Wouters blog

After the Cook Islands I spent a brief amount of time in LA and Las Vegas before heading out to the Grand Canyon. I had seen it on many pictures before but still I was absolutely stunned by the first sight of the canyon. What a massive place with an endless expanse of shapes and colors, glaring brightness and impenetrable shadow. Quite simple one of the most impressive things I have ever seen. It is impossible to capture it well with a camera. Best to go see it yourself!

I was there a bit early in the season which means less people and less heat during the day but also freezing temperatures at night! Once the sun went down temperatures plummeted and it got down to -7c in the tent at night! I really like the campsites in the US National Parks. They might not be the most comfortable but you get loads of space and a fire pit with BBQ in a natural environment.

On my second day I hiked down towards the canyon floor via the South Kaibab trail. Canyon hiking is very different from hiking a mountain. You get the easy bit first in the coolness of the morning. Before you know it you are a long way down into the canyon. Getting back up in the soaring heat in the afternoon is tough and you wished you brought twice as much water with you. It's all worth it though as you pass through successive different landscapes and finally get a close up with the river that believe it or not created this canyon.

The next day clouds were moving in and the weather forecast didn't sound good at all. I did not want to leave but there was no point to stay in bad weather so I decided to drive to Zion National Park and hope things would be sunnier there. Unfortunately it was the opposite. There was a severe storm on the way which would drop several inches of snow and would last for 4 days... Great! So before the storm came in I tried to see as much as I could from the park and the highlight was hiking up to Angel's landing of which you can see the pictures below. On the third picture you can see the approach to Angels Landing.

I was in Bryce Canyon National Park for only 30 minutes when the snowstorm set in. It was time to go to lower ground and I spent two days in some forgettable places in Utah before catching a flight to Austin in Texas. I was meeting Brad, Collin and Quang here who I know from an exchange semester at the Copenhagen Business School. It was fantastic to see them again. They showed me and Quang around in the weekend and Austin has a lot of things going for it. Good weather, awesome food, friendly people, live music and a huge selection of beers! The Texas boys had to get back to work and Quang and me drove all the way to Big Bend National Park in the South West of Texas. We thought that with our rental Jeep Grand Cherokee we would be able to impress but the Texas cowboys with their huge pick-ups put ours into shame...

On the way to Big Bend we passed Fredericksburg which was, as the name makes you suspect, more Germany then Texas!

Big Bend National Park is one the most remote and wild places in the US. It perhaps lacks the big sights that you see in the likes of Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Park but this is compensated by the unique landscapes and the small amount of people that visit here. We were staying in an excellent mountain lodge with a great restaurant (sunset picture below is taken from the restaurant). The Lonely Planet had scared us a bit with stories about mountain lions, bears, rattlesnakes and scorpions but luckily we didn't see any animals except deer. If it wasn't a protected animal I think Quang would have eaten it :-)

After Big Bend we visited some small ghost towns in the South West before driving back to Austin for a real Texas BBQ with Collin. We spent another great weekend in Austin and I left for New York and Quang flew back home to Germany.

In New York I caught up with Aurelia and although the weather was pretty average we had a good time in the Big Apple. In my last weekend I visited Xiu and Mike who live close to Philadelphia. The pictures below are from the nearby Longwood Gardens where they seem to rival the Netherlands with their tulips! It was great to see them and wished I could have stayed a bit longer.

The last blog is a long one and also my last one. I got back in the Netherlands yesterday after traveling for 6 1/2 months. I hope you enjoyed reading my blogs. I certainly liked reading your replies.

Hope to see you all soon!

Wouter

I didn’t know exactly where the Cook Islands were located in the huge Pacific Ocean and was positively surprised to leave the airplane already after a 4-hour flight from Auckland. By crossing the date line I also repeated Saturday 27th March. I didn’t really pay attention to this when booking my hotel and consequently showed up a day early…

From the moment you get off the plane you notice how relaxed everything is here. While waiting for your bags there is live music and you are received by locals with a huge smile on their face. Get’s you in the right mood straight away.

When I arrived at my apartment things only got better. Fantastic beach for snorkeling, seafood bbq’s and great cocktails in a bar on the beach ran by an interesting character who mentioned that the Cook Islands is like Hawai 40 years ago.

I spent 8 days on the island and if you want to chill out for a while this is the place to be. Enough said, I think the pictures speak for themselves.

For me the North Island kicked off spectacularly with the surreal moon like volcano landscape in the Tongariro National Park. One of the key sights is Mount Ngauruhoe (all these names in NZ...), which was used as a stand-in for Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings (on the pictures below during the day and at sunset).

I did a 4-day circuit of the Northern part of the park and stayed in mountain huts. The second day of the circuit is the Tongariro Alpine Crossing and this is the most popular day hike in New Zealand. I left that day as early as I could to avoid the worst of the crowds and by 8am I was in front of Mount Ngauruhoe. Climbing this volcano is quite a steep affair and extra tiring because of the loose lava stones in which you make two steps up and then slide one step down. At the top you get rewarded with views of the Blue Lake and further away lake Taupo.

Later in the day you come across the Emerald Lakes.

The last two days I walked through a moon like landscape in which you expect a bunch of Orcs to jump you from behind a rock.

My next destination was not far away. From the northern slopes of Mount Tongariro the river Whanganui originates and I was going to kayak this river for a good 100km. The river snakes through a national park and besides some huts and campsites there is nothing along the way. The kayak I rented was old but spacious and I could bring plenty of good food and drinks! The rapids are all classed grade I and II so nothing serious but still exciting enough in my old kayak to demand my full attention not to flip over.

At one of the campsites there was a problem with rats (again!). They were running around all over the place. So after my Bali experience I made sure I had no food anywhere near me and was hoping they would leave me alone. The girl in the next tent woke me up with a loud yell in the middle of the night. Turned out she had some lollie’s in her tent and the rats had bitten a hole in her tent to get to them.

The Kiwi's are pretty innovative with their beers. This was one of my favourites and I had a good supply of it in the kayak.

After hiking and kayaking it was time to go the beach! I drove further north to the Coromandel Peninsula and ended up in a hostel in Hahei. Main attractions here are Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. Hot water beach has underground hot springs and its possible to dig into the sand to allow the hot water to escape to the surface. Pretty cool to sit in your own private spa on the beach!

These were the last days of sunshine I would see in New Zealand. I wanted to leave Hahei to go somewhere sunny but I got stuck in Hahei because the rain flooded the only bridge giving access to the village… The next day it looked like the whole of NZ was in a spell of bad weather so I decided to stay in the area and to hike the Pinnacles trail. It is a beautiful area with green valleys where sharp rock formation rise up and you can see the ocean on both sides of the peninsula from the peak I climbed. Unfortunately it doesn’t come up well on the pictures.

I had a great time in New Zealand and it is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful countries in the world. It also a very easy place to travel around and to meet new people. Just a pity that it's such a long flight to get there!

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After Bali I went back to Andrew's place in Brisbane and Jelle was there too! We spent a couple of relaxing days on the beach in Byron Bay. Was great to catch up. After that another weekend in Brisbane and then it was time to say goodbye to Andrew. He has been a fantastic host!

From Brisbane I flew into Queenstown which is on the South Island of New Zealand. After two months in the tropics on the beach it was now time again for mountains. It took me two days to get all my mountain gear sorted and then I was off for 4 days doing the Routeburn and Caples track.

Routeburn is classed as one of the "great walks" in New Zealand and it for sure did not disappoint. The weather was helping too. I had blue skies everyday and in fact there was so much light that it was almost difficult to take good pictures. I was mostly camping in the wild and although there is not much to fear from the animal kingdom (e.g. there are no snakes) the sandflies drive you absolutely crazy!

Next stop was Milford Sound and instead of joining a cruise I went to explore it by kayak. It was a very misty day, which makes it atmospheric and a bit mysterious, but I would have preferred it in bright sunshine. Nevertheless it is spectacular to paddle between vertical slides towering 1200m and waterfalls plunging from hanging valleys. Perhaps the best of all was on the way back when we were escorted by about 20 dolphins. And of course this was the perfect moment for the battery of my camera to die...

This was the view on lake Te Anau on the way back home. In NZ you simply cannot drive for more then 30 minutes before you have to get out of your car and admire the views.

After Milford I spent a long day in the car following the Southern coast line. It is one of the less traveled highways and there is hardly anyone living here. Looking back I should have spend a bit more time here because to get the good views you often had to go off the main road for 30 minutes. Time I did not have... Instead I drove straight to Middlemarch and jumped on a mountain bike to ride the 150km Otago Central Rail Trail which follows the route of a former rail line. What I mostly remember from this trip is lots of wind, rain and a bizarre rugged landscape with some old gold mining towns who have lost most of their former glory. I was very happy to get off the bike...

After experiencing the changeable weather on the South Island I decided to throw away my plans and just to go where the sun was shining. So that made Wanaka the next destination. This is a lovely little town, much better then nearby Queenstown, and has a fabulous setting at the lakes.

Next stop was Franz Joseph Glacier. I have seen other glaciers before but what makes this one special is that in just a couple of kilometers the terrain drops from over 3000m to near sea level. It was a fantastic, although pretty expensive, experience to walk on the glacier the whole day!

Not far away from the glaciers is Arthur's pass. I wanted to camp here but the local people advised me not to... There are quite a number of Kea's, which are alpine parrots, in the area and they basically try to break everything they can get their beak on. Within minutes one landed on my car and started to take the rubbers from the windows. Even when I was driving 50km/h it was still on my roof trying to strip things of my car! Not surprisingly then that some people have woken up to a pile of leather strips and shredded laces when they left their boots outside... As I didn't fancy a second door in my tent I checked into a hostel for the night. The next day I had a tough climb up to avalanche peak with some good views of the area.

I was getting a bit tired of moving around all the time and was looking for a place to relax for a few days. My guide book recommended a lodge in the Kenepurnu Sounds. It is very remote place (literally where the road ends). It's a long long drive and some guests preferred to fly there. The setting at the sound is fabulous and there is a great atmosphere in the lodge. A typical day started with hiking, sailing or mountain biking, followed by a swim in the sea, warming up in the hot tub, eating fresh mussels for dinner and finish it all off with a glass of wine near the fire place. I booked for 2 nights and ended up staying for 6 nights...

My last stop on the South Island was Abel Tasman National Park. I didn't want to join the hordes of backpackers that are walking the 4 day trail so instead I went on a one day kayak trip. It turned out to be a boys trip with a guide and another guy from the Netherlands. He was a plasterer and that he was doing physical work every day could be noticed. It felt like I had a big engine behind me and we ended up doing pretty much the whole coastline in just one day. We just had to stop every now and then to give him his nicotine shot!

I only had one appointment for the whole month and this was the ferry crossing to the North Island. I would have missed it if a nice lady would not have let me and my car enter the ferry way past closing time.

Hi all,

Natural disasters seem to follow me... After the flooding in Brisbane there now was a big earthquake in Christchurch. Luckily I was on a mountain bike a couple hundred of kilometers South and didn't notice a thing.

As always it is hard to keep this blog up to date while traveling so although a bit late see below some pictures and stories from the good times I had on Bali and Lombok.

After Brisbane I flew via Darwin to Bali and there I met with Aurelia who was joining me for 3 1/2 weeks. We started out in the South of Bali in the resort Sanur. We had rented a villa here which was absolutely fantastic and we had a couple of very relaxed days here on the beach. Amazing how friendly the Balinese are and it makes you realize how little people actually smile back at home...

From Sanur we went to Ubud, which is Bali's cultural capital. It is also one of the wettest places in Bali. Just after we arrived we received a downpour that flooded the streets and which cut off all electricity. There are many things to do here but one of the highlights is the food. I learned how to cook 6 different Balinese dishes and I really hope I still know how to do this back home. We had a couple of good dinners here but by far the best was dinner at Ladak. Outstanding food for a price a of couple of Big Mac meals at home! The only "active" thing we did was cruising around on a motorbike. The moment you drive out of the city you are surrounded by terraced rice fields and pretty temples.

I was keen on going to places at higher altitude (for views but also escaping the heath) and although Bali doesn't have a big mountains to speak of they do have some big volcano's. However as it was the wet season we could rarely get a good view of them but hiking around in the area through the rice fields with a local guide was great. Learned a ton of things about the local plants and how they use them as medicine. Also cool to see the things I have been eating my whole life grow in the wild.

The place we stayed at again was superb with sometimes a glimpse of the surrounding volcano's.

Close by was Tirtagangga's Water Palace. Built by a Raja who was had an obsession with pools and fountains. Very relaxed place and hardly any other tourists around.

From mountains back towards the coast towards a place called Amed which looked deserted when we arrived. We thought we were the only ones having dinner in the restaurant that evening but there were also two ducks, Ollie and Punkie, who lived there. If you don't share your food with them they will bite you! Got a very funny video but unfortunately I cannot upload it.

We didn't stay long in Amed and took a boat to the Gilli Islands. Of the three islands we picked Gilli Meno. All of the Gilli islands are relaxed but Meno is definitely the most laid back of the three. We stayed in a bungalow with a veranda that overlooked the gardens of the ocean. For two days I went diving (great visibility with huge amount of marine life) in the morning but besides that it was a brilliant place to do absolutely nothing for a few days.

We did not know what to expect of Sengiggi our next destination on Lombok but this place became our favorite spot of the whole trip. Much less tourists then Bali, nice place to stay, great food and a fun bar with good music in the evening. From here we did a trip around the massive volcano Rinjani which we only saw in the morning before the clouds set in. Lombok receives much less visitors then Bali, where tourism is a massively domimant presence, and it gives you a much more genuine feeling of life on the island.

Plenty of land for sale at beautiful beaches. Here with the Gilli Islands in the background.

Rice fields with in the distance Rinjani (3726m)

From Sengiggi we returned by boat to Bali and then crossed half of the island to arrive at Munduk after a long day of traveling. This is a mountain village in the western part of Bali and we stayed in converted rice barns. Nice to be higher up and no air co or fan was needed to sleep at night.

But what was supposed to be a comfortable night sleep turned out in something else. At night we got some visitors and at first we thought it were mice. But it turned out to be rats who were eating Aurelia's medicine out of here handbag just half a meter away from our bed. Not cool! After that we slept with the lights on and that made them stay away the rest of the night. The only good thing that came out of this is that we were upgraded to a villa with great views over the rice fields and the ocean in the distance. The next couple of nights you are a bit paranoid though.

The view from the veranda.

It was time to hit the beach again and we traveled south to Seminyak which is in the heart of the tourist area of Bali. And although it was quite relaxed here I did not take a single picture for days. Just nothing interesting. Surprisingly most people who visit Bali only go to the Seminyak/Kuta area and consequently miss out completely on what the island has the offer, let alone making a visit to Lombok. Not far from Seminyak is Jimbaran, our last stop on the island, where almost all accommodation was booked out. Why I have no clue... The beach was heavily polluted, the town without any charm and high prices for the hotels... If you go to Bali I would give the resorts in the South a wide miss... Or you must like mingling with thousands of Ozzies wearing Bintang wife-beaters!

Unfortunately Aurelia had to fly back to Paris and I was going back to Australia. We had a great time and can definitely recommend going here for holidays. It has the perfect mix of beaches, mountains, cultural stuff, great food and fantastic places to stay. We visited in the rain season which means it can rain for an hour or so each day and the clouds sometimes block the views of the mountains and volcano's. On the other hand there are not that many tourists (you can basically rock up at most places without reservations and negotiate a good price) and the sun is not out the whole day which makes it much easier and fun to do active things.

At the moment I am enjoying New Zealand and still very happy to be traveling. Hope to send you some stories and pics soon.

Wouter