Misha's Travel Journal

Beloved fam­ily and friends

It’s been a long long long long long long looooooooong time since my last post and I am very sorry, if you have started to get impa­tient… no actu­ally not… for that I enjoyed my time trav­el­ling with­out hav­ing to write a jour­nal all the time to much

Hmmm… I just check now when I cre­ated my last post — 15^th fo April?!?! 3 months noth­ing?!?! Haha… ha… ehm… yeah okay… I am sorry.

Since I moved to a hos­tel in the city cen­ter of Kuala Lumpur I made tons of new expe­ri­ences. Yes, tons. Not kilos. Tons. Because I don’t want to seat here hours after hours typ­ing (and prob­a­bly before I want to save the post the com­puter is going to crash) I will give you a short resume. Very short. I warned you now so please don’t be disappointed…

I spent a bit more then a month in Malaysia. Most of the time I lived in KL at my uncle Stanley’s house. My next des­ti­na­tion was Sin­ga­pore, where I spent over a month. I lived at my aunty’s place, which is about 45 min­utes out­side the city cen­ter with pub­lic trans­port. And I used the pub­lic trans­port a lot. I like the Sky­train by the way. It’s very convenient.

From Sin­ga­pore I flew directly to Bangkok, where I met up with some friends — Phueng, San­dro, Santi and Nena (Actu­ally she’s from South-Africa liv­ing in Aus­tralia at the moment, but she is Santi’s girl­friend, which auto­mat­i­cally makes her my friend) — back from Switzer­land. And it was so much fun. Guys (with guys I also mean the ladies of course) I had an awe­some time with you! It was so nice to have some friends around me from back home after such a long time!

Since the 17^th of July I am now in Viet­nam. I came here with Phuong. We arrived in Ho Chi Minh — also known as Saigon — and later we vis­ited her rel­a­tives in Vung Tau. Phuong had to fly home on the 21^st, so I was on my own after that…To bad she had to leave me after such a short time, because the next stop was good. It would have been fan­tas­tic if I could have shared my time there with some­one… but as you now, I am used to trav­el­ling on my own by now, so I also sur­vived these few lon­ley days

Today (I am back now in Ho Chi Minh — also known as Saigon, as I said before) I vis­ited the Cu Chi Tun­nels, which was really inter­est­ing. They started to build these tun­nels in 1945 against the French and extended the tun­nels dur­ing the Viet­nam war to lay siedge to Saigon. They extended the tun­nels to a length of 200km in three lay­ers… It’s really amaz­ing. Just the rea­son they had to do it is sad.

Any­way. Now I am wait­ing for my bus which is leav­ing in about 5 hours to Cam­bo­dia. The bus ride is going to take approx­i­mately 14 hours?!?! I just hope I am going to have enough space for my legs, which I doubt as all the Viet­namese are max­i­mum 1.50m tall — just kid­ding
So tomor­row I am going to be in Siem Reap, which is next to Angkor Wat — the only rea­son why I go to Cam­bo­dia. I am plan­ning to stay there 2–3 nights and then off to Bangkok again.
Oh yeah. Bangkok again. For the third time since I started my jour­ney. I just love that city and I miss the peo­ple there… I met so many cool guys (with guys I also mean the ladies of course).

So… already done. I hope you enjoy read­ing this post. I’m plan­ning to make one more before I fly back on the 18^th of August, but no promises made…

Take care, all of you guys (with guys I also mean the ladies of course)! Miss you. Love you. And soon… see you

PS: If you like to now where exactly  I’ve been so far: Check out the link ‘Travel Map’ in the nav­i­ga­tion bar. I just updated it. Cheerio!

Hello dear folks

I hope you haven’t been get­ting depressed with­out my blog update for such a long long long long long long time.
So… I am try­ing to make it now up to you start­ing with a long long long long long post.

First about my last days in New Zealand:
Most of my last days I have spent with Tobi and with Nina (who left us a few days ear­lier before Tobi flew to Syd­ney). They were a great com­pany for the road­trips through ‘The  Coro­man­dels’ and the North­lands (only with Tobi).
The high­lights of these trips were:

- Hot Water Beach: Dig­ging a hot pool at the beach and watch a clear night sky.
– The Pin­na­cles: A day walk were we had been tramp­ing. On the top we had a spec­tac­u­lar view over the pin­na­cles.
– 90 Miles Beach: In fact the beach is ‘only’ 90 kilo­me­ters long. But it was fan­tas­tic. We had a beach as far as we could see com­pletely for our­selves… except for some peo­ple walk­ing by some­times.
– Cape Reinga: We just arrived in time to see the sun set­ting at Cape Reinga. It was a fan­tas­tic show… bet­ter then any block­buster movie! Right Tobi?
– Sand Dunes: South of Cape Reinga we found our­selves the largest sand dunes of New Zealand. We had a fun time out there.

Since the first of April I am now in Malaysia. Most of my time I have spend at my uncle Stanley’s house close to Kuala Lumpur. Here I am hang­ing out with my cousins Joe­joe, Ming Li and Wyn­hann… aye aye aye… they have more energy then a thou­sand rab­bits on extasy But I am enjoy­ing my time here.
I have been also to Malacca for a few days. There I was again in the backpacker’s life. Shar­ing a room with other trav­el­ers, exchang­ing rec­om­men­da­tions and sto­ries and dis­cov­er­ing places together. After Malacca I went to Tangkak were the most of my rel­a­tives are liv­ing. Together we drove back to Kuala Lumpur for the chi­nese cel­e­bra­tion called Qing­ming. That was on Sat­ur­day the 10^th. Since then I am back now in my unlce’s place and hav­ing some relax­ing days to plan my next trips. So… tomor­row I will move into a youth hos­tel some­where in the city cen­ter, where I hope­fully meet some­one who likes to have some com­pany to travel through Malaysia.

So… I am now look­ing for­ward for a week­end in the city and some relax­ing days on a pretty beach

Cheeeeeee­ri­oooooo!

By the way: The post wasn’t that long long long long long at all, was it? (Please note: This is an rhetoric question)

In this post I will give you the high­lights since the 11.03 till 16.03.

These days I’ve spent with Nina (from Ger­many, our newest fel­low­ship whom we met in Napier on the 10.03) and Tobias. Together we now have been trav­el­ing from Napier up the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand to the When­u­akite in ‘The Coro­man­dels’.

East Cape – 11. — 12.03: The three of us drove all the way to the point far­thest east of New Zealand: The so called ‘East Cape’ – who would have guessed? There we wanted to watch the sun­rise at the light­house (15min uphill walk from where we slept) in the next morn­ing… but we missed it. Cauz we would have had to wake up at 5:00 a.m. and that would have been much tooooooo early

So, after we finally woke up (around 10 a.m.), we walked up to the light­house (which is also the wold’s far­thest east light­house) and then we con­tin­ued our trip to Whakatane. We made sev­eral stops along the way to pick nick, enjoy the views & beaches.

Tau­ranga 13.03: We arrived in Tau­ranga from Whakatane and went first up the Mount Maun­ganui from where we had a great view over Tau­ranga and it’s sur­round­ings. In the evening we went out to shake our bod­ies on a dance floor: It was much fun, but we (espe­cially me and Tobi) needed to go to sleep after a while as we just were exhausted.

Rotorua 14.03: We arrived in Rotorua and went sight­see­ing in the town. The spe­cial thing about the town is, that all over the place they are ther­mal areas where damp is com­ing up from under­ground and you can smell them every­where – it smells like rot­ten eggs.

In the evening we went to a camp­ing ground where we’ve paned to spend the night. There we rented some fish­ing gear and went fish­ing. Tobi, our hero of the day, was able to catch a trout which I killed (still hav­ing a bad feel­ing about killing a poor fish). Any­way, we steamed the fish at the camp­ing ground and ate it. It was soooooo deli­cious! Yummy!

Waihi Beach – 15.03: Nina and me went on a trip close to Rotorua: ‘The Squeeze’. First we start in a jet boat and went up a river. Our cap­tain explained the area while he drove us to a warm stream. When we arrived there we went out of the boat and walked up the stream to a warm water­fall. To reach the water­fall we needed to ‘squeeze’ our way through a nar­row way. At the water­fall there was also a pool (water tem­per­a­ture: 38 degrees) were we had a good & relax­ing time.

Back at the boat we climbed in and drove the river down. This time we trav­eled faster and our cap­tain made some turns which was tons of fun.

Back at the begin­ning we waited to get picked up by Tobi and then we con­tin­ued our trip to Waihi Beach, where we spent the night in the car at the Beach.

When­u­akite 16.03 (today): We arrived today in When­u­akite from Waihi Beach. Later in the night we will go to the ‘Hot Water Beach’ to dig our­selves a pool where we can chill in and drink some wine.

Hi folks

I am back now on the North Island of New Zealand and I am now try­ing to do the East Coast.
Here the high­lights of the past few days, since I left Akaroa:

Kaik­oura — 05.03: Katja and me went on a’Whale Watch’. And we did see a sperm whale for a cou­ple of min­utes before it dove. Because of bad weather, we had to go closer to the coast, where we have seen tons of dol­phines.
Later in the evening we had our ‘Far­well Din­ner’ as I wanted to move on to Pic­ton to catch a ferry back to the North Island and Katja wanted to go to Nel­son to start work­ing (sil­ver jew­ellery craft­ing) there.

Ton­gariro National Park — 09.03: In Welling­ton, where I spent my week­end, I met Tobias (Ger­man dude) with whom I am now trav­el­ling with. The two of us left Welling­ton on the 8^th of March and drove directly to the Ton­gariro National Park, where we slept in the car for the night. On the next day we did the Ton­gariro Cross­ing. We both searched for the ring and this time we also went up to the top of the Vol­cano… but noooooo ring! Again I failed in my quest… but I won’t give up! I will never quit! NEEEEEVEEEEEEEER!!!
Any­way… after our (it felt like 20 hours) track, we needed some spa. So we found our­self an hot pool, where we relaxed for a good hour.

Napier — 10.03 (today): We drove like 3 hours to Napier (city on the East Coast — please google it for more infor­ma­tion), where we going to start our ‘East Coast Trip’ and I am sure it’s going to be leg­end– wait for it … –dary! Yeah! So… I will let you know how our ‘East Coast Trip’ was when I am back online!
Cheers to all my dear fam­ily, friends & all my per­sonal stalkers!

As I like the struc­ture of my lat­est report, I will cre­ate this one in the same way with all the high­lights of the past 8 days, which I’ve been trav­el­ing with Ninon & Katja:

Lake Pukaki — Tues­day 23.02 : We drove from Oamaru (where we’ve seen the pen­guins) to Lake Pukaki where we planed to camp for a night. From the camp­ing ground we had a good view on Mount Cook (high­est moun­tain in New Zealand). The rea­son we wanted to camp there was because Katja heard that on the camp­ing ground there is a tram­po­line where one can take cool pho­tos of peo­ple jump­ing in front of scenery of Mount Cook. That meant a lot of jump­ing for the day.

Mount Cook — Wednes­day 25.02: I (yes, me alone — kind like a lonely wolf: OuOu­u­u­u­u­u­uuu..!) made a climb to the so called ‘Mueller’s Hut’ which lays at 1800 meter and pro­vides a 360-degree panorama on encom­pass­ing glac­i­ers, ice cliffs, ver­ti­cal rock faces and New Zealand’s high­est peaks (High­est is Mount Cook with 3,754 meters). The 5.4km track to the hut took me about 3 hours. The track is con­stantly ver­ti­cal (my impres­sion) so it’s no won­der I was quite exhausted when I reached the hut and had my well deserved lunch. On the way up I met Etaim, Omri and Ran again by chance. That was quite funny: I was breath­ing ‘like a frog which was held in a cage full of smoke and just came out of it’ while I climbed up my eyes con­stantly focused on the stones in front of me when I heard a famil­iar voice call­ing out my name. And I was just like: ‘What the heck is going on? … Who is that guy? … Uh?… UH?! Omri?!’.
Jep… quite a story right? Any­way. Bot­tom line: I head a great & exhaust­ing day climb­ing up to the track with unex­pected delights on my way up.

Christchurch — Sat­ur­day 27.02: We arrived in Christchurch after a long drive from Lake Tekapo (Beau­ti­ful lake in the color of a clear-summer-sky) and checked-in into our hos­tel: a prison which has been altered into a hos­tel. So you can say I slept for the first time in my life in jail with­out doing any­thing illegal.

Christchurch and Akaroa — Tues­day 02.03: My long term fel­low­ship (Ninon) and I had to sep­a­rate as she had to fly to Auck­land to await her flight to Syd­ney. So the day before we went have din­ner at the ‘Two fat Indi­ans’ and had a deli­cious meal.
After Katja and I said good­bye to her, the two of us con­tin­ued our trip and drove (in two cars) to Akaroa. In the evening Kaja showed me how to knot cool bracelets (She made me one the day before, because it looked so cool I asked her how she did it). So I am now a owner of a cool-Misha-self-made-bracelet. Yeah! Thanks Katja!

Akaroa — Wednes­day 03.03 (today): Because of clouds we didn’t made a tramp. That’s why I had now plenty of time to write this blog. And before I just went out with Katja to have some kickin’ ass fish&chips and a awe­some chees­burger. Yummi! Now Kaja is carv­ing her­self a neck­lace made of ‘green­stone’ while I am updat­ing my blog. Yep I know: Sweeeeet as bro!

Tomor­row fore­cast: We are maybe going to kayak a bit in Akaroa and hope to see some dol­phins. Later we are going to con­tinue our trip up the East Coast.  I’ll let you know what we did as always
Once again my thanks to you for read­ing my blog!

Spe­cial Thanks to Ninon: My travel com­pan­ion for more then a month (20.01 — 02.03.2010). I am thank­ful for these days and I enjoyed them a lot! I hope you’re hav­ing a great time in Auck­land & Syd­ney! And I wish you the best for back home with your fam­ily, friends & future!

Cheers Mate!

Heeeel­looooooo theeeere!

As it’s a looooooong time ago, since I updated my blog, I will give you my high­lights in a ‘day-by-day-with-not-every-day-mentioned-overview’… so here it comes start­ing with…

Wanaka — Fri­day the 5^th: After my last report I went sky­div­ing as I told you I am going to do: It was soooo much fun! Falling from 15’000 feet for 60 sec­onds with a speed of 200km/h, is a won­der­ful thing which makes you feel really alive. I only can rec­om­mend it to you, to try it out once.

Wanaka — Sat­ur­day the 6^th: Ninon & I did a 3 hour track called ‘Rob Roy Track’ which leads to a view­point where you have an amaz­ing view over the Rob Roy Glac­ier. Imag­ine a glac­ier between the capes of two moun­tains, lying there in the shape of a ‘V’. And fur­ther down you can see around ten water­falls giv­ing it’s water to a small and crys­tal clear river. Yep, it’s a beau­ti­ful scenery. And while we watched tons of water pour­ing down the moun­tain, we had a small lunch on a warm sum­mer day in a green valley.

Wanaka — Sun­day the 7^th: In the evening we went to the local cin­ema with some Israeli friends (Nurit, Eitam, Omri, Ran). We watched Sher­lock Holmes — Great movie! But even bet­ter was the cin­ema: Inside there where couches and even a small car to sit in and enjoy the movie and in the break you could go out and have a pizza which you have ordered before the movie started or buy some fresh baked cook­ies. Ohh­hhh, I love those cookies!

Wanaka — Mon­day the 8^th: Our Israeli friends invited us for a Israeli break­fast called — I don’t know how to spell it, so I just write how it is to pro­nounced — ‘Shak­shuka’ (Or some­thing like that). It was deeeel­i­cou­u­u­uus! For this high­light of the day I wanna say to Nurit, Omri, Eitam and last but not least Ran (chief): Thank you sooooooooooo much!

Arrow Town — Thurs­day the 11^th: From Queen­stown we drove out to a small town called Arrow Town, to do a half-a-day-tramp. On the tramp we could see some scenery you can see in the ‘Lord of the Ring’ movie. It reminded me a lot of Switzer­land. But the town itself was an old chines set­tle­ment, which was held in an west­ern stile… I don’t know what one thing has to do with the other one, but it looked nice

Mil­ford Sound — Fri­day the 12^th: After dri­ving like 4–5 hours from Queen­stown to Mil­ford Sound, we were already quite tired when we arrived in the evening. So we where very grate­ful, when some Israelis we never have met before invited us to a ‘Sabbat-Dinner-on-Friday’. Hmmm… very goooooooood foooooood!
After the din­ner me met some old friends of Ninon (Anika, Clem & Katja). We decided to do a cruise together on the next day.

Mil­ford Sound — Sat­ur­day the 13^th: We (Ninon, Anika, Clem, Katja and me) went on a ‘Mil­ford Sound Cruise’: Fan­tas­tic scener­ies! Moun­tains going up nearly ver­ti­cal to your right and the left. And every now and then you see beau­ti­ful water­falls com­ing down and in them you some­times can see some rain­bows appear­ing. Ah yeah…there were also some seals lying around on some rocks… but seals can’t beat water­falls with rain­bows. With RAINBOWS IN WATERFALLS! RAAAAAINBOOOOWS!
Later in the evening the five of us played some card games: ‘Janiv’ (A game which a israeli teached me in Taupo) and ‘Fuck the neigh­bours’ (regards to David Voege, who teached me the game back in Switzer­land and also regards to the Lodestone-fuck-the-neighbour-players)

Lake Mar­ian — Sun­day the 14^th: There was a 3-hour track which led up to Lake Mar­ian: a small lake embed between Moun­tains. When we arrived a the bank of the lake, we couldn’t see any­thing because of a stu­pid mist. Stu­pid mist! So out of frus­tra­tion we ate our stuff we brought along — I only had an apple — and tried to stare away the stu­pid Mist. STUPID mist! But over com­bined star­ing power wasn’t a mach with the stu­pid mist. STUPID mist!
So after a while we gave up and started to walk back. And then. Sud­denly. The cur­tain of fog lifted and we were able to see the clear green water of the lake. We could see the bank on the other side of the lake. And we could see the sur­round­ing moun­tains. So what our star­ing couldnt accom­plish, our sad­ness could. Yea­haaa sad­ness! Sadness:1 — Stu­pid Mist: 0! Take that you stu­pid Mist! Eat sh**!

The Catlins — Tues­day the 16^th: The cat­lines is the south part of New Zealand and looks a lot like Scot­t­land. As I’ve never been in Scot­t­land, I just tell you here what I’ve heard. But it was very green with a hips of sheeps on rolling hills. That’s also what I imag­ine when I think of Scot­t­land… so I think the rumors are true. We made a few stops to see some stuff along the way, like the southest point of the South Island of New Zealand and three water­falls — cool stuff these water­falls. Makes me won­der­ing where all this water is com­ing from. Hahaha… joke. Of course I know where the water is com­ing from. It comes from a huge hid­den water reser­voir up in the sky… or some­thing like that. Yeeep, that’s right!

Dunedin — Thurs­day the 18^th till Sat­ur­day the 20^th: Nice city. I rec­om­mend you to go there, if you should ever decide to visit New Zealand. So… if you’re ask­ing your­self what my high­light was: It was the city itself
Oh yeah… and the mus­sles we had for din­ner on the 20^th. I like mus­sles. And also on the 20^th Katja (a friend of Ninon which I met in Mil­ford) joined us. So it’s now the three of us who trav­els together (but Katja has her own car).

Otago — Sun­day the 21^st: We went to ‘Sand­fly Bay’: A lot of sand is fly­ing around there. And it felt like all the sand flew directly into my eyes all the time… stu­pid fly­ing sand! Why don’t the warn vis­i­tors with a sign like: ‘Care­ful! Fly­ing sand.’ Stu­ipd fly­ing sand!

But the bay itself was very nice. We had to walk down a sand dune to reach the beach where we had our lunch, while the stu­pid sand flew in my eyes and mouth!. But any­way. It was really nice. (Except of the fly­ing sand which — have I men­tioned it already? — flew in my eyes all the time!)
Later that day we went to watch some ‘Royal Alba­trosses’ fly­ing around. Cool birds. And while we watched them we had a beau­ti­ful view.

Oamaru — Mon­day the 22^nd (aka today): We have seen some pen­guins this evening. Two passed me in a dis­tance of only one meter, while I was sit­ting on the floor and adjusted the set­tings for my cam­era. And then when they reached the per­fect dis­tance for me to take a photo, I pressed the but­ton aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… the dis­play said: ‘Bat­tery is empty!’ Stu­ipd Bat­tery! How­ever. It was fun to see the pen­guins walk­ing past me. It’s so funny to watch them walk Cute lit­tle penguins.

WOOOOOW! That’s it! I’m done! It only took me some­thing like thou­sand hours to write this post. Sweet! So… as it is now 00:20 a.m. I will go and have my earned sleep. Yeeee­haaaaa: Sleeeeeeep! Just the sound of the word when I am whis­per­ing it to myself.… sleeeeep… wow… makes me wanna smash my  head on the key­board to knock me out instantly. So… I am bet­ter of now… my mind is get­ting.… hmm… weird… so I hope you enjoyed this blog! I hope it took you at least 10 hours to read it. So it would make the 1000 hours writ­ing worth
Cheerio!

G’day mates!

Hur­rray! As you can see, I sur­vived the 3 days Abel Tas­man sail­ing trip! It was a very nice trip. On the first day we have been walk­ing for maybe 4 hours until we built up our tents and went swim­ming on a beau­ti­ful beach. The next two days we have been kayak­ing along the coast. On that trip we have seen tons of nice beaches & lots of seals. One seal has been swim­ming just one meter away from my kayak. They are so cute, so I couldn’t eat any of them…

After Abel Tas­man we drove to Golden Bay. A place full of Hip­pies. Hehehe… was quite funny and there were again a lot of beau­ti­ful spots to see.

From there we have been trav­el­ing down the West Coast — Again we’ve seen a lot of nice spots. I won’t go into detail here… I will just try to upload some pic­tures later.

When we arrived in Franz Josef, we mad a 6 hour track until we reached a view point, from where we had a rock­ing view on to the Franz Josef Glacier.

Yes­ter­day we arrived in Wanaka. A really nice town between two lakes and a lot of moun­tains sur­round­ing and some glac­i­ers close by. A per­fect spot for a Sky­dive… so I will go sky­div­ing in 2 hours. 60 sec­onds free fall. 15’000 feet height. Awsooooooome!

Sooo… I am now going to start prepar­ing myself men­tally… hope you all are well & hav­ing a good time!

Cheers mates!

Hello World!

After I wrote my last post, I went back to the hos­tel, after walk­ing through Taupo. In the evening I met two girls (Jenny & Vera) with whom I decided to go on the ‘Ton­gariro Cross­ing’ (famous from the movie ‘Lord of the rings as ‘Mount Doom’). So we went to sleep very early as we had to wake up at 5am to drive out to the track. When we arrived there on the next day at 7.30am, they told us, that the track is going to be closed, because of a sud­den change of the weather. Aaaaaall the way back to Taupo we decided to make another track­ing, where we’ve seen some gey­sers. After that we went for a swim in a hot spring. And after that I did.… oh yeah… the Bungeeeeeee Juu­u­u­u­ump! Woooohoooooo!

47 meters adren­a­lin over a river. Sadly I was to light and I wasn’t able to dive into the river But even so, I had a great time hang­ing upside down on a rope… I have to admit, I was quite scared when I stood on the edge… but giv­ing up was never an option I hope the jump pre­pared me a bit for my planed jump in Queen­stown which is going to be 134meters — oh shit!

In the evening an other girl (Nora) came up to me and asked me if she could join us for the cross­ing which we wanted to do on the next day now. Of course we brought her along . As Vera wasn’t able to come along this time Jenny, Nora and I left the next morn­ing again to the start of the track and this time there was no prob­lem and we could do the 7 hour track.
The track was really amaz­ing. I can’t say I have ever seen some­thing like that. I am sad to tell you, that I wasn’t able to find the ring… so you all will remain as a free peo­ple… to bad.
If you can’t wait until I am able to upload some pho­tos, you should search google for ‘Ton­gariro Crossing’.

After the track we drove to Wan­ganui where we spent a night and vis­ited a black sand beach. From there we con­tin­ued to Paekakariki (here it’s maybe a good time to men­tion, that I have a lot of prob­lems with the names of some places here…). From there we headed to Welling­ton where we stayed for a night. The next day only Nora and me took the ferry to Pic­ton, because poor Jenny sadly had to return to Sweden.

In Pic­ton we spent two nights, so we had on day to relax and pre­pare for the south island of New Zealand. There we met also some new girls which until now trav­eled with us: Ninon from Ger­many, Selina and Noemi from Switzer­land. So finally I can speak some Swiss-German again, I already started to for­get how to speak it

Now we are in Nel­son and today we have been to a local mar­ket and I bought myself a rain jacket, which I really going to need on the com­ing days in the south. Tomor­row we are mak­ing a 3 day tour to Abel Tas­man, where we are going to do some track­ing and kayak­ing. It’s going to be aaaaaw­soooome! (I bought enough food today… oth­er­wise we need to eat one of the girls… hmmm… shouldn’t be that bad if it comes to it — hehehe).

I hope I won’t get lost in the open sea with my kayak, so I can write you once more when the tour is done… till then: have a great time!

Love, Misha

Jo there!

I am now in New Zealand. So far so good. I love it!

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That’s all

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Bye, till next time!

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Hahaha… just kid­ding… after two weeks of silence I owe you a bit more then that, my loyal read­ers

Sooooooo… I arrived in New Zealand on the 6^th of Jan­u­ary. My uncle William picked me up from the air­port in Auck­land and brought me to his home in How­ick (40minutes from Auck­land CBD by bus). There I had a very nice time, where I pre­pared my ‘New Zealand Roadtrip’.

And belive it or not. My uncle offered me his sec­ond car to doing my trip — Thank you so much William for this & every­thing else! I really enjoyed my time at you place!

On Mon­day the 11^th of Jan­u­ary I hit the road (on the left side — at the begin­ning I had some prob­lems with the indi­ca­tor… i don’t know why, but instead of the indi­ca­tor the wiper went off… hmmm.…) to Raglan over Hamil­ton. In Raglan I have been camp­ing for two nights… my tent let some water through the first night, so I had to build a roof over the tent on the sec­ond night… Next time I’ll just sleep in the car if it’s going to rain hehehe…

After Raglan, which has a black sand beach, I went to Wait­omo, where I went for an 8 hour ‘Wait­omo Cave Tour’ with a 100 meter abseil — Yeeee­haaaaa! It was really fun… We had to swim, crawl, dive and climb through the cave — really a fun thing to do I hope I am soon able to upload some pho­tos of that tour, so you can get an impres­sion

Today I arrived now in Taupo (google it, if you like to learn more about this place, hehehe). So… for Taupo I am plan­ing: Swim­ming in a hot ther­mal river, bungee jump­ing (my first one) where I am going to dive into a river with my upper body and I also want to do the ‘Ton­gariro Cross­ing’ which is a track­ing tour to ‘Mount Doom’ of the movie ‘Lord of the rings’ — I’m hop­ing I am able to find the ring… I really think Frodo haven’t made it and lost the ring some­where at the feet of the moun­tain… and then I am going to rull the world! MUUHAHAHHAHAHA!

So… if I am able to find it, the next time I will see you I am going to be the new emperor of the world and you all going to be my slaves — muha­haha! … if I am not able to find it, then just for­get all about what I just said… it was a joke… it really was.

Soooooooooo.… once again, I wish you all the best & hope you had a great 2010 so far!

Chee­rio, Misha

I hope all of you had a great Christ­mas & great start into 2010!

After a loooooong time of silence I am finally able to update my jour­nal… so let me tell  you about the last two weeks:

We went on a three days sail­ing trip around the  ‘White­sun­days’. There we did some snor­kel­ing and we vis­ited the ‘White Heav­ens Beach’ and as the name sais it, the beach is really as white as snow… We were back in Air­lie Beach, where we started the sail­ing trip, on the 24^th of Decem­ber (when nor­mal peo­ple cel­e­brate Christ­mas eve) and went later to a pup to eat pizza and drink some beer. Later in the evening we went to our hos­tel, where we cel­e­brated Christ­mas together.

On the 25^th (when Aus­tralians and some other folks cel­e­brate Christ­mas) we drove ten hours up to Cairns and had there a Chi­nese din­ner and went directly to sleep… so not really an inter­est­ing day Besides that we were quite tired, there was another rea­son we went to sleep so early: we had to wake up early in the morn­ing the next day to go for our SKYDIVE — YEAH!
So we had an 1 1/2 hour drive to where we were intended to do the Sky­dive (Mis­sion Beach). But as the weather wasn’t that good, we had to wait there for 2 hours and hope for a change… but sadly there wasn’t any, so we couldn’t do our jump
I decided now, to do my sky­dive in New Zealand where I heard it is also very nice to do it… so I have now one more rea­son to be excited about going to NZ

In Cairns we did a ‘Cape Tribu­la­tion Tour’ where we went on a ‘Croc­o­dile Cruise’, did some track­ing trough the Dain­tree rain­for­est, swam by an water­fall and vis­ited Port Dou­glas (a nice town north of cairns). We had a lot of fun on that tour, espe­cially because of our guide.

We also spent New Year in Cairns where a big party was going on… I would have loved to be in Syd­ney to see the fire­work, but cer­tainly Cairns was a lot of fun too, so I not really regret it.
In the after­noon of the 1^st of Jan­u­ary, I catched my flight to Syd­ney, where I am at the moment.

And tomor­row I am going to leave Syd­ney — ohh­h­hhw… — and fly­ing to Auck­land — Yeaaaaaah! — So my next time you are going to hear from me, I will be in Neeeew Zeaaalaaaaand!
Until then, have a great time, cheers Misha