New Zealand trip Day 4 - Queenstown --> Christchurch

The Final Day of our New Zealand trip, it is indeed a very short trip....

Early morning 7am, the sun was not really up yet. Looking out from the balcony of our hotel room, we could see the mountains covered with snow, it was only -4C! Freezing cold...

Imaging waking up every morning looking out at this scenery, I think people here must be happier than the others.

Okay, at last glance around our hotel, tourism is really a big business here, there were more hotels than residential houses.

And then, we were on our journey driving back to Christchurch.

At road side, there were people stopped their car at a side and ran up the hill to play with the snow.

All the way from Queenstown to Christchurch took us about 7 hours driving. Each sides of road were sheep, deers, cows, swine and horses.... every where around New Zealand. It is indeed a country with livestocks populations many folds more than the residents.

A sheep in the ranch, drawing our attention.

I've never seen any free ranging swine in Malaysia before, our swine are all staying in very squeezy houses.... Are these free ranging swine happier?

Herds of cattles, we made a mistake winding down the car window to take the picture. And the heavy smell of ammonia immediately rushed into our car and almost killed us! Those ammonia came from the cow dungs! I can imagine how much electric power can be generated from the gas there!

Once arrival at Christchurch city centre, we rushed for our last minute shopping at this wool products factory outlet.

They are selling wool products at up to 70% lesser than retail price!

And these are what we got, at 50% lesser than retail price.

The factory outlet we visited were just one of the few factories which are still operating. Most of the others in the city centre were destructed during the previous earthquake in February.

Some of the buildings there were still under reconstruction.

Some were left untouched, fenced up, restricted entrance.

And some roads were closed. GPS map that we had no longer up to date in this case.

These buildings were left abandoned....

And this is a brand new McDonald outlet operates after the one in the city centre destructed. It was built outside the affected area.

And finally, we headed to Christchurch Airport, dropped our rental Camry at valet and checked in for flight return to Malaysia.

New Zealand trip Day 3 - Queenstown --> Milford Sound

On the 3rd day morning, we woke up very early as the Milford Sound 1 day trip would be going to take us at least 12hours to complete. And our driver was so punctual to pick us up at our hotel 6.30am sharrrrp! The cost for the 1 day trip to Milford is about NZD$120 to NZD$ 150 per pax depends whether you are buying the lunch on cruise or not.

The journey in the bus was actually quite boring, as we have nothing to look out from the bus in early dark morning. So most of us were just sleeping on the couch.

Half way through the journey, about 2.5hours in the bus, the driver dropped us by a stoppover cafe at Te Anau for breakfast and toilet break, while he could pick up some other tourists who had already made the reservation for trip. And that made our bus full of 32 persons.

Te Anau is another tourism place which one would not miss to visit it. There is a big lake at Te Anau as well but we've already visited Lake Tekapo and our time did not allow, so we decided to give it a miss.

After half an hour break at Te Anau, we hopped back in our bus and continue the journey for another 2.5hours.

In the middle of it, our driver stopped by roadside when we were in the valley of Milford Sound, there was this big empty piece of land covered with ice where we could jump in and admire the beauty of icebergs in awe.

And then, we carried on the journey, this was another stop-by point --> Mirrors Lake.

It was really very cold out there, -4C freezing, we could not stay long out there, so we just made a quick walk through the pathway!

Many animals are supposed to be observed around this area, but it was winter, so I guess most of them were hiding in bed!

The lake was peacefully calm, but other than that, nothing seems special for me.

And then, we carried on our journey again. And there we came to the Homer Tunnel, which means we are not far away from the the Harbour of Milford Sound now.

It was a very dark creepy narrow tunnel which would only allow 1 vehicle to pass at a time, so drivers had to be very patient and extra careful passing through it.

And finally, we reached the Harbour and boarded on the cruise which were going to bring us through the Milford Sound.

We bought the lunch provided in the cruise. Either cooked salmon sushi or a ham sandwich to choose from, which came with scone, cookies and apple, and free flow of hot coffee and tea.

The name of Milford Sound in Maori is Piopiotahi, after an extinct bird -- Piopio bird.

There are quite a number of waterfalls after dry spells, some are gigantic and some could be seen disappeared with only some stains on the cliffs.

Tourist can either choose to travel through Milford Sound by cruise or by plane. Of course, by plane would be great, but the price would be double.

The goodness of travelling in cruise is that we got to watch Dolphins and Seals.

Rainbows appeared after sun shine through the waterfalls.

I think this is the nest of the seals, they were sleeping so leisurely on the rocks, not disturbed at all.

The cruising took us about 2 hours ++. And then we were on our way back to Queenstown again for another 5 hours.

The winding mountain road in the valley of Milford Sound.... It was said to be very prone to Avalanches, especially during winter. There were many warning signs of avalanches along these roads.

By the time when we arrived at Queenstown, it was already 6.30pm. And we were planning to have some BBQ pork ribs for the night, but without a reservation, we were only able to get a table at this Flame & Grill Bar at 9pm....

Honestly I did not make any survey before I decided to dine in this restaurant for the night, and I did not know that it could be so full house! All tables were full and we have to wait, and it was not even a weekend night.

The serving portion which stated for a person was actually enough for two. And opps, we ordered too much in the end, too much for 5 Asian stomaches.

Hm... the full rack of pork ribs was quite a disappointment, I've had a much nicer one in Australia. This was too chewy and over-cooked.

These BBQ chicken wings were nice though.

The seafood platter for one could actually feed 2-3 Asian stomaches ~_~

Fried Chicken Chop with cheese on top, with the side of steamed baby potatoes.

Caesae salads, not a bad one but too salty.