New Zealand Trip (Part 1) : Christchurch | Lake Tekapo | Lake Pukaki | Twizel

Note: All pictures are not filtered unless stated otherwise. So what you will be seeing will be New Zealand in its purest amateur digital form. Dig in!

I had no plans to write about my family trip to New Zealand in my old blog because I figured it would take a lot of time and I was lazy. And now that 10 months have passed since that trip, it would be kind of weird. But a friend texted me recently asking about the trip as his parents were planning to go to New Zealand for their honeymoon (He told me later that they ended up changing their destination to Turkey though). And I remember how I had browsed over 10 blogs while planning the itinerary for the holiday, and how that had helped me immensely during the planning process. So as I have ample time on my hands now and I have a new sparse blog, I thought what the heck I’ll write a post – or two -  about the trip. Who knows, somewhere in the world someone is planning a trip to the picturesque islands and like I did a year ago, turns to Goggle for help.

My family and I were in New Zealand for 11 days and 10 nights. At first we planned just to visit the South Island, but my mom all of the sudden wanted to add Wellington (the southern part of North Island) to our trip. If you ask me, when you only have less than two weeks to explore New Zealand, it’s better to stick to one island. There’s so much to do in the South Island, that I wish we had spent more time there. Praying hard that I can set foot on this beautiful country again in the near future.

We booked our tickets in June 2014 but only booked for our rental car in July and accommodations in late August. It was a bit late but my parents entrusted me to plan and decide on the route and I had to do it alone without the help of my sisters so I gave it my best. Oh yeah, by route I mean driving route, because my dad would be driving in the South Island. We used Booking.com and Agoda to find places to stay but I can’t recall the website we used to book the 8 seater van, sorry. Tip #1, you should choose a place that has rave reviews. Out of the 6 places that we stayed in (and booked online for), only one was a disappoinment. I think prebooking is crucial if you're travelling in wolfpacks, but if you're travelling alone or in twos, it would not be a problem to just swing by the many motels and check yourself in. You can try Airbnb.com to find a place to stay too.

We departed from Kuala Lumpur with MAS on the 20^th October 2014 in the morning and arrived in Melbourne that night. If you’re from Malaysia, there is no direct flight to the South Island of New Zealand. So you either have to fly to Australia (like we did) and then take another flight to Christchurch (South Island) from there or you can fly directly to Auckland (North Island) and make your way to Christchurch from there. We had a two and a half hour transit, if I remember correctly before we hopped onto our next flight. I think not staying in Melbourne for the night was the first mistake we had made. The airline we took to Christchurch after that was JetStar and I understand that it was a budget airline but the seats were kind of harder than what I expected. So it wasn’t really a pleasant experience as we had little sleep during that journey. Add in the fact that we spent 8 hours in the air earlier so we were really knocked out. It took another 4 hours to Christchurch and we arrived at about a little bit after 5 in the morning.

DAY 1

Yay! Arrived in Chricthurch, NZ. A tip for Muslim travellers, the prayer times on the internet are not 100% reliable so you’d better cross check with the local muslim association or mosque. After we went through the customs and had no trouble unlike when went to Australia because this time we didn’t bring any food except for canned sardines, 3in1 drinks and instant noodles. Oh and the Christchurch Airport isn’t a 24 hour airport so you have to go and get your passports checked quickly at the customs.  Only after we got our luggage did we find a secluded area to pray. Unlike the airports in Auckland and Melbourne there is no Surau or prayer room available so you just have to make do with a clean spot.

And then we took some pictures inside and outside the airport – like typical tourists- as we waited for the people from the car rental to pick us up at 7.30 am. Only when we went outside did we realize how cold it was, at least for us Malaysians. It was late October and it was supposed to be in the middle of spring in New Zealand but the temperature then was only 4 degree celcius. Good thing I read a blog earlier about how the weather there is bipolar, so you should always have a coat ready.

After picking up the car from the car rental place and realizing that we had brought too many bags, we made our way to the city center to find our motel. But first, breakfast. We stopped at a café to have breakfast. I can’t remember the name but it was attached to an organic grocery store which was colder than the air outside. The food was alright but was a bit pricy. After we were happy and full, we used the free map to go to our first motel. Yeah, a map, guys, I did not made a typo. We wanted to rent a portable gps but the rental company said they were out of stock. Thankfully, we managed to find our motel which was Courtesy Court Motel in Edgeware , situated in a row of motels. It was owned by a Korean family. We booked two units, each has a living room with a tv, a kitchenette, a bedroom and attached bathroom. Since we are a family of 6 we had to pay for an extra bed. My sisters and I share one unit while my parents and younger brother share the other one. I really recommend this motel because it is clean, including the bathroom, the furnitures are not outdated, has ample parking space and the owner are nice enough to hold to some of our luggage when we flew to Wellington on the 7th day. Of course, it had free wifi. 

That first day we only drove around the city (where we found lots of amazing street art and went to the mall to get food (there is a halal indian food place but it was kind of a fast food place so the dishes were just so-so) as were tired. We only stayed for the night because the next day is when the real adventure begins. After checking out early in the morning, we headed straight to the highway ( just for a little while, soon after it was only a one lane road) towards Tekapo. It took about 3 hours and a half to get to the lake but it was worth it. The scenery was great, We got to see a lot of cows and sheep as expected. 

My dad was the one who drove and would be the only driver for the whole trip, poor him, because my sister (who was the only competent driver aside from him in our family) said she didn't dare to, at the last minute after seeing the steep road towards Queenstown but  we'll get to that later. If you're Malaysian and you're wondering what is the procedure to driving a car in NZ, fret not. You don't need an international driving license like you would if you plan on going to the UK or the US. I made a mistake in telling my sister to do her international license and we wasted quite some money. Oops. After finding out about that, my dad didn't go and made his. Thank God. Okay so first you need to book your car or caravan online prior to your trip. When booking, you will need to type in the name of the driver and the license number in the online form. Then, you have to photocopy your license and bring that with the original along to New Zealand. You will need to submit that to the car rental company and you're done. You also drive on the left side of the road just like we do back home so there's nothing to worry about except for some scary winding road but like I said, let's save that for later.

When we made it to Lake Tekapo, I was lost for words. Here are a few pictures to tempt you. We actually took a lot more pictures with us in them but you wouldn't want to see shots of people or selfies when you could focus on and admire these beauties. 

We spent some time in Lake Tekapo basking in the sun. I later learnt that that was the one and only time I can walk around without a coat for the duration of our trip. At Tekapo, there is the Church of The Good Shepherd, which I didn't have a good photo of in my camera. There is also accommodation available there but we decided to choose to spend the night in Twizel, a nearby town which was cheaper.  Twizel was also further down the road than Mount Cook, which we had planned to see that day. But unfortunately, we didn't because it was late already and we were so hungry for lunch. So we went to Twizel which was a nice quaint town and one of the places in NZ that they shot LOTR.  But I think If I were to go to Tekapo again, I'd spend the night there.

The sky was so clear that night and we got to see stars. Like a lot of them. Unfortunately the camera was in my mom's room and even my sister's iphone could not get a good snap. But you can see a picture of that from google. And the clouds in Twizel were just beautiful. I didn't get to take any pictures with the camera but here's a few with my phone and filtered using Vsco.

Okay that's all guys for today. I will update more on our trip soon. Especially the hotel we stayed in Twizel which wasn't up to par even though it was supposed to be a good hotel. The motel in Christchurch  was heaps better.