My trip to New Zealand

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Back to the north island

Well. Being back in the north island, after spending 4 month in the south, was kinda strange. It's true that it is still a beautiful place, but the south island is simply better for a traveler. Less people, better DOC, I dunno, it's just nicer. I still enjoyed the north, of course. I had around 2 weeks there, and the only thing I really wanted to do was the Whanganui journey - a 3 day canoe down the river. So I headed north to Wanganui, to do it. On the way I stopped in Wellington (all in all, quite a nice city), Otaki (just a place in nowhere, really), and then Wanganui, the city. (It's not a misprint. The city is Wanganui, and the river is Whanganui (Whanganui is correct, but they didn't want to change the city's name)

 The road, somewhere north of wellington...
Wanganui from above. We climbed a small tower to look at it. The most exciting thing in this picture is that you can see the Warehouse (where everyone gets a bargain!)
Stephanie from canada, up in the tower.
Sunset in Wanganui. Wow.

The Whanganui Journey

The Whanganui journey is the only Great Walk in new-zealand that is not actually a walk. You canoe down the easy Whanganui river, for 3 days, and it's really fun. I did it with an Israeli bloke called Omer, and 3 germans (Father & his daughters, all doctors, so we were pretty safe down there).

The journey actually started close to the National park, so that's where we spent the night and saw another great sunset.
Me & Our Canoe.
The Whanganui river. It is really really beautiful, just like that.
Spending 3 days on a canoe, doing nothing but watching the view, was actually quite good.
Taking a small hike, to see the bridge-to-nowhere, and meeting a goat on the way.
The bridge to nowhere. It is just what it sounds like - quite a large, impressive bridge, with nothing on either side, but a small trail. They wanted to turn this whole land into farmland, but it wasn't any good, but they built the bridge before they knew that...
Omer in our Canoe.
The 2nd night, we spent in a Maori Marae, with a couple of Maoris showing us some traditional customs and stuff like that. It was quite good.
Last day on the river. We actually capsized on the last rapid, which was kinda fun, really.

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