple
Even though it was very windy, when we took the ferry over to the South Island, it could have been a lot worse. We spent most of the time outside on deck, looking for dolphins and whales, but ended up taking a photo of a photo of a dolphin in the lounge... We saw albatrosses though!

Even though we met beautiful scenery on the South Island, it was so cold (around 10°C) and wet and windy that I struggled to enjoy it. Luckily the wind and therefor the weather turned and we are  now enjoying much warmer temperatures and just an occasional rain shower. As we learned on the radio, things had obviously been a lot worse a few days earlier: They have had unprecedented rainfall with numerous landslides (- here they call them “slips” which sounds half as bad), cutting people in remote areas off and forcing others to leave their homes. Most of the roads are open again, but we can still see the devastation. Riverbanks also show signs of recently much higher watermarks. The city of Nelson suffered badly, but things were almost back to normal, when we visited it. We were surprised by the size of this city, considering that only one million people live on the South Island. There was so much to see (and eat) that we forgot the time and thus found a parking ticket on our return. Bummer!

On our way to Motueka we passed “Jester's House”, a cafe with a large garden full of lovely details, art pieces, a playground and a creek, where eels in all sizes (some HUGE) were waiting for us to feed them with minced meet, which we had purchased in the cafe. After we had fed the eels it was time to feed ourselves with their glittering cupcakes, ice cream with gummy eels and affogatoes (which is espresso on ice cream).
The other half of that day was spent on a perfectly golden beach in Kikerikeri, in the rightfully called region of Golden Bay. When the tide came in and the sun went down it was time to move on. The beach had shrunk considerably and we were eager to see the Split Apple. It is really just a  big, round rock in the sea (at high tide) that is split in half, but to get to the secluded cove, you walk through dense forest, which then opens to this sandy beach with exciting caves and diving seabirds in the clear water.
We then left Golden Bay to drive westward. We went down to Bull River by a little fall and started to wash for gold with our dinner plates. We found quite a lot and were wondering whether it was all just fool's gold. Suddenly a group of rafters appeared and went ashore to check out the fall. Their guide asked what we were doing and when we answered that we probably were collecting a lot of fool's gold, he explained the difference and showed us the right washing technique, before throwing himself and his customers down the fall, which capsized one of the three rafts.
It is obvious that the Gold Rush is over and we are not quitting our jobs just yet, since we ended up with no gold and a lot of sand fly bites! Even Lisa, who was by far the most eager, realized that washing gold was a tough job and maybe this was not “the happiest day of my life!” after all. It was a great day though, no doubt!

We went to an old gold-mining-town and traced the footsteps of those who once – like Lisa – had been determined to find gold. In what is now dense forest again, you can see what is left from those days 150 years ago. Not much…
We drove on and reached the west coast. It was great to see the sea again and luckily Cape Foul Wind did not present itself worthy of its name. Here, in Tauranga Bay, we got to see seals!!! We saw a whole colony of animals in all sizes! This was also the first place we saw wekas, flightless birds that look quite like a Kiwi but with a shorter beak.
We then found a place right on a nearby beach, where we fell asleep to the sounds of the waves.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Since we do not know whether we will have internet access on Christmas Eve - or where exactly we will be -  we are already sending you 
SEASONS GREETINGS AND ALL THE BEST WISHES
here from Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand!
Lots of love from
Silja & Axel,
Lisa,
Niklas (who specificly requested a Christmas photo under a palm tree)
and Lea


Lisa: Lisa får en venn

Vi skulle besøke noen venner fra mamma og pappa. De var veldig snille. De hadde 4 barn som også var veldig snille de og. Den største het Johannes og etter det var det Ruth og så kom Jorunn og til sist var det Hannah.

Vi kjørte til en fin strand og i vannet var det fult av kjempestore sjøstjerner. Det var perfekt til å snorkle.
(Silja: Det var omtrent 12 varmegrader og ingen fikk lov eller hadde lyst til å snorkle!)


Wir besuchten Freunde von Mama und Papa.  Die waren sehr lieb. Die hatten 4 Kinder, die auch sehr lieb waren. Der älteste hiess Johannes, dann kam Ruth und dann Jorunn und zum Schluss kam Hannah.
Wir fuhren zu einem schönen Strand und im Wasser gab es riesige Seesterne. Das war perfekt zum Schnorcheln. (Silja: Es waren ungefähr 12 Grad und niemand durfte oder wollte schnorcheln.)

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Silja: Kakahi– Forgotten-World-Highway - Mt Taranaki - Wellington



I do not suppose anybody has ever heard of Kakahi, a tiny village off Highway 4 south east of Taumarunui, virtually in the middle of nowhere and thus not easy to find. We tried anyway because it said «Glow Worms» in our map. The strange thing was that that was our only information and it was not mentioned in any other tourist map of the area or on any signs. Kakahi was so dead that it took some time til we found somebody we could ask. We stopped a tractor on a farm and after some joking around with us, a young man jumped on a quad and showed us the way on unpaved roads (I sure hope the rental company is not reading this) through fields and meadows to the point where the narrow road cut rather deep into the terrain. The walls on either side were several meters high and overgrown by fern and higher up by trees, so the joining canopies gave it a cave-like appearance. We found a spot nearby to camp and returned after dinner, when it was getting dark. What we saw in there was magical! There were glow worms all over the walls, sitting together in what appeared to be clouds of stars forming dachshounds, horses, mermaids and many more. The really quite tired children were spellbound. Then Axel turned on his head lamp and picked up a few slimy worms off the wall for further inspection.

The next day we took the Forgotten-World – Highway from Taumarunui to Stratford. That was a great drive through deep gorges and  lush forests aswell as green hills. The weather was great, but the forecast was not, so we were hoping to catch a glimpse of Mt Taranaki (also known as Mt Egmont) befor sundown. We did see its perfect cone shape in a haze with the pointed, snowy topp sticking out of the clouds. We never saw its summit again... The weather was so bad that we went to the Aquatic Center in New Plymouth, to give the kids a chance to move and get clean at the same time. We walked along the seaside and through  the city center of this nice little city, until a major power cut put an end to it all. Some shops closed because the security system was out of order, while ohers were unable to work their cashregisters – and it started to rain again... We left New Plymouth and drove around the mountain the next day, but still no luck.

We drove on to Wangerei, a pictoresque town that looked good even in all this rain. Between spells we visited Victoria Park, where we walked around the lake, which was home to all kinds of ducks, geese, swans etc. and there were more birds to be seen in a walk-in- voliere. When it started to rain again, we fled to an indoor «Winter Garden» with a Chistmas theme and an artsy outdoor gallery attached to it. Here the theme was «Looking at you looking at me» an my sister Christin would have loved it!

The next day it was raining constantly! We drove towards Wellington and the only time we left the motorhome was to walk through Waitarere forest, where - according to Axel – the scene of Gollum talking to himself about «Precious» was filmed. The weather was actually perfect for that eerie setting!

When arrived in Wellington it was still raining but now Marit and Jakob opened their big, beautiful  house with four great kids to play with. We are all having a blast! After a day in Wellington and the  Te Papa museum we are now preparing dinner - or truth be told: Jakob cooks and we pretend to help. This is cooking on a whole different level than what Königs do... Looking forward to this mouth watering happening!

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Niklas: uke 7 / Woche 7

Søndag var et uvær og vi kjørte rett gjennom det. På mandagen badet vi i store bølger i havet. Senere snorklet vi i en innsjø. Alt var veldig moro.  Neste dag badet vi i en grønn, varm og stor innsjø. På fredagen kjørte vi ti en plass der Lisa, Lea og jeg lekte indianere og så laget Lisa et bål, som Lea ødela. Da ble Lisa lei seg til jeg hadde lagt det på nytt. Det ble et fint bål og jeg syns det var den beste kvelden!

Am Sonntag fuhren wir durch ein Unwetter. Am Montag haben wir in hohen Wellen am Meer gebadet. Später schnorchelten wir in einem See. Das war sehr lustig. Am nächsten Tag badeten wir in einem grossen, grünen und warmen See. Am Freitag fuhren wir zu einem Platz, wo ich mit Lisa und Lea Indianer spielte und Lisa bereitete ein Feuer vor, das Lea zerstörte. Da waurde Lisa traurig und ich habe es wieder aufgebaut. Das wurde ein tolles Feuer und der beste Abend!


Silja: Rotorua – Lake Taupo – Tongariro Ntl. Park



Rotorua is a quiet cozy town that is renowned for its mineral and geothermal resources as well as being the heartland of Maori culture. It is a mix of English Tudor architecture and Maori wood carved elements and buildings.
There is a huge thermal area in Kirau Park and it took us almost a whole day to look at all the boiling water pots, bubbling mud, steaming lakes – including a picnic, a round on the playground and soaking our feet in the warm basins that we shared with a group of Japanese people.

When I woke up the next day I found that constant sulphur smell hard to take on an empty stomach, but we were not ready to leave Rotorua yet. We visited a Maori marae (a community house) and burial site. Under several of what looked like storm water inlets you could see and hear boiling water, which they told us are still used by the Maori to cook food in. In some places, hot water and steam had found their way through cracks in the pavement and one really had to watch ones step and ones children!

We then walked the trail from the Polynesian Spa to the Sportsdrome along the sulphurous banks of Lake Rotorua. Seeing all those sinter terraces and yellow sulphur crystals around steaming or even roaring holes made us all forget how hungry we really were. When we arrived at the camper van it started to rain heavily, which made lunch even more cozy!

On our way out of Rotorua we passed Te Puia and saw the Pohutu-Geyser erupt. Even though it is the largest in the valley, we were quite disappointed and even the kids (who have not been to Iceland nor Yellowstone Park) did not seem too impressed. The greatest experience of the day was yet to come:
In the Waimangu Thermal Valley we found a place to stay the night right next to a very green, steaming lake with a beautiful backdrop of green hills that let off steam here and there. The water temperature was perfect at about 35ºC but still I would not have dared to go in with more than just my feet since one could not see the bottom. Axel, however, went straight in which was the queue for the kids to tear off their clothes and follow behind. Soon we were all lying in the green, warm water while the sun was setting.

The next morning we found out that the lake and the nearby Kerosene Creek ( a warm creek with pools) were not quite as unknown as we thought and we had to put on bathing suits for the morning bath due to tourists passing or stopping, taking pictures.

We then carried on to Lake Taupo, the biggest lake in Australasia, visiting Huka Falls on the way. We shared the experience of seeing enormous water masses «in action» with a lot of Japanese people that all had a hard time trying to take pictures of each other standing at a banister with a waterfall bellow...

We found a beautiful camping spot right on one of Lake Taupos beaches, where we were hanging out for quite some time reading, snorkeling, collecting white volcanic stones and fighting off black swans. (They are fearless! No wonder they have become endangered. I had to throw stones to defend my hysterical 3-year-old and her shrieks usually do the trick!)

Despite the late start we made it to our next destination: Tongariro National Park. Suddenly this trip seems to have turned into a pilgrimage for Axel, since parts of “Lord of the Rings” were filmed here. Thus he refers to Mt Ngauruhoe only as “Mt Doom” and turns into quite the film-director himself, making the kids run towards him in front of it with “weapons”(i.e.sticks) in their hands and angry faces – not really convincing in flying summer dresses...
The next day Axel had his personal Frodo-experience when climbing his Mt Doom (2291m) on all fours. He missed his “Sam” carrying his food and says the person in question will know whom he means…