New Zealand - Northland

Explanations of the pictures from up till down:

A great car to travel with!

A nice landscape from the Flagstaff of the Bay of islands. (Historic place where the English made a controversial treaty with the Mahoris)

The houses on the sea side is Russell. It was called the Hell hole of the Pacific by Darwin. Before, it was a place where seeman went to drink and to meet girls. Now it's a nice romantic place.

An Happy Kiwi couple

The pictures where we sit on each other is in a Birth reserve: Thomas (Argentina), Rika (Germany), Pedro (Argentina), Tina, Nic

The group picture is with others Argentines with who we enjoy speaking Spanish.

On the last picture, we are in Cape Reinga (top north of NZ). According to the Mahori culture, it's there where the spirits go after death.

On the almost last picture, we have on the left side of Tina: Cas, the Fotographer from Antwerp (Belgium). On the right side is Mike, a carpinter from Bavaria (Germany).

New Zealand - Northland - Sand dunes

Pictures explanations:
At the top, we are in the sand dunes of Cape Reinga (Top north of New Zealand). Slide and Crash ...
Then, the guy with the beard is Raf: He worked for the Belgian cooperation in Africa during 30 years.
On the bridge, you can see young Mahoris, who challenged us on all type of jumps ( see our jump section).
Bellow, we are playing football. Rest of the world against Argentina. We won 2 matches and lost 1.
With the small boy at the bottom we are learning haka. (Mahori war dance)

Jumps

As many of you knows, we like to take pictures of jumps. Maybe because of the natural expressions ...

New Zealand - Mandarine Work

That's the Pukenui team with who we were working in the mandarines. The people were from New Zealand (also called Kiwis), Scotland, Tcheck Republik, Argentina, Germany, England, ...

You can see the bus that we go to work. Our break, resting on the ground and also a Pizza party organized by the Latins.

The work consisted in thinning mandarines of the trees so that the ones who are staying could grow bigger.

The first days were very hard, then we start to get use to it.


A the beginning, I thought it was a job for men:) Then, I noticed that the supervisor told me the whole time that I was leaving too much mandarines on the tree. On the other side ,Tina was a bit slower but she always took all mandarines off from the tree. So she was better than I and consequently received incentives who made that she was better paid than I during the first days.

Sorry Nic, but I wasn't more slow then you! Anyway the important thing is that I was better paied ;-)
The only problem in this type of job are the wasps!!!! They were in the trees and sometimes it was impossible to find them so we got stang sometimes!!! Nic got 2 and I've got 3 bites!!! One was horrible, the weather was terrible (raining a lot) and I saw those wasps, I've asked for the Fly Spray but it was to late and this wasp attacked me between the lips and the nose!!!!!! Well, now I am fine! "Shit Happens"!
Ah, Nic and I were nominated the best stripers (apart from thinning the trees, some of them needed an year holiday, so we were taking alls mandarines from those ones)

On the pictures you can see Nic on the party of the last day. He needed to make a real strip ...

Cook Islands (2)

On these pictures, you can see some people that we met on the island: Alex, Letichia and Tisa.

We went around the island by bike. It was very hot and as you can see I forgot to put some sun lotion on my feet...

Also note that it's a great spot for snorkeling. (The best I have ever seen) After many hours of persuasion I succeed to get Tina to go snorkeling. Actually, she is afraid that big fishes come to touch her ...

And of course: there was a lot of big fishes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cook Islands (1) the treck

Finally, Tina got the Summer. Rarotonga is one of the nicest Cook islands in the middle of the Pacific. Local people are Mahoris.
For adventurous reasons, we decided to cross the island without guides and from South to North. (It was recommend by the locals to cross it from North to South) As a result, same if is seems difficult to lose your way on an island, we dit it: we walked 7 hours in place of 4. You can see on the pictures a map of the islands and pictures token during the walk.

When I was crossing the 1st river I've lost one of my sandals.............imagine just in the middle of the trekking! Well, for my luck, Nic saved me: he runs in the river, got all wet and was able to get the sandal! Thanks Nic :)

Short stop in TAHITI

We stayed 1 hour in the French Polynesian island Tahiti