It is also a journey of self discovery. Doing the things that we love from deep inside our hearts. Finding the values, that are most meaningful to us, living our life according to our own truth and on our own terms, living in the process of creating and realizing what’s most important to us.
We definitely cut down our lifestyle. And it is amazing, but we do not miss any of our luxury gadgets. At home, we almost felt the same no matter what we added to our belongings, as we stayed the same inside. On the road, we changed to a healthier lifestyle and were more in the moment and more driven by our hearts. And it seems like we can enjoy so much more…

Later on we discovered the different districts of Christchurch, mostly overwhelmed by the little beach towns close to Christchurch like Sumner, Taylor’s Mistake and South Brighton.

In South Brighton we were welcomed by Alice and Luke with Taylor, who we met at the Luminate festival and who recognized our orange van. Within less than an hour we have had the key to their house right next to the beach to enjoy their sweet home, their spa, the hammocks at the veranda and the company of a dog and a cat while they left for the week-end. These signs of trust touch us deeply, so much trust from people, who do not even know our complete names. It is all about a connection, where time and facts don’t matter, as the look into each others eyes shows what’s real.
We feel like getting the chance to experience a slice of how it feels like to live in New Zealand, sitting here in the sweet artist’s home right next to the perfect kiting beach…

The kids were playing in Taylor’s room, we were enjoying a drink in the hot-tub and dog and cat were relaxing on the veranda.

The next day, when we came home in the late afternoon, Alice and Luke had already prepared a wonderful feast for us, we have had a great evening full of stories, good food and great music. I love Alice’s art, which integrate beautifully Maori elements and nature colours.

Maori Art

And I love her rasta hair, which reminds me of a mermaid with beautiful turquoise ribbons, water coloured pearls, little pendants from friends with a special meaning to her.

Mermaid

From there we cruised down to the Abel Tasman national park, where we have so great memories from 7 years ago.
Today is Sienna’s birthday. She wakes up with a big big smile, now as she is 4 years old.
Here is the recipe for her birthday cake. Not that it was exceptionally good, but we could prepare it without an oven and the kids loved it:
pile 4 pancakes and stick them together with Nutella. Put lots of marshmallows and jelly animals on top and try to squeeze 4 candles onto it as well.

Yum Yum Birthday Cake

I wish….

The table was decorated with shells and on her plate there was a map for a treasure hunt waiting.

We spent the day at the golden beaches in warm sunlight, endless turquoise waters to play around with logs. We played in tidal pools collected star fishes and put them all together in one spot for an underwater birthday party with starfishes, sand dollars and some big fat mussels.
During the whole day, Sienna could wish whatever she wanted.

So she has had ice cream for herself and Robinson, I had to draw a shark and a dolphin, she wished for a story with lots of animals, a sailing boat and that’s about it .

Sailing to new horizons

In Kaikoura we met Anneke and Anthony again at the surf beach.

Getting dinner from the ocean

Looking at the waves we discovered a precious gift from the ocean: Paua / abalone.

Delicious PAUA

They are a delicious snack in a beautiful shell with shimmering rainbow colours. Normally you have to dive and be very lucky to find some. But here they were just on the rocks at the beach. As it was just full moon, the tide is lower and uncovers its gifts for us. We were sitting at the beach at sunset, cooking the thinsliced paua in garlic and butter.

getting the paua out of their beautiful shells

Spicy

With a cold white wine and some lemon sprinkles simply delicious…

We dive into a new world, the celebration of sustainable conscious community during the ancient summer harvest festival of Lughnasadgh, on the full moon midway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox.
Luminate is a clean environment event. The ethos is to RRRESPECT zero waste: reduce reuse recycle, energy efficiency, sustainability, personal responsibility, education, composting, traditional materials.
The festival layout and art installations have been designed using sacred geometry, natural materials and re-used resources.
We are up at 2000 f up a quartz crystal and limestone mountain surrounded by native bush.
From there it is a small walk up to the performance area.

Ready for a spiritual journey

There is a healing zone with a Tipi and a Jurte for teaching and healing.
You can choose from various Yoga classes (Laughter Yoga, Yoga Nidra), Gong sessions, go on a Healing Journey, dive into Prana-yama meditation or learn reflexology or Reiki.
I take the chance and get my introduction into Reiki. I am already pretty confident to give reiki to my food and water, the rest may follow…

There are more sources of various conscious experiences:
From drumming to upgrading your DNA, from digjeridoo to embracing your shadow, from mantra & chanting to kids interactive concert, from mayan calendar to songwriting, from terraquaculture to native story telling….

story telling and discovering

In between there are circus skills workshops with hula hoop rings, juggling, staff, daiblo, etc. For kids and adults.

Hula hippieee

The kids were in blissful heaven at the festival.

Beautiful face tatoos from Epiphany (no, not permanent)

Same tribe

Listening to great stories

In the Tribal village and the te Ahi Aroha, the heartfire of Luminate. At night you see a big fire in the dark, surrounded by rastamen drumming. People join in with their instruments and co-create and celebrate organic music, while beautiful girls dance freely around the fire in front of the full moon. What a magic moment: the sound of the drums from meditative slowness to wild Kauden kovimmat uutuudet Playboy, Bust the Bank ja Fisticuffs loytyvat joka casinon ykkospelien listalta yhdessa miljonaarikone Mega Fortunen kanssa. ecstasy, awakening an intuitive dance of people with warm smiles. There is a sense of happiness and peace, of freedom and community.

Dancing to the rhythm of the earth

There is 24 hours of live music on two stages, bands and DJs blasting tribal sounds, heavy trance, chill beats, reaggae, drum and bass, folk, world music, happy tunes. In the afternoon you see kids and adults singing and dancing happily to the music or taking a chill out under a tree in the green grass.

Go with the rhythm…

Robinson joining the party

Chillllllll

What a coincidence, that Sika and Caitlin were performing live on stage on Sunday night. This music touches my soul with all the elements of different tribal origins of the world.

Sika and Caitlin

The nights are full of energy, happy dancing to strong beats until the sun rises.

The people are connected by a conscious living and a life full of love and care for themselves, the community and our planet.
They eat healthy food, wear organic clothes, feel the energy of rocks and the full moon, tune their bodies with dancing and playing.
It is about love and caring, creating and enjoying in a community, about being the one special and unique person you are meant to be.
Our life in the industrial world feels so plastic with people, that share the same look, high consumption, high waste production, little time, about separation instead of integration.
Life up here felt like living together rather than trying to get ahead for yourself, being one, being immersed in a community of likeminds. It felt really good… the energy remains within us.

happy together

Nelson is a vivid town, it has beautiful beaches and great sailing, delicious cafes and a colourful cultural scene. It is also known for their great kite scene. After several days of no Kaum eine Slot kostenlos book of ra deluxe spielen Maschine dieses Anbieters ist dusterer, doch wenn du erst einmal ein wenig gespielt hast, wirst …Tattoos sind Kult. wind, we finally have the breeze to go out kiting. It was definitely not one of our best days out and we are still about to discover the beauty of this spot…
Nelson has a great mix of people, which you can easily feel on the Saturday morning market. This is where we discovered one of Sienna’s new favourite toys:

It is amazing how some pieces of fabric turn out to be a very stylish outfit…Whoever wants to get one, just let us know….
One day Gerry met Shane, his wive and the 4 kids, who were playing with a Flying Dutchman and a Jolle in the water. Full of generosity, they offered us to enjoy a sailing trip on the FD in the bay whenever we wanted. Sienna and Robinson loved to be the captain.

Besides that, we just enjoyed talking and sharing all of what happened within the last months.

Boat Shed Cafe

1/3 Lonely Planet
1/3 tipps from travelers we met along the way
1/3 local knowledge

I greatly respect Toni Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet who I met in Vancouver in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, his amazing success has led to dramatic inflation. His well researched guides used to be off the beaten track, but because of the amazing popularity of these guides it has now become THE beaten track. The reason is that pretty much everybody travels with a lonely planet, regardless of age group. We have declared our trip a “Lonely-Planet-free-venture” for this very reason. The result is a trip full of surprises and unexpected adventures. Rather than traveling to and ticking off the beautiful “must-see” sites, we travel into the unknown, fully embracing Tim Duffy’s “the plan is there is no plan” strategy. So how do we travel?

We have decided to stay away from guidebooks altogether and use the following mix:

1/3 local passion expert tipps (in our case kitesurfing locals)
1/3 tipps from travelers we meet along the way
1/3 local knowledge (tipps from locals)

The result is that our travels have a different style and result, which we have truly enjoyed:

• spontaneous: travel plans are on the go, most of the times we do not know where we will travel to, or what we will see. Decisions are based on inspiration from tipps, weather, and longing for food, sleep, waves, wind. An essential element is that we did not book or reserve anything in advance.
• micro-explorative: we stay longer at fewer places and explore those more thouroughly, in more detail, with more patience, and often find hidden jewels. It is also a much better way to meet the locals, find out cool stuff about the area (history, nature, culture, sports, weather patterns etc.), and to get a feeling for what life is like in this specific spot. We never stop asking and looking, we all seem to have a bit of James Cook in us. The kids of course are very excited about new places and – like all kids – are mesmerized not by beautiful grand vistas, but the beauty and novelty in the detail of a small rock, a butterfly wing, a bug, a wave, a bird, hidden trails, etc.
• Flow: this is probably the most important element with the greatest rewards. The Dutch happiness researcher Venhoeven has collected the World Database of Happiness Studies, and one concept that has emerged strongly as an indication for happiness is the FLOW principle, first defined by Csikszentmihalyi in the 1960s. It basically means being fully in the moment of an activity without any external influences, rewards, motivators. This activity could be anything, good examples in my life are loving, snowboarding, playing with the kids, surfing, kitesurfing, laughing with friends. We are trying to live this principle on our travels. It basically means letting go and going with the flow. Be assured that wonderful, completely unexpected things happen to you. Without training it is quite hard to just let go, enjoying the moment and going with the flow. In our lives in Western society we have been trained to keep in control, to plan our life and our days, to live as a hostage of time, to follow a clear schedule, to manage projects and keep timelines, to achieve milestones, to make rational decisions. FLOW is the opposite of this, it means letting go and letting mind / body / soul be fully immersed in an experience that is happening now. FLOW is good and brings peace love and happiness.

The result of this style is that we visit fewer places, but experience each one of them with greater intensity. We also get a much better understanding of what it is like to live here. And it feels good to let the soul rest a few days. We have taken a route less travelled, we have been more off the beaten track. There have also been classic impressive highlights which are frequented by thousands of travellers – such as Cape Reinga – but for the most part we travelled far away from other tourists and saw places that are not listed in guidebooks. We found hidden jewels, and had unexpected experiences such as the House of Sham Reaggae concert in Opononi or Shane’s kite party in Rangiputa. We ended up doing more “freecamping”, just finding spots right on our own private beach and staying overnight, since there were no campgrounds in sight.

Here are some of the people who have inspired us for our travel experiences and destinations:

Glen Butcher or “Butch” who has launched his kite surfing empire at Foxton Beach, a very underrated spot with a beautiful estaury 1 hour North of Wellington. Butch has been cruising the world and now settled for a while with his two girls in Foxton, playing with wind and water every day. He is also the only man I have witnessed kite surfing in under 5 knots of wind. Go see him at
www.windwarriorkitesports.com

Glen Butcher, our wind warrior at Foxton Beach

Shane from Auckland who drove us with a boat to the sand bar for a kitesurf session, kept his five kids and wife engaged in activity and happy, and threw a party for all kitesurfers in sight, all at the same time! RESPECT!

Shane is a happy man!

Anneke and Anthony who share passions for random acts of kindness, healing, snowboarding (including some world cup touring), surfing, living as a free spirit, and the colour orange.

Anneke and Anthony

Olly Brunton, the local madman in Raglan, did 254 days of kitesurfing in 2009. But if you think, this is his life, you are totally off. He makes happy music, was on the olympic snowboarding team, has a heart for kids, runs a successful accupuncture practice, and I am certain I forgot a few items on this list… Most importantly, he has a great spirit!!!
See for your self at www.ollybrunton.co.nz/

Olly Brunton local madman in Raglan

Olly the music man

Olly playing in Raglan

Hoani Harris, a Maori from Northland, fully embraced the gentleness we felt from virtually all our contacts with Maori. It is the same friendliness and warmth we have experienced from Polynesians in Hawaii, Samoa and Fiji. Hoani was very open to share the wisdom of Maori culture and how this is lived today. He also shares our passion for surfing, cooks great food and has a great smile and spirit. For those who would like to explore Maori culture and New Zealand’s beautiful nature, his brother offers some great tours at Indigenous Trails www.itrails.co.nz

Hoani Harris at Taputaputa Bay near Cape Reinga

Arnie and Zoe who run Airzone kitesurfing school in Rangiputa on the Mati peninsula, raise their child right near the beach in the bush and head back to their native England every summer for more kitesurfing instruction. If you want to learn kitesurfing and love to stay in a beautiful bay, this is the place to go:

www.kitesurfnz.com

Bernie in his element

Dave Kay and Sue run a kitesurfing school in Ruakaka near Whangarei and make kiteboards in a cool little “factory” that has all the fancy technology but gives every board that personal hand-made touch, including the option of personalized design. Dave can talk to you for hours about how good kiteboards are made. We tried one and instantly had to buy one, a 135 x 40 Falcata. The wood core gives the board a response, flex and liveliness that really makes riding feel special, makes landing after big airs smoother and drives well through choppy waters. With a history of radical kitesurfing, Dave and Sue have a passion for quality and creating nothing but the best and this has led to their success with
www.decaykiteboards.co.nz. They kindly shared the experiences from the major kite spots in NZ, which brought us to some very cool places.

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Dave and Sue from Decay kiteboards in Ruakaka

Shane and Sue Anderson are the local kite chiefs in Nelson, one of the best and most popular kite spots in New Zealand. They run a shop and school at http://www.kitesurfnelson.co.nz/, and can be found in the water or at the beach almost every day, just playing …

Shane Anderson having fun at his home spot in Nelson

Especially for kids it is heaven on earth.

There is another phantastic beach with nice surf for the kids.

Sienna enjoying a ride on a llooooongboard

Surfing

Sienna and Robinson became friends with a girl at the beach, who has had a kids’ quad….

Girls on a mission

Robinson definitely enjoyed the ride with the beach beauty.

fun ride

Apart from that, Sienna enjoyed dancing with the sun rays…

Rainbow and sun rays

..while Robinson was playing with his new 1.5 m2 kite with the boys.

playing with the wind

Everybody into kitesurfing should have Foxton on his radar as well. Especially if you wish to get inspired by great kiters, such as Glen Butcher.

The most beautiful colour water may have

Unbelievable, but you could even go right to the falls’ pool with a jet boat…

We find a free campground directly at the Waikato river at “Reits farm” just next to the wild Huka Falls. Surrounded by nature we wash our dishes in the river and jump into the fresh water for a morning swim

When we went to the bungy jump place the next morning in Taupo, Gerry could not resist and was going for a backward jump down 47 meters.

Taupo itself is quite busy offering wonderful food delights at replete café, which has everything from passion fruit smoothies to yummie tandoori chicken.

YumYum

At the ZeaYou Gallery I found some beautiful wood carvings. Kevin McCardell does beautiful pieces which deserve to be offered to European art lovers with beach houses. Wanna see? Just wait until we are back…

The kids loved the animal farm “Lilliput Fun Farm” where they could feed about 20 different animals from Captain Cook pigs to wallabies.

In between they could jump on Earth’s Best Vehicles for kids including Thomas ,the train; a space shuttle, a pirate ship …

Thomas the train...

back to the future

Trying to find the big treasure...

But the highlight was the ride on a donkey.

Horse or donkey?

When the horses were tired, Gerry jumped in and pulled the kids around on a wagon.

a horse or a donkey?

A perfect family experience! The farm lives from the personal touch and the love for detail. The owners may follow the 10 indian commandments that were pinned on the wall at the entrance:

10 commandments of the indians for life

1. Treat the Earth and all that dwell thereon with respect
2. Remain close to the Great Spirit
3. Show great respect for your fellow beings
4. Work together for the benefit of all Mankind
5. Give assistance and kindness wherever needed
6. Do what you know to be right
7. Look after the well-being of mind and body
8. Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater good
9. Be truthful and honest at all times
10. Take full responsibility for your actions

There are three world-class point breaks. Manu Bay is said to offer the longest left hand rides on the planet and featured in Bruce Brown’s 1964 classic surf film The Endless Summer. Further along the coastline sit the breaks of Whale Bay and Indicators.

From the campground we could walk into the village, having a coffee in the kiteshop, meeting relaxed people, enjoying fresh organic food and ginger beer in one of the restaurants, where most of the guests seem to enjoy the waves somehow and everybody seem to have lots of time.

In the afternoon we checked out the kite spot at the harbour entrance with clean flat water conditions.
Although there was very little wind blowing (only 5 to 10 knots from the West), there were about 6 kiters out with 12 m kites. There is an explanation to the miracle: the outgoing tide ads up to 7 knots to the wind, which allows kiting at more than 250 days a year.

Later on we went to Ngaranui, a wonderful stretched bay with smooth waves rolling in. There were about 50 surfers, but there was enough space for 400…

The people seem to enjoy life here a lot. Affordable hippie houses nestled into the hills with ocean view,

relaxed open minded people, nice cafes and restaurants with more life music than in most decent cities we know, organic food stores and alternative medicine, wonderful sunshine most of the time, endless non crowded beaches, kiting and surfing, an art school for the creative souls.

At least, if you see Olly Brunton, you believe that he is very happy here: work with great people giving acupuncture, kiting almost every day, enjoying lots of time with family and friends.
Is this all we need to be happy? It is worth finding out, what else really matters…Family, yes! Friends, yes! Job,… ?

Breakfast on the beach at Orewa

You need some time to find the charms of Auckland, but it has some nice pockets such as the Ponsenby area and the America’s Cup Harbour area, which is lined with cafes, bars and restaurants. You can see and sail the America’s Cuppers, and this is also where the current NZ campaign sponsored by Emirates is housed. The whole town seems to be built around sailing. After weeks of country living we had adjustment problems in the big city and only stayed for a quick lunch before moving on to Raglan, saying goodbye with the classic Maori greeting, the tongue:

goodbye auckland - we shall see you again...