Day 10 : 15 September 2011
We basically didn't spend much time in Lake Tekapo. Close to noon, we started our journey down south, heading towards the next destination, Wanaka. The owner of Lakeview Tekapo warned us that there's news the night before that there will be snow in Lindis Pass, so we have to be careful.
The journey between Tekapo to Wanaka was a very challenging one.. not because of the road condition, not because of weather condition, but because the scenery was so beautiful that we made photo stop every now and then - it was so difficult to resist, we simply had to take photos of this and that.
New Zealand doesn't have the best highway, but one thing good is they take into consideration of their tourism industry, and recognise the fact that something need to be done along the road to utilise the beauty of its nature. So we can see lookout point every now and then, for us to stop and take pictures of the scenery. Isn't that convenient? 
Throughout the 2 hour journey from Tekapo to Wanaka, there's some common characteristics we can see in many parts of it - that is there's lake, surrounded by snow capped mountain. That basically what we can see along the way, which is difficult to be ignored. 
And I think many people knows that the Maori name for New Zealand, which is Aotearoa - often translated as The Land of The Long White Cloud. I used to wonder what does that means. But upon admiring the clouds in South Island, I wonder no more. It was so easy to see the long white cloud lying so low, sometimes it looks like it is just located at the base of the mountain. A long white cloud lying low. 
Apart from the clouds and the mountain, New Zealand is full of lakes - beautiful lakes. But my personal favorite along the way from Tekapo to Wanaka is of course Lake Ohau, which forms the traditional boundary of Canterbury and Otago district. I took a picture of it, and thought it looks like the picture in a postcard. The color combination is simply beautiful - with the yellowish-greenish from the trees, brownish-greenish from the mountain, and the light blue from the lake. It looks like a painting. 
And I also love the scenery along Lindis Pass. When we were there, true enough it was snowing, but not heavy at all so it created dots here and there on the mountain. That, to me, was very beautiful.
We reached Wanaka at about 1pm and headed straight to Puzzling World. Time to have fun! We bought the combo tickets to both The Maze and Illusion Rooms. The Maze was funny, we kept getting lost at each route that we spent quite some times in it. By the time we enter the Illusion Rooms, we were already tired of walking hahaha. 
We were considering whether we wanted to explore Wanaka a bit, or should we just head straight to Arrowtown. It was already close to 3pm, Mr D is a bit reluctant to stay longer in Wanaka, so we decided to continue our journey to Arrowtown. There are 2 routes leading to Arrowtown, through Cromwell, and through Cardrona. It is much shorter via Cardrona, but the road is a narrow, twisting-and-turning mountain road, so we need to be extra careful, especially in winter. This is one of South Island's most scenic drives, so we didn't want to miss it no matter how difficult the road condition is. Through my observation, the road is much more challenging from south to north, than from north to south. Glad that we are coming from North heading South. I think if you are using campervan, perhaps it is better to avoid this road from south to north. 
It was quite a short drive from Wanaka to Arrowtown, it took only about 40 minutes. Arrowtown was built in the middle of 19th century upon discovery of gold in Arrow river. The town by itself is unique, as it maintains the old wooden and stone buildings giving it a historic look. I understand that Arrowtown is best visited during autumn due to the color of the trees.
The town by itself is unique, as it maintains the old wooden and stone buildings giving it a historic look. There are rows of shops, selling many things from leather product to clothes, to sweet etc etc. I found it a little bit pricey though, so it is definitely not the place to shop, at least not for me.
We spent close to 2 hours in Arrowtown, wandering around the town, before heading to our next destination, Queenstown, where we spent our night. Journey to Queenstown only takes about 20 minutes. We headed straight to our motel, Earnslaw Lodge, where I booked a studio unit. 
It was an old building, not comfortably accessible, but the room was OK. The kitchen is quite complete. The internet access can be purchased, and we paid NZD25 for 3 days 24-hour access, limited to 500MB. 
Though the kitchen is complete, I didn't feel like cooking that night. I read a recommendation from Chef Wan during his recent visit to Queenstown, a simple yet nice seafood restaurant called Fishbone Bar & Grill. So Mr D called the restaurant and book for 2 pax for the night. The food was simple, but the freshness of its ingredients that stands out. We ordered oysters for starter (which we carefully state what we can eat), grilled fish on cauliflower puree and spinach for me, and of course another fish and chips for Mr D. We spent some time walking around the town after dinner, before heading back to motel to end the day.
Next : Cromwell for fruits and ice cream.
Day 9&10, 14-15 September 2011
The Woolshed Gallery in Akaroa distracted us a bit, we were carried away selecting what kind of wool products we wanted to buy to the extent that we forgot about the time and the fact that we had long way to go from Akaroa to Lake Tekapo.
The first thing we need to do once we get out of Akaroa was searching for petrol station, to prepare for the long journey. Our GPS took us far far away from civilisation, which we initially worried as to whether it shows us the right direction [history shows that that particular GPS has its mood, it took us God knows where the final night we were in Wellington]. Nonetheless, it was a good drive, the countryside was equally cool and beautiful.
We continued our journey south once we were done with the petrol matter. We decided to have a relaxing drive along the way. Mr D received a business call when we reached Lincoln, so he had to stop by the roadside to answer the call. I took that opportunity to wander around and was so glad he stopped very near to Lincoln University. It's photo time, some of my friends are the product of Lincoln University, so I purposely took photos of Lincoln University from different angles, with the intention to show it to them later on. See girls, this is how your university looks like these days. 
The almost 4 hour journey between Akaroa to Lake Tekapo was a nice one, though most of the time we were going through the road in the middle of nowhere. South Island is big, but with only 1 million population, we can expect quite a quiet island along the way. We used Ashburton - Geraldine - Fairlie - Tekapo route. 
It was almost 6pm by the time we reached Lake Tekapo. It was already near Maghrib time. The view is already different here, we can already see the snow capped mountain surrounding the lake. The view was simply breathtaking, with the slightly reddish sky as the background. 
We checked in at Lakeview Tekapo, the last motel I booked, booked very near to departure. Reason being, the initial itinerary was to stay 2 nights in Christchurch and then to drive straight from Christchurch to Queenstown. But we later thought it will be too taxing to drive that far, so Lake Tekapo was the choice to break the journey. As the booking was done quite late, and we were left with not much choices around Lake Tekapo, so we settled with Lakeview Tekapo, which is the most expensive among all motels we stayed in. It costs NZD195 per night... I originally budgeted maximum of NZD150 per night for motel, so we practically burst our budget with this one. 
We were satisfied with the motel though, it was very modern, with no key to pass through the main door, just pass code to be keyed in. The apartment was very spacious, the kitchenette was superbly furnished, the living room was comfortably set, it makes the stay very relaxing. One thing I like the most about this motel is the existence of auto sky window, right on top of our bed. This sky window is controlled using a remote, allowing us to do stargazing from our bed at night. That means we can even stare at the stars while lying on the bed!
One notable thing about Lake Tekapo is its clear sky, allowing stargazing activities to be done. There are even stargazing tours we can join at night, to the Mt John observatory or Cowan's Hill. Simply amazing! The streetlights around Lake Tekapo are of a low intensity just so it won't distract us from the amazing sky.
Once we were done with stargazing and stuffs, I prepared my 20 minutes meal, comprises of microwaved-rice, kapitan curry chicken, and some raw salad. It was so convenient and easy, just dump everything in the microwave and wallaa.. The next morning before we started our journey, it was time for buttered-bread, tomato and sausages to fill in our tummy.
It was freezing cold that next morning, it was 0 degree celcius when we went out of the house. But the Lake Tekapo was so inviting we didn't care about the freezing weather. One notable thing about Lake Tekapo is its outstanding turquoise blue color, which was created by the rock flour which was grind by glaciers into fine dust, and created the unique blue color when combined with sunlight.
Tekapo town centre is located just off the lake, so once we were done admiring the lake, we spent some times going around the small town. It was so small you don't need even an hour to wander around. 
Despite its small size, we can actually get quite a number of things including souvenirs. There's also a supermarket called 4Square in the middle of the town, but when I looked at the various items sold, it was sold at a much higher price than what we can find in many other places. Even Whittakers chocolate was sold at NZD5.99, when it was sold at around NZD3.50 at Pak N Save and Countdown. That's kind of a huge margin to be tolerated. 
It was raining that morning, so there's nothing much we can do anyway. It was near noon, but the temperature at that time was only 2 degree celcius. So we decided to continue our journey south, heading towards Queenstown next.
Next : Beautiful route Tekapo - Wanaka - Cardrona - Arrowtown - Queenstown
Day 9 : Wednesday, 14 September 2011
We checked out early that day from City Central Motel. The plan was to take a detour to Akaroa, before driving to Lake Tekapo. The journey to Akaroa from Christchurch is about 90km which takes about an hour, while driving to Lake Tekapo from Akaroa will take approximately 4 hour within the distance of about 300km, so basically we had a long drive to go and had to start early.
Our first stop was at Little River, a small settlement located between Christchurch and Akaroa. For those who love arts stuffs, Little River will be a perfect stop as it has art gallery just next to the main road. I was browsing the prices of the painting.. it costs from NZD1k to NZD5k.. opps! That's definitely not within our budget. Little River also has a couple of cafes so it will be a good stop if we want to just take a coffee break.
The drive from Christchurch to Little River was quite smooth as it is at sea level, but after Little River, I noticed the road started to become hilly and it was quite steep, until we reached the hilltop where there's lookout point to see the valley.
The view from the hill top was refreshingly beautiful, it is kind of nice to see civilisation down there from up the hill. The combination of the greenery, deep blue from the sea and the hill around it is simply beautiful. 
Akaroa simply means 'Long Harbor', the name perhaps taken based on its logistic. The French established a settlement in Akaroa in 1840, and to this date there's still a lot of visible French influence in Akaroa - that includes streets name and building name. The moment we set our foot in the heart of Akaroa, it is obvious that this is a retirement town. The town centre is so peaceful, and I particularly like its cinema which looks like a normal shop lot. Akaroa's population is just about 500, and about 30% of them are over 65yrs - kind of too many for a small town isn't it?
We can also see some French flags displayed outside some of the building within the town centre. We stopped by at Fire & Ice, a place where they sold their own handmade paua shell and paua pearl based jewelery items. Paua is a type of edible shellfish which can be found in New Zealand, where its beautiful shell (after being cleaned) are widely used to make jeweleries. We can find paua sheall-based items sold almost all gift shops, but the ones sold in Fire & Ice are of a better quality with plated with silver or gold. The price, is of course much higher than the one we can get in the normal gift shop. We just bought a small pendant made of gold, paua shell and paua pearl for Mr D's daughter. It costs about NZD95. 
Akaroa's speciality is its nature, and the kind of activities we can do there are also nature-related. Apart from the beautiful scenery, we can also board the Akaroa Nature Harbor Cruise where visitors will be cruising around the extinct volcanic crater, and at the same time enjoy the wildlife especially the Hector's dolphin and penguin. There's also swimming with dolphin cruise, but we can't board both of it as it was closed that day.
But at the place where we can book the black cat nature and swimming with dolphin cruise, we can also find a gift shop, but I can say that it is not the cheapest we see, I saw cheaper of the same thing in Te Anau and Queenstown later. But we did bought some more paua jeweleries for the girls back home, but this time a much cheaper version which cost somewhere in the region of NZD10 to NZD30. 
Akaroa town is not big, but it is so quiet and peaceful. We spent some times walking around the town, observing the locals and also searching for what we can buy. 
It was already 1pm by the time we finished with walking around town, so we decided to just have lunch at a seafood restaurant. I ordered tomyam soup set, which was served with rice, while Mr D settled with fish and chips. One thing we have to remember about buying fish and chips in countries like New Zealand, is the possibility of the batter being mixed with beer, and the possibility of fat being used as the frying medium. So be careful selecting your fish and chips. 
The fish and chips was OK, the tomyam was OK.. the tomyam was filled with mussels, fish, prawn and some squid, not hot, more like a sour soup kind of taste. I completed my meal with a cup of hot blackcurrent, and that became my favorite hot drink nowadays. I don't really fancy coffee and tea, so if there's blackcurrent as an alternative when Mr D wanted to stop for coffee break that will be good.
When we head back to the place where we parked our car, we found Akaroa Woolshed. This gallery sells many wool items and some can be very interesting. I particularly love a sheep skin shoe which can be used in the house, suitable for the rainy days when it can be quite cold and we don't want to have contact with the floor. I straight away remember my mother, and thought to buy that for her as her feet can sometimes be very cold. It costs NZD79 per pair. There are also cute baby items, but some are not suitable to be brought back to Malaysia.
What I can say about Akaroa is it is beautiful, it is peaceful, and it is a place to relax. Not surprising, as old citizen make up the huge portion of the population. Wonder how the life like in here...
Next : Off to Lake Tekapo
