NZ Day 5 - 7: Queenstown

Queenstown is a beautiful town by Lake Wakatipu - one of NZ's largest lakes. Known as the 'Activities Center' it boasts 6 ski fields, and hosts bungee jumping, whitewater rafting and water sports. To add to the list - there is no shortage of retail shops, restaurants, pubs and clubs - set amidst 1000 hectares of vineyards. Unsurprisingly - the place was abuzz mainly with the younger tourist from as far as Europe and the USA - out to experience winter in the middle of the year. In Singaporean speak... 'damn happening'.

Every night was a virtual party - 20 somethings fresh from the ski-fields dancing away at nightclubs and queuing up at 24hour burger stands for a late snack, before retiring - half drunk - no less to the many hostels and motels before hitting fresh powder the next morning. Such is life...


Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu by late sunset


Queenstown Mall


Queenstown at night - ski lifts in the far distance.


Queenstown from The Remarkables

And did I mention that the food here was beyond excellent - albeit expensive? The food is deserving of a post of its own.

NZ Day 4: Milford Sound

After stomping about the glaciers and our photo frenzy around Lake Matherson - we set off to Queenstown. Now, the original plan was to drive to Milford Sound (some 700km - off my head) overnight - as we did not have accommodation booked. But reports that the roads were iced over dampened our resolve to drive through the night. Instead we decided to head on to Queenstown ala 'Activities Capital' - find accommodation there and follow a tour to Milford Sound - let someone else do the treacherous driving.

In typical fashion - everywhere was completely booked out - no surprise being peak season for skiing. We did indeed sleep (or tried) in the car - unaided at all by the occasional drunk dude stammering away in the night and the -1 degree temperature outside (and almost definitely inside the car).

The risk avoiding behavior (saving it for the bungee jump - yeah right!!) turned out to be a great decision. I was secretly glad that I did not have to drive the 800km return trip from Queenstown to Milford Sound and took the opportunity to catch up on much needed sleep. Plus the roads were REALLY iced up. There were accidents that day and at least one tour company canceled their program because their buses were not equipped to deal with the black ice.

From the trip:


Frozen Bush - photographed by the road side during a break on our 5 hour ride to MS.


Valley to Milford Sound - Mid Morning

Milford Sound is a fjord i.e. a valley submerged by sea as a result of glacier eroding the valley floor to below todays sea level.


Milford Sound


Mountain by Milford Sound


Milford Sound by Cruise


Rock Formations - Look hard and you will notice seals. There were dolphins too (not pictured).


Waterfall - Mountain to Sea


Waterfall - Close up.

Milford Sound may be 5 hours to nowhere from Queenstown - but an absolute must if you haven't been!

Lake Matherson

If a picture could ever speak a thousand words - I'd choose this photograph to summarize how wickedly beautiful South Island is.


Silent Reflections... in a thousand words.

NZ Day 3: Glacier Hiking

I just realised how 'blue' this post is going to look. Anyway to continue from our frosty morning - it actually cleared up to become what may be the clearest winter day for us yet! This morning - we were to glacier hike around Fox Glacier ('explore' is a more apt word) - but we will let it rest, in the name of commercialism!


Our ride!! First time in a chopper for me - and they are not exaggerating when they cautioned us about the wind created by the props!


Fox Glacier from the helicopter. Having a big camera gets you up in front with the pilot!


To give you an idea of how big the glacier is... look right into the middle of the photograph. Draw a line right down... see that dot? Thats this:


5 small tiny people!


B+W Hike Formation


Glacier structure - created by streams from melting ice. Notice the blue here - and the turquoise river from the last post! Know why now?


Glacier Sunrise - One of my favorite photographs


Self portrait


Glacier Formations


More Glacier Formations


Group shot!


Most important equipment - Spikes


They go on like this!!


Ride home - absolutely love this shot! Had to stand my ground against flying ice and stone chips to take this shot...

BTW I will be working ALL week - so no updates until I get some off time, hopefully end of this week or so. And it's likely going to be the 'or so' bit. But there's more than enough photographs to entertain you for now!

NZ Day 2 & 3

Quick filler in between all the nice photos. BTW contrary to popular belief, not all the photos came out great! I use about 5-10% of the photos as 'keepers'. The rest like many of these below make up a snapshot documentary of the trip.

After white water rafting - that came about to be a tad easier than what we'd expect (less water during winter and thus slower rapids) we proceeded to drive on to Fox Glacier (see map below), our second Kiwi stop. On the way we saw this:


Turquoise River - from the melting glaciers. Apparently certain minerals that wash with the ice create this gorgeous colour.


One way bridges - pretty much ALL bridges in South Island. Wondering what the deal is!? How much more would it cost to make the bridges 2-way? Thankfully most drivers give way. I can only imagine the riot this will cause back in Malaysia.


Town of Franz Josef about an hour and a half from Fox.


Frost. Next morning we dragged our sorry selves out of bed early to shoot (or rather I dragged poor Andrew out of bed to shoot). An idea of how cold it was out there. BTW our car was so frozen over we had to pour boiling water over to defrost our windscreen.


Outside Lake Matherson Cafe for breakfast. Cold breakfast anyone?


Sub-zero morning. Feeling lucky that I am not a tree of some sort here ;)If you look hard enough, notice that the bushes in the foreground are iced over.


Map modified from tourism.net.nz

NZ Day 2 (morning)

Next morning, we woke up especially early. The original plan was to have a lazy morning and head up to the white water rafting meeting point in town at 9am. However - the owner of the motel we bunked over insisted that we make the 45min drive (that was so not going to happen with our Ford) to Punakaiki (map right below) to see the 'Pancake Rocks'.

So we thought... ah what the heck and woke up ultra early to take the photos needed, return to the motel to check out and be at the white water rafting centre at 9am... When we reached Punakaiki at dawn we were just in awe of the view. There is absolutely something magical about sunrise!


Pancake Rocks by Dawn


Blow Hole


Dawn by Pancake Rocks, Punakaiki (remastered)


Map modified from tourism.net.nz

Coming up... no photographs from rafting! Was just not keen to see my camera float around in the rapids. But the drive to Fox Glacier was absolutely magic... Photos in a few days!

NZ Day 1

Landed in Christchurch that has possibly one of the oldest looking airports I have seen in a while. Come to think of it - it looks remarkably similar to the airport in Kenya. Picked up our rental (Ford Mondeo 2.0L Automatic) a terribly underpowered car and drove from Christchurch straight to Greymouth via Arthur's Pass. Follow the red line in the map right below!! You will notice that we essentially crossed South Island through a series of mountain passes.

We (Andrew & myself) landed at approximately 3pm local time. Needless to say - being mid winter, we essentially drove in the dark. The terrain rapidly changed from dry fields and lakes (not unlike country Victoria) to alpine mountains and icy roads as we drove through the mountains. A few shots:


Wild flower with Alpine Mountain background.


Semi-Frozen Lake

About the last photograph... it was literally pitch black as we drove through a region of lakes. The photographer in me was determined to take at least a few photographs from this part of the journey. I dragged Andrew into -1 degree temperature to help me take this shot. It was so dark that I had to get Andrew to shine the torch around to help me compose the picture. In addition, I only noticed that part of the lake was frozen on the camera LCD as I literally could not see the ice in the darkness.


Map modified from tourism.net.nz

We arrived at Greymouth - and lost count of the number of times our underpowered Ford was overtaken by fully laden lorries - late evening.