I'm back, and I have to say, that New Zealand is beautiful. :)

I still need more time to rest, yes, I don't have the mood to post about my trip, but don't expect much, I won't in detail, just talk about the country and the itinerary.

OK FINE SINCE I'M HERE I might as well talk about it now.

At first when I went there, I wasn't really keen about it, cos I don't really feel anything towards New Zealand, like, 'it's such a less-interesting place, no shopping' this kinda thoughts, haha. But then soon after I arrived, I was quite soaked up in the beautiful scenery. :) Yeah, so I told myself just enjoy! It's really rare that I can travel all the way down under to NZ! Great opportunity. :)

I saw lots and lots of farm animals, such as sheep, horses, goats, deer. Lots and lots of sheep! There are about 45 MILLION sheep in NZ! Wow. There used to be about 80 million of them about 50 years ago.

The first day we didn't really do anything, besides going to the International Antartic Centre, we went to Hanmer Springs to soak in the hot springs. Haha, it wasn't really hot, but quite a nice sensation. :)

The second day had lots of travelling. We went from the centre of South Island to the West, and all the way down South. Saw the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks. A nice natural formation! But I still don't understand about the blowholes part. =.= We passed by many townships like Westport, Greymouth, Hokitika, Haast etc. Stayed at the Fox Glacier hotel.

The third day was a rainy day. :( We were supposed to walk to view the Fox Glacier, but due to the bad weather, we couldn't do that, but only take the bus and view it from afar. Only caught a part of it. :( After that we travelled towards Queenstown.
Queenstown is a tourist place, tourist attraction, and the houses there are very nice! Lake Wakatipu is just beside, so there are many houses just at the front of the lake! Very nice. :) THe hotel there was also fantastic. Very modern and the facilities were good and new!

The fourth day was actually a free-and-easy day, which means you can choose what you want to do for the day. We chose to go to Milford Sound, the fjords place, where most other people from the tour are going there too. On the journey, we passed by many nice places, very camera-worthy. The creeks, mountains, they're all very nice. We got down the coach and took many nice pictures. :)
Milford Sound was very nice, haha, what can I say? Basically NZ is all about nice scenery! Ther water was not turquoise, haha, but then I saw nice waterfalls and moutains. (Were they mountains?)

The fifth day was the day to leave Queenstown. Sigh, I really like Queenstown, because I quite like their shopping street, haha! But of course, it's such a peaceful place, even though it's a tourist attraction. It gives you a very relaxing feeling. :)
Ok, so we left for a few places. I couldn't really remember where we went to, but this was the day when we stopped by many places. But in the end, we headed to Lake Tekapo, where we would be staying overnight in a hotel/extremely nice chalet nearby. Oh, Lake Tekapo is very beautiful! The water is really turquoise! And the Lupins (flowers) are really nice too! At night, we were supposed to go star-gazing, but then the weather was not ideal. Firstly, the wind is much too strong to go uphill, into the open air, and the guide said that the wind speed then was 100 km/h! Haha, anyway, I believe that we can be blown away if we really went up there to the hill, where it's completely open, no shelter what-so-ever. It's a pity, yes, because the star-gazing is one the highlights of the tour! Secondly, the sky was full of clouds. Even from our hotel/chalet, we could only see two stars! So we just had to succumb to our fate our not being able to go star-gazing.

The sixth day was heading towards Christchurch again. Actually, today was quite a boring day... As far as I could rmb (and referring to the map), we were sitting in the coach most of the time. We didn't visit any special place... OH YES WE DID! Haha, I forgot. In the morning, we were to go to the bank of Lake Tekapo to take some nice pictures, unfortunately, it was raining! And the wind was very, very strong! But then, suddenly, the tides were turned around, and the sun started coming out! Whee! To our right, the sun was there, but to our left, it was still cloudy, and both sides were still raining. So guess what, a beautiful rainbow appeared! :D And I'm telling you, it's the best, nicest, loveliest rainbow that I have ever seen! It was amazing! I could see the whole of it, from one end till the other. So after about 10min, the rain subsided, and we got down the coach and snapped a few pictures with the lovely rainbow and Lake Tekapo in the background. :)
We went to the Willowbank National Park where we saw some birds and animals of NZ, and of course, the endangered Kiwi bird, which I was so longing to see! ;) It's so sad, these animals/birds are all endangered! Man'd better learn how to cherish them!
Then we went to Monaville, which is some nice garden, with many lovely flowers there. To me it was alright, not say very fantastic, haha! But we saw the Singapore flag outside one of the houses facing the river in Monaville! :D
After that we visited the famous Cathedral Square in Christchurch. So that is the one that's always shown/featured in those fridge magnets/souvenirs!

And the next day was just spending time in the aeroplane going back to Singapore. I realised that there are many, many souvenir shops in NZ. Anywhere you go, be it a shopping street, cafe, restaurant, there's always a souvenir shop nearby. Even for those cafes or bars that we stopped by for toilet breaks, there's always a souvenir shop in it. Wow. So there were plenty of chances to buy souvenirs. Just depends on how much you want to buy.

The people there are very friendly and spontaneous. Unlike Singapore, haha, sad to say. The country is very clean, toilets are clean, roads are very neat and properly aligned. :)

Needless to say, the scenery was wonderful. Amazing. Yes, that's what you go there for. Pay for the scenery there. Haha.

I know my vocab is not good, cos throughout this post, the only adjectives I use to describe things are 'nice', 'beautiful', 'wonderful' and 'amazing'. =.=

I'm just glad that I can go to NZ at such a young age. Very fortunate indeed. :)