Snow-cap mountain..
I am back! Do you guys miss me? haha ok ok.. just joking.. Now, lets see after such a long dry spell.. oh before I go into that, you guys must be thinking why I suddenly change my blog address. This blog address is recommended by my bro so decided to give it a try… Well, the reason why I have not been writing is because I wasn’t in town and not because I got lazy. I just got back from my annual overseas trip. I try to make one of such trip once a year if possible. Last year I went to UK and Europe.. Will tell you guys bout that trip another time…
This year I went to New Zealand and I just got back from the Kiwis a couple days ago.. Since, we are here to follow the Lord Of The Ring Trilogy, let’s follow their theme then, I will split my NZ experiences to 3 posts: General Experiences, Food & Accommodations and Activities.
So for the 1st post, let’s talk bout the General experiences of the trip. However, before I go into that, let me share with you on the details of our trips. The group contains of 04 persons with KY, AK, SP and Me. We had a 9-day self drive trip at South Island and proceed with 02 more days at North Island. We flew in on Friday, touching down on Saturday morning, and there it starts the journey.
Our LOTR trail starts when we touch down at Christchurch airport after about 10 hours flight from Singapore. After picking up our horses – a Toyota Previa we start our journey. Many says that New Zealand is a very scenic place and everytime you stop to admire the scenery is like a picture. It is very true. Weather is very cooling, a nice change from Singapore weather which is hot and humid. The only thing was on some days it rains so it cause a little inconveniences.
Our first stop was Twizel which is a very small town. It was a about 5 -6 hours drive but we did stop in a few stops for photo-taking purposes.. Mt Cook and the Lake Tekapo. Along the drive you will see the snow-capped mountain… which, one of them is Mt Cook. All the way, we are able to enjoy the mother nature.
From there we drove down to Dunedin. It is a larger city but as we reached the city quite late, there was nothing much we are able to see. Most of the attractions are either closing or have already closed. Eventhough the attractions are within the town but from the city center, it takes another 2 hours drive to get there. Its not like in Singapore one point to the next is just the most 1 hour drive! However, we went to this point where it is very tip of the Coast Otago. Scenery is superb, freakng cold course it is so windy.. if we are a few more pound lighter I think we will be blown off! It was quite a nice change from a quiet town to arrive to a bigger town. See more shops around, more crowds as before arriving to this town, we had a stop over at this small little town for lunch. Guess what, the population there is only 127 persons!
We spend a night at Dunedin and the next day thinking we still have some time.. we spend some time at the botanica garden, enjoying the Spring time of the year which is the flower blooming sesson…All types of plants, all blooming with flowers, you see all flower types with various colours and sizes. But right after that, when we realized that we miscalculated our timing and we were late for our Milford Sound cruise which is 2 hours away from Te Anau.. Dunedin to Te Anau is about 3 hours away… we can no longer able to slowly enjoy the scenery and just hop into our car and be on our way to Milford Sound.
As we try to make it for the cruise, we sped our way, over the speed limit.. this is the first time in my life, we were chased by a police car.. Its like in the movie, when the policeman walks up to the window asking for licence. But this policeman is quite friendly and kind of like invited my friend – driver to his petrol car to explain to him. So after a few minutes, he came back with a saman of NZ170 . After learning the lesson, we stick closely to the speed limit. We manage to change the cruise timing to the next day instead.
That was the most exciting experience we ever had. We finally came to the town of Te Anau. It is a smaller city compared to Dunedin, but nice and quiet with a nice lake. But our excitement did not just end there, while we were sleeping, we felt like the motel is swaying. I got a feeling like I was on a boat in the middle of a rough sea. It is quite terrifying for a second. SP woke up asking if I felt the swaying. So I wasn’t dreaming then. Not a second later, someone knocked on our door asking if we are alright. She was saying the worse is over and there will be a couple more times. I tried switching on the TV to check if any major things happened but nothing was on except for TV shopping commercials. So thinking that it is just a small matter, we return back to bed. The next day we realize that it is earthquake, scaling at 6.7! Wow! I finally experience a tremor of an earthquake. Since Singapore had experienced a few tremors from Indonesia earthquake before but I always unable to feel it! This time round I sure did!
The next day, after our beautiful scenic cruise at Milford Sound with spectacular views of dolphins and waterfalls, we make our way to Queenstown, the second largest city in South Island. This is where all the activities are. I will go into the activities in another post. A city of its own, shopping centers with some well-known brand can be found here, all types of cuisine restaurants, cafes and even food court can be found in this city. After living in Singapore, after the small towns that we been to, it was like coming into a familier ground in Queenstown. Of course, not like Singapore, they do not have high rise buildings.
We spend 2 days in the civilizations then we are back to the nature. Our next stop is Fran Josef where all the glaziers are. It is a 1-street town. All the shops are all allocated along this street. To get to our motel, we have to bypass the city. So it is another small town… cold and they have a very nice scenery with the mountains in the background. As we arrived late we spend 2 nights in this town before proceeding to another bigger city – Greymouth. Here we did not stay but just dropping of the car then took a scenic train back to Christchurch. Here ends the self drive.
Our scenic train that we took from Greymouth to Christchurch
At Christchurch we are on our own and unable to rent our own car. Therefore we got a cab to the motel to leave our bags and we took their local bus to the city. Explore a little of the city and had our dinner there. The next day the group is split to 2. SP and Me proceed to North Island and AK & KY flew back to Singapore.
Upon reaching Auckland in the morning of 7am, we went to our favourite counter which is the known as the “i” for informations. Trying to book a day tour to Rotorua and at the end decided to just make our way there by bus which is about 3 hours bus ride but we have to catch the airport airbus to city to catch that bus.
The lady that was assisting us took her own sweet time with regards to the bus tickets, tour tickets. Feeling anxious, we kept on hinting to her to hurry up as we have to catch the next airbus to the city to catch the other bus to Rotorua! At the end we did miss the bus due to the misleading signages! At the end, we took a cab to the city that cost us sixty over bucks! The most expensive cab fare I have ever paid, best part was the cab driver gave us his card for us to call him if we need him to pick us when we are back from Rotorua. Fat hopes.. no way we am paying another sixty over bucks!
When we got to Rotorua we manage to join 2 tours: Hobbiton Tours and Tamaki Cultural Tour. I will go in more details with the tours in the another post. We spend a night there and the next day, after much consideration, we decided to rent our own car. We got a cute Cream Color Daihatsu Sirioncar. From there we drove down to Auckland and had a hard time driving into their car park next to the motel.
The roads in Auckland is all hill slopes and since I was not the driver, I was quite relieve.. but my friend had a hard time with the manual gears and the hill slopes. Along the way from Rotorua to Auckland we experience a queer experience. Something that you will never think that you will experience over here in a highway. It is TRAFFIC JAM! Can you believe it.. yes its true.. we were in the jam for about 2 hours before it is again smooth sailing drive to Auckland.
One thing that most of us think after this trip is… IT IS TOO SHORT! There are so many other city that we did not go and some city that we were at, we are not able to explore more and some activities that we are not able to do because of our limited time. So one word of advise for those planning to go to the kiwis… plan for more time! 11 days is not enough! Take more days, don’t save on your leave and you will regret it!
Also would like to take this opportunity to apologize to my group members, for me being hardheaded with an activity that I insisted I wanted to do and thanks for giving in to me but because of that, we end up arriving to the next town very late. Would also like to apologize to NZ government for killing either squirrals, rabbits or possums, when they just dash out from the road and we were not able to avoid them when we drove at night to reach to the next city. Thanks again for our 2 main drivers: KY & AK at South Island and SP who drove in North Island!
Sad part of this trip is that I lost all my photos that I took at the beginning of the trip. So I will try to load some of the photos that I took at the later part of the trip. Another is that, 2 days before coming back, my camera went KO on me. So pictures lost, camera also spoilt. Sigh.. what an experience..
