After New Year I hit the road north again. Endless driving reminds me on Canada.

Castle hill. A magic place on earth. Heaps of lime stone boulders waiting to be climbed.

I end up bouldering with a good growd of people. Sun, fun and couple of hard moves as well. Wish I could have stayed longer but I needed to catch my ferry back to the north island. Photo creds to Ashtyn Renée Photography. thanks.

Cristchurch is still suffering from that devastating earthquake in 2011. Quiet intimitating and intense how mother earth is able to shake us up easily.

Though it´s fascinating how people in a metropolis like that are dealing with such a catastrophe. Here the anglican cathedral temporarily built out of cardboard, designed by the japanese disaster architect Shigeru Ban.

Besides that a lot of freaky art is going on in Christchurch. Lucky that I got the chance to see this amazing performance. It´s all about processing the pain I learned that day... so "pain is temporary, glory last forever" is still a valid saying.

I was driving north from Wellington when I picked up Roger hitchhiking. He is a 65 year old maori guy who was going to surprise his sister for a birthday party after beeing away from home since 8 years.

While driving I learned a lot about maori culture and at some stage Roger got super excited about seeing "his" mountain - Mt. Taranaki - again. It was an easy thing for him to convince me doing a little detour to the base of the mountain. Felt pretty much like myself and Mt.Ötscha back home in Austria. Anyways, the maori legend says seeing the summit free of clouds is a good omen - so it might gonna be a good year for us!