Our first stop was the Church of the Good Shepherd. The town of Lake Tekapo is so small that you can’t possibly get lost. It’s practically just one major road, and that’s it. We took a few minutes to get to the church, and then stepped outside to take a few photos. As soon as we stepped out, we wanted to get back into the warmth of our car! It was so windy that it was difficult to pose for photos, the wind made us want to keep our eyes closed all the time. We hurriedly snapped a few pictures, and then got back into the car. A few meters down from the church was a statue of some dog, erected in memory to something or other. This time, we didn’t even get out from the car but took some pictures from the inside of the car.

After that we drove back to Christchurch, and made a visit to the cathedral. Then, we walked around, looking for some places to have lunch. Overall, I much prefer Queenstown to Christchurch. Queenstown feels like compact town, with friendly people all over, and everything is easy to find. In Christchurch, we walked around quite a bit, and everything was so spread out that it didn’t feel very “tourist-friendly”.

We dropped our car off at the Omega office (the car was wonderful, and highly reccommended!), and they gave us a ride back to the airport, which is only a few minutes away from the office. And so, ended our great NZ trip!

Related posts:

1. Te Anau to Lake Tekapo (Day 12)
2. Melbourne / Christchurch – Day 5
3. Christchurch – Kaikoura – Nelson (Day 6)

We set off from Te Anau and reached Queenstown by 11ish, and decided to explore Queesntown for a bit. We took the gondola up the mountain, and it was so much more fun compared to the Genting cable cars. I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but the views were so wonderful!

When we reached the top, Terence went off to the luge track as he had purchased 5 rounds around the track together with the gondola ticket. It’s a bit hard to describe what a luge is, it’s kind of like a go-kart. From the website, this is what it says:

The scenery’s a blur!
Hurtle down a winding downhill track through the trees.
Race through the bends, or pull in for a breather and enjoy the panorama.
Burn it up on the advanced track or cruise sedately down the scenic track.
Then hop on the chairlift and do it all again.
Skyline Luge – it’s 800 metres of fast-paced freedom.
Once is never enough!

It sounds so much cooler than it looks. I managed to get a picture of Terence on the luge, and it looks like he’s sitting on a teeny land-based boat.

After we came down from the mountain, we stopped at Vudu Cafe for our lunch, and here’s our obligatory meal pictures.

After lunch, we explored a bit more, and I must say that I really like Queenstown. It’s my favourite town that I’ve been to so far in the South Island. It’s a smallish place, but very compact, and lots of activity going on all over.

My impressions of Queenstown were further improved when I discovered two shops. The first was a sweet shop called The Remarkable Sweet Shop. They have great fudge there, I tried so many flavors but amongst my favorites were Creme Brulee and Hokey Pokey. I would love it if this shop was in Malaysia, but then again, I’d probably get diabetes really quickly. They do have online shopping though….

The second shop was one that sold this great tasting gelati, I’ve forgotten the name, but it was so yummy. I can see myself putting on tons of weight if this trip was any longer!

We spent more time that we should have in Queenstown, which meant we had to drive in the dark in order to reach Lake Tekapo. Everything went smoothly though, and we checked into our last night’s stay at Lake Tekapo’s YHA.

I would say that overall, comparing BBH to YHA, I think I do prefer YHA more based on the different places that we’ve stayed at. However, either way, backpacking in New Zealand is at a much higher standard compared to anywhere else I’ve been before. So, my dear Shangri-la friend, do go backpacking in NZ, you’d love it!

Related posts:

1. Lake Tekapo to Christchurch (Day 13)
2. Wanaka – Te Anau (Day 10)

The views whilst going up to Milford Sound was stunning. We could see lots of snow all over, the results of the avalanche that occurred a couple of weeks ago.

We made several stops whilst on the way up at several places of interest. One of them was called Mirror Lakes, and from the picture, you should be able to see why!

When we reached the Real Journeys base, we hopped onto the cruise boat, and we were off! As it was winter, they had a promotion where we got a free lunch pack. We started off eating it inside the boat, but quickly decided to go out onto the deck so that we can see more. It was cold and oh so windy, but really worth it.

The skipper of the boat spotted some bottlenose dolphins and he brought us right next to the dolphins, and it was so cool! It was a whole pod of dolphins swimming around, and they stayed around the boat for quite awhile before swimming off.

There were tons of waterfalls all around us. It had rained the previous day, so according to one of the guides, there were quite a few “temporary” waterfalls which would be gone by the end of the day.

Other than the dolphins, we also managed to catch a glimpse of a few tiny penguins, but they were so small and hard to see! Finally, we saw some seals sunning themselves on the rocks nearby.

It was an experience I wouldn’t have liked to have missed, and I’m so glad the roads were cleared of the avalanche in time for us to make the trip!

Related posts:

1. Te Anau to Lake Tekapo (Day 12)

There was an awesome van at the information center, and I had to take some photos of that van. If I ever had a van, I’d probably want it to look like that!

After our visit to the i-Site, I had decided to go to Puzzling World, which was just a few kms away from Wanaka. There was enough at Puzzle World to keep us entertained for a few hours, the maze itself took us almost an hour to complete!

The goal was to find the four corner towers of the maze, the easy challenge was just finding them, whereas the more difficult challenge was finding the towers in a certain order. We decided to start off with the difficult challenge, but soon discovered that it was more difficult than it looked, so we ended up doing the easy challenge instead.

After completing the maze, we went on to visit the Roman style toilets. It’s so well done that when I peeped through, I thought there were real people using them! We finished up with the illusion rooms, then made our way back to Wanaka for lunch by the lakeside. Of course, the idea always sounded better in our head, when we sat down by the lake, the wind was so strong that we quickly found ourselves making our way back to the restaurant to eat in peace.

We arrived quite early at Te Anau, before 6 and checked into the YHA there. We asked the receptionist for a few dinner suggestions (not that there were that many restaurants!), and headed off to La Toscana. On the way there, we passed by a park, and I felt like making a quick stop to relive my childhood.

Then, we continued on our way to La Toscana, and our dinner.

Related posts:

1. Te Anau to Lake Tekapo (Day 12)
2. Lake Tekapo to Christchurch (Day 13)
3. Franz Josef – Wanaka (Day 9)

When we arrived, they gave us a short briefing of the extra clothes that we would need. They provided us with overtrousers to keep your pants from getting wet, hat, gloves, waterproof jacket, boots and crampons. After putting on all the equipment except for the crampons, we took a short bus ride to the starting point.

From the drop-off point, we had to walk through a small forrested area, and then it was about 40 minutes walk through a rocky area to reach the foot of the glacier. Along the way, we passed a few small waterfalls on the sides, which were really pretty. At this point, I was feeling a bit overheated from the many layers I was wearing, so I shed the poofy jacket layer. I guess it really wasn’t necessary to put on so many layers, the exercise would probably keep you warm anyway!

At the foot of the glacier, we were split into two groups. The first, was the one that would go a bit faster, whereas the second would be taking a more leisurely walk, with more opportunities to take photos. I wanted to go in the second group, because I knew that I wasn’t fit at all, but Terence wanted the first group, so that’s where we ended up.

About ten minutes into the hike up, I knew that it was going to be a tough day. The steps going up the glacer were pretty steep, and probably not made for a short person’s legs, especially an unfit person! I was huffing and puffing, and had already dropped back to the end of the group after a few mintues.

At this point, I was really glad that we hadn’t chosen to do a full day glacier trek, it probably would’ve killed me! Thankfully we stopped fairly often. As we were the first hike of the day, some of the steps needed hacking with the pickaxe, which our guide had to do, and this gave me a few minutes to rest each time. After an hour or so, we reached the highest point we would be hiking to, and this gave us a chance for a few photo opportunities.

After the glacier trek, we stopped for a quick lunch at The Landing, where we had a chicken cajun sandwich, and a bacon quiche.

We then set out for Wanaka. Initially, I was a bit worried about going over the Haast pass, as I had read in a few blogs that the cars had required snow chains to drive through the pass, and it was dangerous, and we would only be able to go at 25 kms per hour. In addition to that, someone had mentioned that during winter, the pass closed at 5pm! In this case, our only option would be to stay the night at Haast, but the accommodation reviews were pretty dismal.

We made a stop at the information center, and they reassured us that there was no snow, so the chains would be unnecessary, and the pass was only closed when the roads were dangerous. So, we were good to make our way to Wanaka. It probably took us about 4 hours or so, and by the end of the drive, my driving total stood at 350 kms since the start of our journey.

Our accommodation for the night was another YHA, and this one was quite different from the Franz Josef YHA. We were booked into a twin room at the YHA Wanaka, and we got something like a service apartment. There were two rooms inside this little cottage, one of which was ours. The other room was unoccupied, but it was locked. In the cottage, there were all the facilities, shower / toilet, kitchen, TV area. For the dorm rooms, we saw that the shower / toilet areas were actually outside the main accommodation area, so you’d have to keep coming outside into the cold if you wanted to use the facilities. I was really happy that ours was so much more convenient!

We had dinner at a nearby pub, I think it was called Muzza’s. The owner recommended the lamb, so we ordered that, plus a pork spare ribs appetiser, which I decided would be my main course. When it came out, it was pretty huge, 6 ribs! I would never have been able to finish the main course size, which was double the amount of ribs.

I’m constantly amazed at the amount of food that the locals can consume. We also had a dessert, which was too yummy that we didn’t even manage to take a photo. After dinner, it was back to the YHA for the night.

Related posts:

1. Nelson – Punakaiki – Franz Josef (Day 8)
2. Hanoi Day 4
3. Wanaka – Te Anau (Day 10)

Our first leg took us from Nelson to Punakaiki so that we could visit the Pancake Rocks & Blowholes. As we neared Punakaiki, the roads were quite winding, but the views of the Tasman Sea were spectacular! At every bend, it seemed like there were more stunning views. We reached Punakaiki at about 12.30, and set off around the walking track.

The rocks did look like stacks of pancakes piled onto one another, and were really unusual. They didn’t look that sturdy to me, and the waves pounding against the rocks made me think that the rocks wouldn’t last forever because of the erosion. I guess it’s just like the twelve apostles along the Great Ocean Road in Melbourne, things don’t last forever.

Other than the rocks, there were also blowholes in the same area. It was really fun looking at the holes, waiting for the spray of water to come out of the holes. It wasn’t as big as it could’ve been, because it wasn’t high tide, but it was still better than the ones we saw in Australia.

We drove onto Greymouth for our lunch stop, and from there went on to the Franz Josef Glacier. My driving tally today was a measly 100 kms, and Terence was the champion, doing almost 400 kms! At Franz Josef, we stayed at the YHA there, and the rooms were awesome. They were clean, bright and most importantly, really warm. The showers were nice as well, with wonderful water pressure and lots of hot water. So far, YHAs are impressing me more than the BBH hostels.

For dinner, we went to a pub nearby called The Landing and ordered nachos, fish and chips, and a banoffee pie.

Although we’re living in backpacker hostels, we’re sure not eating like backpackers! Lots of the backpackers cook their own dinners, and we always seem to go out for relatively expensive dinners. I suppose they aren’t really expensive by NZ standards, a main meal normally costs about 20 – 25 NZD, so on average our dinners are usually about 50 NZD. We just keep telling ourselves not to convert to RM, and it doesn’t make us feel so bad.

Related posts:

1. Franz Josef – Wanaka (Day 9)
2. Christchurch – Kaikoura – Nelson (Day 6)

The pickup from Green Monkey was at 7.10am, and they arrived promptly. There were two other guys in the bus with us, a Welshman named Dave, and a German caller Julius. We passed the time chatting with them, and Terence bonded with Dave over some football talk.

When we arrived at their base, we met our guide for the day and he briefed us on our itinerary. The company was very professional, even providing us with additional clothing, should we need it. There were fleece jackets, as well as thermal tops and leggings available. They did mention that as the day was going to be sunny, they didn’t think we would need the additional clothes, but if we wanted to, we were free to take anything we liked. Terence decided to borrow the thermal leggings which were bright stripey blue, and he looked hilarious!

Our guide briefed us on the kayaking equipment we would need, and procedures of launching / beaching the kayaks and then we were ready to go. There were five kayaks in total, which meant ten people including the guide. For some reason, Terence and I were always the last ones, I blame it on our kayak, or our paddles! There must’ve been something wrong with them.

My arms really started to ache midway through the morning, but there were quite a few pauses in between where the guide provided some explanations, giving me enough time to rest. We landed at a nice beach for a lunch break, where we had soup, bread and coffee.

The guide then took us up a path, which provided us a beautiful view of the beach, with our kayaks on the sand below.

We continued on with our kayak journey in the afternoon, and managed to see quite a bit of wildlife, including some seals! We didn’t really manage to get any good photos of the seals, though. After paddling about 19 kms, we landed at another beach, and were picked up by the aqua taxi to go back to our base.

My arms were aching like crazy by this time, and my cargo pants were soaked from the kayaking. With the wind blowing, I was freezing! I was just so thankful that it was sunny for the entire day, I read previously in other peoples’ blogs that on their kayaking trip it rained, and it was miserable weather. My advice for people going kayaking in the winter, bring spare clothes, and always bring your sunglasses! I almost didn’t bring it because I thought it wouldn’t be necessary, but the sun was pretty strong! All in all, it was a lovely day, and a nice rest from the long drive we had the previous day.

Related posts:

1. Christchurch – Kaikoura – Nelson (Day 6)
2. Franz Josef – Wanaka (Day 9)

As we drove along the roads, it was our first oppurtunity to really check out the car’s performance. The night before, we had only driven from the airport to the hostel, which was less than 20kms away. Overall, we were quite impressed with the car’s performance, it was fairly new, and didn’t seem to have any problems.

My first impression of the “highways” in New Zealand was that they weren’t like the highways we have back in Malaysia. They’re mostly single lane roads, and they have many curves and bends all over the place! On that morning, it was quite foggy as well, which was quite scary considering the amount of driving I had planned for the two of us over the next week.

We had our first glimpse of sheep early on, and we had to stop to take pictures. Our excitement over the sheep died down pretty rapidly as we passed sheep every few kms along the highway!

After awhile, the fog cleared up somewhat and the views whilst driving were simply magnificent. There are so many snow topped mountains all over the place, and we were truly awed by their beauty.

We reached Kaikoura after about 2 1/2 hours of driving and made our way to the seal colony. Apparently there were a few areas that we could trek through, and the views were supposed to be magnificent. We parked our car, and there was a seal right in front of the carpark! It seemed to be putting on a show for us, and we got a few nice pictures, especially with the gorgeous background.

After walking around for awhile, we decided that it was time for lunch, and we stopped at a roadside stall nearby called Kaikoura Seafood BBQ. It was kind of like a picnic with views of the sea, but we didn’t realize how cold it would be!

We ordered garlic scallops with rice, and a whitebait fritter sandwich. We didn’t know what whitebait was, but we thought it sounded pretty exotic. How were we to know…it’s more or less like ikan bilis. The garlic scallops tasted quite nice, although the food got cold within seconds of arriving on the table. We were really freezing by the time the food came as the wind was really strong, so we tried to eat as fast as possible and get back into the car to warm our hands.

After lunch, we made our way to Nelson, which was about 3+ hours away, and I had my first taste of driving in New Zealand. For those of you who know me, you probably know I hate driving, so this was truly an experience. Luckily for me, there aren’t many cars driving around, which makes things much better. Compared to driving to work everyday which is…5kms at most (I think), I drove an amazing 120 kms today!

We checked into the Green Monkey which I had chosen, mainly because of the free Wi-Fi that they provided, plus the reviews online seemed pretty promising. The owner is a really friendly chap named Steve, and he gave us a tour of the area. It’s a house which has been converted into a hostel and has about 6 – 8 rooms. A lot of the guests there are long-term guests, so they’ve made it into their second home.

We went out for dinner not long after we checked in, as we know that places close really early. We found a Pizza Bar nearby, and the food there was really good, they gave complimentary garlic bread for starters, and we had a salmon cream pasta and a four topping pizza.

After that, we headed back to the Green Monkey to check out our hostel a bit more. The heater in the room seemed to be controlled by a central switch somewhere. I have no idea when it comes on, it just seems to turn on randomly in the middle of the night, so the room could get pretty cold.

The living area was very warm, there was a fireplace there, and there’s free cake baked every night (I assume it’s every night, as we were there two nights, and both nights had cake). The showers weren’t easy to control, it kept on going from too hot, to too cold. Me being me, of course I opted for too hot, and came out looking sunburnt!

We had a pretty early night, as we were off on a full day kayak the next day. I was praying for good weather, as I couldn’t imagine going out kayaking with rain coming down, and this was during winter! Thankfully, the weather forecast was for sun, so I had my fingers crossed that it was correct!

Related posts:

1. Melbourne / Christchurch – Day 5
2. Lake Tekapo to Christchurch (Day 13)
3. Nelson – Punakaiki – Franz Josef (Day 8)

After that, we met up with Tim, who had just come back from visiting his gf’s parents in Poland. He has a Polish girlfriend! He met her whilst backpacking in Rome, and he just went to meet her parents. Apparently, they don’t speak much English, which makes communication really difficult. They stay in a kampung area, and had never seen an Asian before! Hahaha, must’ve been an interesting visit.

And then, we were off to the airport again, Eel having kindly volunteered to send us. The Jetstar flight was delayed slightly, maybe about half an hour or so, which meant we reached Christchurch at about 1am in the morning!

Coming from Melbourne, it was so SO cold. We had already arranged for a rental car with Omega Rental Cars. Originally, we asked for a 1500 cc Toyota Corolla, but we ended up with a Toyota Corona (not a car I’ve ever heard of before). We had to go and look for the car at the long term parking, and the keys would be kept in a “secret” location. The only thing was, it was freezing! Windy, cold, and rainy…not the best weather at all. We eventually found it, and I just had to take a photo of our first day with the car.

If you’re in a warm country right now, don’t you feel glad?? Haha, it sure was cold that night.

From the airport, T drove to our backpacker place, with me assisting in the navigation (I can’t believe the car rental didn’t provide us with maps!). We stayed at the Dorset House. Because of our late arrival time, we had been given the access code, and the keys to the room were kept at the reception.

I was really impressed with Dorset House. Having recently come back from backpacker hostels in Egypt in Jan, I was preparing myself for similar accommodation. I find it’s good to always prepare myself for the worst, and then I’m never disappointed!

Just like in Egypt, when we booked a cruise, I was expecting something like the Hanoi cruise along Halong Bay, which was so rickety, a teeny room, and water in the shower at only certain times. But I was very pleasantly surprised by the luxuriousness of the Egypt cruise.

Anyway, at Dorset House, we got a really nice, brightly lit place, and it was so warm! There were quite a few shower / toilet rooms, maybe about four on the ground floor, and another four upstairs. The one that I used was fantastic, plenty of hot water (we were always running out of hot water in Egypt, and it was winter there too!), clean and well lit. The price we paid was only about 50+ NZD, cheaper than the YHAs in Christchurch.

We slept soon after showering, as we were planning on leaving early the next day, heading up to Kaikoura, and then to Nelson.

Related posts:

1. Christchurch – Kaikoura – Nelson (Day 6)
2. Lake Tekapo to Christchurch (Day 13)
3. Melbourne Day 4

Checking in wasn’t a problem, they asked to see the Australian visa. I couldn’t show them one because I never received anything that I could print out. All I got was an email saying my application has been received, and it didn’t have any details like my passport number. Furthermore the email said that the visa was linked to my passport, and there was no need to print anything out, so I didn’t! T had a printed copy of his business visa, so he showed that to them and they seemed to be satisfied.

Interesting thing to note, when T was helping me carry my suitcase to his car, he remarked that it was really heavy. At the airport, when we weighed the two suitcases, mine was 12kg, and his was 20kgs! Hmm….what does that say about him?

OK, off to the washroom before we board the plane. Stay tuned for our upcoming adventures overseas!

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2. Hanoi Day 6