The last few days in Castle Hill were quite hot. The sun was burning without a single cloud. Climbing around midday was impossible. We had to wait an other few days because we wanted to meet up with my brother Jochen, his wife Miriam and their daughter Paula. Paula is Finjas twin-cousin, since she’s born the same day, with a difference of 4,5 hours!
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| Finja and Paula on the Road. |
We picked them up at the airport and they gladly imported a Tetanol vaccination for Finja. We did a Tetanol-Only vaccination back home in germany and hoped to do give her the second boost in Newzealand. After arrival we learned there’s no chance to get this specific vaccination here, only a triple vaccination which wouldn’t work. Having a correct medicin in our hands we drove straight to the doctor and this business was off from our todo list.
After some shopping and a long 90minutes drive back to the campsite (especially for our visitors who just happend to sit in a plane for 32 hours) we had an delicous Pasta Bolognaise Dinner and a couple of beers together. Finja was psyched to see an other baby and all was good.
The next day we could only do a quick climbing session since a big storm arrived and brought strong ice wind with hail. It was a good chance for the others to rest and sleep agains the jetlag.
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| Delicious Dinner in our van. |
After two days of some climbing together, Katinka and I had finished our last projects and we had seen enough of Castle Hill. With two campervans we wanted to start a roadtrip to Takaka, at Golden Beach at the northern border of the southern island. But Jochen started puking over night and was half dead for a full day. So we had to leave them alone and hit the road. A reunion planned to happen two days later in Paynes Ford, another climbing area near Takaka.
As we hit Greymouth, a big city at the westcoast we checked our emails and our faces went long … Instead of a change of flight confirmation we got a message from STA-Travels, we can’t change our flight for a planned amount of 200Euros, but we should spent 500-600Euros and travel on a bad date as well. Now there was hurry. We had to change our plans. No more climbing in Paynes Ford, but hit the road faster. 5 days left to arrive in Auckland, then another 3 days to sell our van and then the day of departure to Sydney, Australia.
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| Finjas last project. A slabclimb in Quantum Field. |
Today our roadtrip got delayed again. Katinka catched up the same virus, Jochen had the day before. She’s half dead and puking every now and then. At least, after sending some eMails back and forth with STA, we now have a backup solution of another flightdate for the cheap price of 200Euros again. Still not sure if we are going to change our flight. We wanted to spent 14 more days here, this backupsolution would give us 8 days here. We’ll see what happens.