Southland: You will find beautiful beaches in the "Catlins" and still not many tourists. 

Saturday afternoon in Invergargill, Rugby in the middle of town. Here it comes to the crunch. 

As we found out later, this is precisely the place, where Frodo Baggins, son of Drogo, from Hobbiton in the Shire, decided to leave his companions and continue his journey to Mordor alone. Like often before in history, fortune was with the foolish. His friend Samwise Gamgee not able to swim at all, quick-wittedly jumped into the water to follow his master, thereby helping to save all the peoples of middle earth from seemingly inevitable doom. The small round clearing in the forest on the other side of the lake can be seen in the movie several times. We did not meet any Orcs at North Mavora Lake, but were happy to find a windless spot. We're cooking damper (aka Lembas bread) on the campfire and enjoy the view on the icing covered mountains.

The summit of Mt. Cook for once not covered in clouds. It took us three visits to New Zealand to get this view.

Tasman Glacier, on the left hand you see the lateral moraine. Here we met some Kiwis with a regular car. We still remember the sound of the rocks smashing against the bottom plate every few meters.

Banks Peninsula: the dog cemetery of the Orton Bradley Park. For more than fifty years already, faithful servants rest here eternally.

By popular request, the maintenance staff working with its favourite tool, the grease gun!

At Lake Katrine and Lake Sumner there are no tourists. Even the driver of the Land Rover has to be careful not to get wet feet when driving here. We are lucky to find a calm spot. A hundred meters to the right, the westerlies are so strong,  they almost knock you over.

The Rainbow Road leading from Hanmer Strings to St. Arnoud was built in the fifties to get the electricity from Lake Benmore to the Nelson region. Between December and march it's open to 4WDs for a 20$ charge. 

Rainbow Road, 130 km loneliness. Only the power poles are relics of civilization.

Back in sunny Nelson, our trip to Aussie has to be prepared. In the background "maggie" is parking. Their owners came from Germany by land (as far as possible) on their Website http://www.worldtrucking.info we found many good hints for our trip to NZ and Aussie.

Hangdog Camp, the climbers campground at Paynes Ford. Unfortunately gravity is very strong today, so we only do some easy climbing up to grade 16.

Bremach in the 20' High Cube Container. This container is unavailable in Europe, that's why we had to use our special container wheels. Here loading the vehicle is done in a matter of minutes. 

There's a lot of container trucks driving around the port towns. this crane can lift 38 tons. 

On the way to the wharf, heading towards Sydney, on the P&O Nedlloyd "Wellington".