Ubud: earthquake, rice fields, temples, rafting and more!

So, after island life on Gili Air we headed down to Ubud, a city in Bali inland. We had heard from many people that it would be a nice city with a lot of yoga and good restaurants. We went there for five nights to explore what the surroundings would have to offer. 

When booking hotels in totally new places, downside is that you don't know which location would be the best one. We booked a room at Pajar House Ubud because it had received good recommendations and it looked nice in pictures. The downside was that it was rather far away from the city. BUT, the hotel had a brilliant shuttle system. When we came to the hotel, we got an old Nokia mobile phone (Edda even remembered how to unlock it! 😂) and we could always call their reception or driver when we needed something. E.g. every time we were in the city, we called the driver when we wanted to come back and he picked us up. For free! Cool.

Vacation from traveling! Indonesia: Gili Air

Hooooolidaaay! Ceeeeelebrate!.... 😂 After six weeks changing place every second day in NZ and few days in Sydney, and long flights, we arrived to Indonesia! Our holiday destination. We had decided to stay only in three different places here. We are going to just relax, take it easy and enjoy our stay!

When we arrived to Denpasar, the capital of Bali, we started to hear "taxi", "taxi, "taxi"... We had checked that an airport taxi would cost around 30€ - 35€ to Sanur. That was way too much. Our friend Minna, who "lives" in Bali for the moment told that the blue taxis are quite cheap but we would have to walk a bit out from the airport. Then there was Uber, but we needed internet so we bought a local prepaid sim card. Luckily they hadn't blocked Uber from the airport as many places did in Latin-America.

Few days in Sydney: KOI dessert bar, coastal walk, walking tour, swimming and "inte gå" ;)

Since our flight from NZ to Indonesia was through Sydney, we asked Kilroy Travels whether if we could stay few nights there and it worked out fine. That was nice since Edda had never been there before and Markus' last visit was a long time ago. We didn't have any expectations for Sydney - we just wanted to walk around and we looked forward to seeing Edda's friends, Anki and Jocke and their son Theo. 😄 

 Teaser for this post 😀

When we first arrived we went to Judith's place - the Dutch girl we met in NZ. She is staying in Sydney for a while and we decided to walk around the city together. And we got to put our luggage in her room for the day which was great! Judith showed us where to buy a metro/bus/ferry card and showed us a bit of the city center. 

Last 3 places in NZ: Hanmer Springs, Akaroa peninsula and Christchurch

We are a bit late with our blog. We are now sitting in a plane flying through Kuala Lumpur to our next destination, Indonesia, and still writing about NZ… Well, it’s actually a quite tough job to write, especially when we have been changing places quite a lot. Now we are going to have some holiday from traveling and just relax in Indonesia. But now back to NZ. As we wrote in the last post, we were making knives and that we were a bit worried how long it would take to finish them because of the power cut. We had still to drive to Hanmer Springs that night. We finished early enough so that we manage to arrive to HanmerSprings around 9 pm. We checked in to a really nice hostel, Hanmer Backpackers, and had dinner.

Turquoise river in Hokitika and Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki and a lot more!

After visiting Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, it was time to continue our trip on the West coast. There were again fantastic views on the way! We stopped at one bridge where the water underneath was turquoise again. We saw other people who had also walked on the bridge to take some photos of the river. We were wondering why all of them ran back. Well, we walked on the bridge as well and then we understood why they ran. Sandflies! So many sandflies! We ran back too!

One place we wanted to visit along the way was Hokitika George. It is a river so turquoise and milky, it's hard to believe if one doesn't see it oneself. We walked a short bit in the forest and crossed a bridge and came to the beautiful river. We had heard that there would be a lot of sandflies as well, but we seemed to be lucky. We maybe saw one. We sat on the rocks and just watched the river because we knew that it would be the last turquoise river we would see in NZ. 

Wanaka, Glaciers and a bit of West coast with the #¤*@%§! sandflies!

When we came in the evening from Tekapo to Wanaka, we knew that we probably would have to sleep in the car because we had thought we would stay in Tekapo. In Tekapo the situation was the same, no accommodation under 100€. We drove close to Lake Hawea where we had our next accommodation. We found a nice spot next to Havea lake away from the town. Markus fixed our mosquito net to one car window so we would get fresh air. It was a quite warm night, 20c. We had a nice view over the lake but it was a trap! In the morning after our breakfast, we brushed our teeth and spitted out from the car. We had the door open for about 10 sec and we were immediately attacked. We got about 40 sandflies inside the car! A small panic started to grow! We moved the car away from the grass, jumped out and sprayed the car from the inside. We waited for a while outside but it was quite challenging because of the million sandflies. When we had "won" the fight with just minor injuries (just few bites) we headed to our next place where we had a bed! 

 Our equipment for the night in the car 😜

Beautiful Milford Sound, breathtaking Lake Pukaki and Tekapo and majestic Mt Cook

We were in Cardrona and we were thinking whether if we should drive to Milford Sound or skip it entirely. It was still about 4,5 hours of driving one-way without any stops. And we knew there would be many stops along the way. We had heard from everyone that it's a beautiful place so we decided to make the drive! So we started to drive towards Milford Sound, which again, is not a music festival, even if it sounds like one. 😄 It is a place with fjords and mountains. We had booked a boat tour including a kayak tour and a tour in an underwater observatory. We will come back to these later. On our way we stopped here and there, because the road from Te Anau to Milford Sound is filled with sights. But first we stopped when we saw a river and we thought it would be a perfect spot for lunch. This time - cold rice and peanut butter sandwiches. 😝 We might have a break from peanut butter after this trip! But luckily they sell the ones that don’t have sugar or salt in them here!

Family time in Arrowtown, Queenstown and Cardrona

After Dunedin it was time for Queenstown and spending time with Markus’ parents. We had tried to find accommodation in Queenstown with no luck. It’s almost impossible to get accommodation within two weeks from there. Luckily Markus parents stayed in Arrowtown, a small city next to Queens and they had space in their room so we could sleep there. Unfortunately there was space only for one night so we had to find another place for the next night. We found only one place for four people in the area. It was in Cardrona, 40 min drive from Queenstown. Crazy, we would say!😵

A dam on our way from Dunedin to Arrowtown