The return journey after an eventful holiday always appears to be a long one. Last 14 days have been filled with loads of fun as we took our annual holidays to New Zealand. After two consecutive trips to Europe in last two years another overseas trip was nowhere on the mind and wallet. But reading newspaper one fine morning i chanced upon the emirates global sale offer where return fares to almost all destinations were close to 40 percent less than usual. Seed had been planted for planning another holiday. After the most difficult part of convincing the wife for another overseas trip was over, rest of the planning was not much of a task.
PLANNING
Destination was not much difficult to choose as after Europe, NewZealand was always on our agenda. And we wanted to visit New Zealand in its most beautiful season- Autumn. Tickets were booked in January for travel in second week of April, Visa formalities were over by January end, and then started the agonizing wait till April. Since leave was always a constraint, we could only take out two weeks for this trip and that meant only one of the island was possible and we chose the South Island.
After pouring over the net, various forums, lonely planet New Zealand book, we chalked out our itinerary like this
Day 1 Arrive in Christchurch – Pick up the rental car
Day 2 Drive to lake Tekapo, Night at lake Tekapo Scenic resort
Day 3 Drive to Mount Cook National park, overnight at twizel
Day 4 Lake Ohau, Lake Benmore & Twizel area, over night at Twizel
Day 5 Drive to Queenstown
Day 6 Queenstown
Day 7 Queenstwon or Wanaka
Day 8 Wanaka
Day 9 Drive to Franzjosef
Day 10 Drive to Nelson region
Day 11 Abe Tasman National park
Day 12 Drive back to Christchurch
Day 13 First half Christchurch city and board flight back home at 1600 hrs
Hotel booking for the first day and last day was done in advance and for rest other days i had finalised the various hotels and had sent them a mail about tentative booking. Since April was not the prime tourist season, hotel booking was not very difficult till the last minute. Car rental was a diffuclt choice and here i went with the most recommended agency on Trip Advisor- Apex Car rentals and retrospectively i must say i am not disappointed with the choice. They were thoroughly professional, always responded to mails immediately and provided accurate information. Had no problem with the Toyota camry i had hired from them for the entire period. Cost of hiring for 12 days with full insurance (Zero excess) came out to be 1050 NZ$.
As the dates of travel came near we had finished our shopping for some woollens and different food items we intended to carry like ready to eat meals etc etc. One thing to be kept in mind that one needs to declare all these food items in passenger entry card as you land into NZ as they have a strict biosecurity policy.
So finally after all the planning, packing, making checklist, re checking the checklist, the day of travel finally arrived and we arrived in Mumbai on 12th April for our flight on 13th April early morning. Since our tickets were booked in emirates, it meant travelling first 3hrs in opposite direction to Dubai and then to Christchurch via Sydney.
Flight to Dubai was a Boeing 777-300ER, which was a nice plane with 10” wide ICE and i must say Emirates has one of the best ICE system today amongst all airlines. Food was nice by our standards and three hours just went by. Our next leg was Dubai Sydney non stop in Airbus A380-800 and wow what a plane it was. One of the most silent cabin i had ever flown. Leg room was also much better compared to 777. Though it was a 13 hour flight, with all the movies, games and music loaded in the ICE, journey passed off smoothly and we landed in Sydney on 0600hrs on 14th April and arrived in Christchurch same day at 1400hrs local time.
I was keeping my fingers crossed for my luggage as on previous trip one piece of luggage didn’t arrived but this time as soon as i cleared my immigration and went to baggage carousel my bags were already there. After claiming the luggage we went through bio security check where they checked all food items and after getting satisfied, we were out of the airport by 1430hrs. Called up my hotel and they were there to pick me up in 5 minutes as hotel was quite close to airport.
After settling in our hotel room which was a two bedroom apartment, i picked up the car and went to supermarket for some shopping. After an early dinner we finally called it a day.
15th April 2012 Christchurch to Lake Tekapo
I got up early at around six and went for a walk to nearby park to capture some autumn pictures of Christchurch.
After breakfast at around 1030 hrs we left for Lake Tekapo. Drive through tekapo was through Cantebury plains and it was a non eventful drive with minimum stop for pictures.
We reached Tekapo at around 1400hrs. Our resort was located right on the lakeside and had wonderful views of the lake.
Light was just perfect for photography and after having our lunch we went exploring lake tekapo and then lake tekapo scenic reserve.
By the time we finished with the reserve we thought of going till Mt John observatory only to find that road is closed after 1700hrs and we have to come back next morning at 0900hrs. So went went exploring Lake Alexendrina and Lake Mcgregor. Fading light provided some excellent photo opportunities.
So we came back to our resort and after an early dinner at 1900 hrs we called it a day but not before checking out next day weather report on New Zealand primetime news.