Step by Step

homestay at Akaroa

Took another good few hours before reaching yet another deserted town, Akaroa. Well, this town is famous for the fish and chips locally(which i think is really so so), but it is well known for its spectacular peninsular view as well. Unfortunately, the weather was so bad this round that we did not see much in this town.

We experienced farm homestay in the town, but thanks to the weather, we literally home stay, ie stuck in the house on chit chat with the owner only. We cant even go their beautiful garden (from pictures) or walk around the hill areas.

Its a bit unfortunate, but we did have good time with the owner, and we are still drooling over their home baked apple pie until today~we copied down the recipe, but lost it on the second day,ha! how typical right...

i can still remember the rose in the room i stayed smells so good...but my mum can only remember that the corridor is so dark that she has to wake my dad up to go toilet along at night :)

one of them eventually became our dinner

the house owner and us

Kaikoura

kaikoura is well known for whale watching as at once it was in the "most likely place to see whale in the world" list. But still, that doesnt explain the price tag that they slap on the whale watching tour. So we ended up not doing it. i remember it was a rainy day, we didnt get to walk around the town much (there's only 2 roll of shops only anyway...). We ended up having meal at typical western burger shop. I dont have much feeling about it, but i think it should be a new experience to them (although very likely they would not remember it now..)

kaikoura is a coastal city, so as we are approaching the town, the road begin to go curvy along the coast. Its quite tricky for driver, but with the spectacular view in return, i dont mind at all.

Again with some luck, i actually gotten a motel that has a front sea view. We were so excited that i even suggested everyone to wake up at 5am to check out sunrise (woke up at 9 eventually...). And the highlight of the day ended up to be.....the sudden hailing. Firstly my dad was complaining how come the rain here hurt so much, then only we realize it was actually hailing. My mum was so fascinated by it that she actually collected a few hails and seeing it to melt....

see....tourists are always the happiest people.

next day we decided to just cruise around the area. Passed by a wineyard, think it looks kinda nice, so drop by and wine tasting again~
After that we decided to go to a place that i was reluctant to go, but at the end it was surprisingly pleasant.

yes...the lavender garden....it was not the biggest lavender garden i have been, but the ambient is really pleasant, like a small private garden that welcome anyone passby to take a rest, enjoy cup of tea (and put money into honesty box)

lavender

nice backdrop right~

family photo time..

the lavender trip was nice besides the really odd taste lavender flavor ice-cream. Sometimes, being too adventuress is not a good thing...

maruia spring

so with anticipation, we arrived the hot spring place, without knowing this would be yet another let down

gorgeous setup for a resort. forest, hot spring, serene, no pollution whatsoever, japanese. yes, japanese, the whole spring was setup in japanese style. it may impressed the local, but what the hack, the tourism centre expect me to be excited over japanese style while my whole family fly 10 hours for a NZ encounter?~!

ok fine, at least the concept and the setup was great, but just because we are in extremely secluded area, you cant just charged us in such high price right? and guess what, the food is terrible to max, worse than the cheese+ rosemary+ overcooked chicken that i cooked (i am quite sure i was possessed while i was creating that horrible dish)

this is the indoor spring pool....quite nice but i dunno how to enjoy it. There's an outdoor 1, but there's so much mold and sandfly (which apparently means it is 100% natural hotspring) that it just put me off to the max....

thank god we had quite a lot of fun by playing card game 'turtle' with my dad. He just cracked us up by getting so excited whenever someone took away the Ace card from him....still find it so cute....i should really dig out the video and post it up

Greymouth

After conquering the mountain, we go towards hot spring instead, but due to the distant, we stopped over at Greymouth for a night. Driving in NZ south island west coast is a very interesting experience. There is almost no way you can get lost there, because there is only one road leading you there. And you are more likely to see animals than human being. sound like our lovely east coast isnt it?

cow's crossing~~ give way, give way~~

somehow, their cow is way much more handsome than ours

even the kids are cuter~

so we stopped over at the town just to refill our grocery as well as checking out the town. Its quite dead frankly speaking, but there's some victorian building here and there that worth snapping some photos.

so i snapped the town hall like any other tourist would do :)

in 13 days we stayed in 10 different motel, and interesting my mum's favourite is this one in Greymouth.

simple kitchen may be the deciding factor

oh wait, it should be because there is enough space for laundry~

ha....mum will always be mum :) but i quite like the place actually. you can actually hear the wave sound from the backyard, the sea is just 50m behind the backyard. Unfortunately the water is just wayyyy to cold, and its a rocky beach, so didnt even bother snapping photo...

franz josef

" guess what, i climbed a snow mountain in summer time!"
"no way....."
" really, everything around the mountain has already melted but the mountain is still stood there unaffected"
"you sure boh?"
"i climbed it lar~"
"that is really amazing!"

that was a cute conversation between my dad and his friend. Technically he was not wrong, except the fact that it is ice, not snow. So we went to Franz Josef Glacier to experience climbing the glacier, or ice mountain in a darn hot summer. It does sound amazing to me that there is actually a natural freezer standing in the middle of mountains disregarding the weather around it. Hence, i arranged the trip for my family, although later they were complaining it is too dangerous for them.

so as we walking closer to the glacier, we are starting to see a layer of ice embedded in between tropical forest, but not really that impressive just that.

now it does impressed all of us, it looks quite stunning and watching it without sunglasses will actually hurts our eye due to the strong reflection. After all, its layers and layers and layers of ice! would so be nice if i can pour cendol on top :)

this is an ice cave, but we were prohibited from getting near as it was rated as unstable. And guess what? it collapsed in 2007.

so this is a history moment, the cave is not there anymore.

like this photo very much. we are like a group of adventurers, climbing up the unknown mountain.

a prove that it is summer

the tired grannies

it would take another 5 hours to climb up, but we just stopped there. $$$ issue

find it hard to believe we actually climb such a steep glacier when we look back. but its worth the experience

In between the destination

if you have experienced road trip before, you would know quite well that the best encounter always occurred in between destinations, and it usually cannot be found in any traveling guide. i have lost in strange land for many occasions, and yet each time i experienced storyline that belongs solely to myself. maybe due to the great experience i had, my favourite English word has got to be 'serendipity' - such a beautiful word that i will put a smile on my face by just hearing the word from one's lip.

so on our way to Franz Joseph, we drove past a waterfall and the lake. We didnt snap much at the waterfall as we have seen so many of it that starting to feel dumb about the beauty of it. however, the lake was literally like a mirror that reflects everything above the surface. It's so unreal that i start to wonder if there's any place more unpolluted than NZ

Wanaka

After spending 2 nights at Queenstown, we officially starting our road trip. I arranged a stopped over at Wanaka to prevent long drive for the next day. Didnt have anything in mind, hence stopped over at a winery. The wine was normal, but the scenary was surprisingly stunning. once again my experience proved that serendipity always bring out the true beauty of traveling ( well, sometimes it was just an excuse for myself to feel better when i got lost in strange city, ha~)

tell me how not to love wine

i remember myself trying hard to cover the truck from being seen in pic.

snow mountains~ i still love it after so many years

Queenstown 4 (winter)

I actually been to Queenstown three times in total. The previous 2 rounds were purely for experiencing snowboarding. Queenstown leave a rather different impression to me on summer and winter. Here's some of the winter pictures, and me successfully conquered Remarkable ski field.