Stewart island, queenstown, mt Cook, Christchurch

Even though Stewart island has some of the worst weather patterns in New Zealand, the weather I got was brilliant. Most of the time it was blue sky with only some clouds and the temperature was very decent (about 15 deg).
With that kind of weather we had good possibilities for walking what we did a lot. On the first day however we watched a movie first. It was a local movie about the history of Stewart and the narrator was a dog. The movie was therefor appropriately called "a local's tail". It had a lot of humour and gave of some nice insights about what "island time" is. You hear every islander talk about it and it is supposed to be the great relaxing times on the island if the weather is good and you can go fish a bit or lay on the beach.
At night we did today's walk. We wanted to see penguins, muttonbird and kiwi, which are all creatures that can only be spotted at night. It was a fun experience walking in the dark (we had our lights mostly turned off to not scare the other birds) and quite tricky sometimes as well, but we made it to the lighthouse where we spotted ourselves some titi, which are a bit like boobies and no, I'm not talking about what men constantly think about, it are both seabirds that go to shore at night.
On our way back we spotted 3 little blue penguins, but the kiwis didn't show up. We heard them walking around us quite close but unfortunately we couldn't find them.
The next day we went by water taxi to Ulva island. Ulva island is a bird sanctuary where there are no rats, possums and weasels. That way birds do not have enemies there and are not shy to humans at all. We saw some kaka, a bird not poo, that really didn't mind us getting closer than 1,5 m. Eventually it flew away and we had to duck or it would've hit us.
My last day on Stewart was a nice walk to the "chain". New Zealand has 3 major islands which all have a meaning. The northern island is the fish that Maui (ancestral being) tried to catch, the souther island is Maui's canoe that flipped and Stewart island is the anchor stone. That is why there are two massive chain sculptures that symbolically state that Stewart island still is considered the anchor stone.

On my way to Queenstown I met Sam again. Sam is a Dutch guy that lives in Rotterdam and even knows my sister and some of my friends, which is quite odd. Hungry as we were we decided to get a Ferg burger, the best burgers of New Zealand. We both took the basic one and it was so big and delicious. We ate it at the harbour during sunset with a guy playing piano next to us, it quite set the tone.
Next day was frisbee golf day. In Queenstown they have a 18 hole park where you can play frisbee golf. It was very fun. We did it with Julie and Linnea which I keep running into.
On my final day in Queenstown Sam and I did the tiki trail. That is a track up Queenstown mountain and on top you have the luge. The luge is kind of a downhill track for small sledges with wheels and it was so fun. In the evening we decided to eat a Ferg burger again. This time however I wanted to try the Big Al, Ferg's biggest burger with 1/2 lb of quality beef, 2 eggs, 2 layers of cheese, 2 layers of bacon, relish and a whole lot of aioli. It was huge and so delicious, I think the best burger I ever had. Funny thing we even were still a bit hungry afterwards.

Now in Mt Cook we had some amazing views of icebergs, glaciers avalanches and it didn't end there, Mt Cook is amazing and the scenery around the path to hooker valley is no exception. Everything around me really looked photoshopped. The colours where too surreal.

After Mt Cook we stopped at some other insignificant places, such as Rangitata and Kaikoura and went to Christchurch afterwards.

Even though every person said that Christchurch is really not worth visiting after the 2011 earthquakes I really had to see it for myself.
First thing you notice if you drive around there is that the roads are bad and that half of the buildings is abandoned or destroyed.
Especially the center is in bad shape. You really have to walk around the "red zone" because they are still demolishing the buildings and cleaning all the scrap left behind.
It is true that you can't even spent half a day in Christchurch as there is nothing to see except the restart mall (aka the container mall) and the botanical gardens. Luckily there was the world buskers festival, which is a 10 day festival with lots of street performers, some very good others quite bad. Julie and I actually took a day to see some of them. We started by seeing the Flying Dutchmen, which were Dutch, obviously. I already saw them walking around with an Etos bag and spoke with then in advance. I should've known that they would make fun with me afterwards. I had to get on the stage and battle a 4-year old boy who could balance a ball on our finger the longest. They let me lose big time which was quite funny. The first time it fell right of my finger and they said that for a fellow Dutchie I could have a second chance if I would use my pinky, after which 5 seconds was my record, which was 4 seconds short of the little boy. Unfortunately I did not win that new car that day.
The other shows were also quite cool, there was an acrobatics group that did sick things and were jaw dropping, even though they made some mistakes and the last one Julie and I saw was Alakazam. He is a contortionist which means he is very nimble and could fit his body and a rugby ball through a squash racket simultaneously. He had a great sense of humour and did sick things as well. His grand finale was standing on a 4 m high pole juggling 3 blades while spinning a massive double blade on his chin, pretty awesome I must say.
These artists made my day in boring Christchurch and made it a good experience. Now I am waiting on the airport though, spending the night actually, and will go to Cairns soon. Really looking forward to it.