Isolated from the rest of the world, New Zealand is a beautiful country with amazing sceneries, flora and fauna. The outdoor scenes of the movies Lord of the Rings and The Hobbits were taken in the beautiful scenic places in New Zealand. The people living there are generally friendly, sincere and helpful to visitors too.
Being an agricultural country, you can also see a number of sheep, cows, and sometimes horses eating grasses on vast farmlands. It is said that the population of these livestock is more than the population of people in New Zealand.
After landed at Christchurch International Airport, we were picked up by the free shuttle van from Airport Gateway Motel which we stayed that day. After check-in, the motel was kind enough to shuttle us to Juicy Rentals nearby the airport, where we rented an MPV as our transport throughout our tour in New Zealand.
We ate a very relaxing breakfast at Terra Viva Café & Deli nearby Juicy Rentals. The Café is attached with a beautiful garden with lots of flowers.
We visited the Canterbury Museum, which exhibits the Maori culture, Asian arts, dinosaurs, birds and Antarctic lives, a young lady mummy, meteorite stone, etc. There is also a historical Victorian Christchurch street near its exit.
We had picnic in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens located next to the Canterbury Museum. There is a river in the botanic gardens, and you could see flock of ducks and birds living in the habitat.
Eating in restaurant or café in New Zealand is pretty expensive, so most of the time we prefer to do our own cooking in the place we stayed. Groceries can be purchased at hypermarkets such as New World, Countdown, etc.
We visited Re:Start, a shopping mall where shops are made out of cargo containers. We also visited the Cardboard Cathedral Church. The roof of this church is made out of cardboards. It is a transitional church building, as the original Cathedral Church was badly damaged in an earthquake happened in 2011. Near to the church are hundreds of white chairs, installed there in memorial to the death killed by that earthquake in 2011.
We visited the Ohoka Farmer's Market on our way from Christchurch to Rangiora. There are lovely people, nice food and fresh vegetables.
We had a farm stay in a cottage house in Pete's Farm Stay. Pete brought us to walk around his farm, watched his dog Jessy shepherded his livestock, fed the lovely sheep, calves, alpacas and cows. He even demonstrated to us how he shears a sheep.
The next morning, we had breakfast with Pete's family in his lovely house, together with another family from Canada who also stayed at Pete's Farm.
Then, we travelled all the way south from Rangiora to Ohoka, Ashburton, Timaru and reached our destination Oamaru. We stayed at the Ambassador Motor Lodge.
We visited the Steampunk HQ museum located near to the Oamaru Harbour. It features the steam-powered technology of 19th century Victorian England.
We went to a viewing platform at Bushy Beach to watch the yellow-eyed penguins returning from sea. The platform is high up at a cliff, quite some distance away from the penguin landing beach. It is very windy and cold there. We only managed to see a few penguins.
Then we went to watch the blue penguins at Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony. While watching penguins at Bushy Beach is free, watching penguins at the Colony requires purchase of entry ticket. But it worth the money, as we could see hundreds of small blue penguins returned from the sea, gathered together, queuing up and walking crossing the beach in front of us to return to their nests.
Departed from Oamaru, we went to see the big round rocks at the beach in Moeraki Boulders. We had our lunch in a nice seafood restaurant there.
We continued south to Dunedin, but we missed the opening hour of visiting Cadbury World. We also missed the departure hour of Dunedin scenic train tour. Anyhow, the Dunedin railway station is beautiful, and we took quite a lot of photos there.
We went to Baldwin Street, which is considered as the world's steepest residential street.
We continued our journey to Otago Peninsula, driving through kilometres of unpaved road at a swampy area, before we reached Bettys Bach. It is a waterfront cottage down a steep slope, with very nice scenic view. The slope is so deep that our luggage needed to be carried by an electrical lift connecting the small parking area on top with the cottage at the bottom.
There is a Larnach Castle in Otago Peninsula, but due to time constraint, we didn't enter into the castle. We went to Te Rauone Beach to watch the sea lions. The beach is very windy. We dodn't manage to see any sea lion that day.
We visited the Royal Albatross Centre and saw hundreds of albatross resting and flying around the place.
After that, we headed west to a small town beside a huge lake called Te Anau. We stayed in a nice lakeside holiday house there.
There is a Miles Better Pies bakery shop nearby that sells really delicious pies. There are also several souvenir shops that sell merchandises at reasonable price.
We drove north along the Fiordland National Park from Te Anau to Milford Sound for our cruise tour. It is a scenic highway with lots of sight seeing stop points, including the Mirror Lakes, Knobs Flat, The Divide, Hollyford Valley, Monkey Creek, The Chasm, etc. Our car passed through a long Homer Tunnel which only allows one way traffic at a time, controlled by traffic light at both side of the tunnel.
At Milford Sound, we went sight seeing on Mitre Peak Cruise.
On our way back, we visited the Underwater Observatory of Milford Discovery Centre.
We didn't have much choice for our lunch in Milford Sound. We found only one Blue Duck Café & Bar there. The food is quite nice, although a bit expensive.
Departed from Te Anau, our next destination was Queenstown. We stayed at Panorama Terrace apartment there.
Queenstown is a more dynamic and happening place in New Zealand, with bars and casino in the town centre. We had a fun time in Below Zero Ice Bar.
We went up Bob's Peak by riding on Skyline Gondola. Really very nice view up there.
Departed from Queenstown, we visited the historical Arrowtown nearby. There is nice ice-cream selling in Arrowtown, and a narrow Arrow River.
We also visited the Gibbston Valley Winery and had a nice wine tour in its large wine cave. We watched bungy jumps at the Kawarau Bridge Bungy Centre.
We settled down in Manuka Crescent Motel in Wanaka. Wanaka is a small town at the shore of the beautiful Lake Wanaka. We walked from the motel to the town, following the track in Eely Point Recreational Reserve. There are beautiful pine trees and lupin flowers along the way, and also ducks and birds in the lake. Recreational fishing boats were sailing in the lake. At the other side of the lake, far far away, are ice mountains forming a beautiful scene.
We had our dinner at Bombay Palace Indian Restaurant. The food was really nice, but also pretty expensive.
I had an amazing 1 hour trial flight above the Mt Aspiring National Park and its surrounding with my flight instructor from Learn To Fly NZ. This is my first experience flying a plane on the sky!
We also visited the Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World before leaving Wanaka to Aoraki Mt Cook.
Before arriving Mt Cook, there is a very long Lake Pupaki. There are nice and fresh salmons selling in Mt Cook Alpine Salmon Shop beside the Lake Pupaki Information Centre, located at the south of Lake Pupaki.
We stayed in Hermitage Family Motel in Aoraki Mt Cook National Park. There is free shuttle service to bring us to the Hermitage Hotel located about 800 meters away. Inside the hotel, there is a small museum with a 3D theatre and planetarium.
We just purchased the ticket once, and it entitled us for unlimited entry to the museum and theatre throughout our stay in the Hermitage. We watched the Primeval New Zealand documentary, Tycho to the Moon 3D cartoon, and Infinity Express.
We visited the Tasman Glacier terminal lake in our Glacier Explorers cruising tour.
We also walked into the Hooker Valley, a track that passed 3 suspension bridges and took us more than 4 hours from Hermitage Hotel to and fro. I noticed that even deep inside Hooker Valley, there was still one or two bars of handphone signal available.
Leaving Mt Cook, we headed east to Lake Tekapo and stayed in Lake Tekapo Motel.
We visited the heritage Church of Good Shepherd and the Mackenzie Sheep Dog Statue.
We had lunch at Kohan Japanese Restaurant and dinner at Thai Tekapo.
We planed to have stargazing at night at Mt John University Observatory, but the weather was too cloudy. Anyhow, we had nice coffee and ice-cream at the Astro Café there.
Before leaving Tekapo, we went to Tekapo Springs and soaked ourselves in the three tiered hot pools there.
Then, we drove to Geraldine and took the inland scenic route back to Christchurch. There are farms and farms and farms along the way.
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