Day 7 Christchurch->Dunedin

I booked a hostel in Sumner beach which is on the other end of the town. It was a long drive through the town plus the terrible traffic jam. In Dunedin, there is never a jam. I had my first jam in the recent 7 years while I was in the bus from London to Manchester a couple of months ago, and that was the second jam. Therefore I don't have much good impression over Christchurch...

It was boring on the way back as it is straight. But we managed to make the most out of it. Thanks to Roland who recommanded the place for my mum. We visit the Moraki Boulders. The boulders are the round rocks on the beach.

Day 6 Arthur's Pass

The stunning snow moutain views.

Day 5, West Coast, Haast -> Hokitika

West Coast is well known beautiful. Unfortunately because of my poor driving skills and road conditions, I didn't get to take lots of pictures. We passed Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph Glacier. It was heiling in the mountain area and we couldn't stop much for picrtures. It was a shame. We only had a distance look at the glacier. While in town just 15 minutes driving away, the sky was clear and the sun was shining!

Day 4, Wanaka->Haast

The next day we went to another lake town Wanaka for a short stop. It was windy and cloudy at the start but cleared up later on. We had some lunch on the lake side with some sparrows. On our way to Haast, there are lots of beatiful camping spots with creeks aside, I wished I had a tent with me!

Haast is a very small "town", there is no cash machine, no EFPOS, there is one supermarket though with a big Backpacker's accomodation. We went to the nearby beach to have some fun, but it was too windy to stay for long. The sea waves were huge and the sky looked yellow and grey. Not far from us, the clouds were standing from the shore straight up like cyclone wati. We were scared and quickly escaped from the beach.

Day 3, Queenstown

My mother always wanted to see Queenstown, but it has been spoiled by the tourists a lot. I don't like the downtown that much, but I like the lookout points outside the town. We took a detour to Arrowtown to picnic for the evening. We splept in a room with lots of interesting pictures for the night.

Day 2 Milford Sound

We took a bus from Te Anau to Milford and back. I also booked a boat ride in milford.

Day 1, Te Anua

The plan (Thanks to Emese who made the plan for me according to her experience) was to go from Dunedin where I live to Te Anau where we, my mother and I, could easily go to the famous Milford Sound. We were going to visit Queenstown and Wanaka, the two beautiful lake towns, then head to west coast. The views along west coast are great. We were going to turn to Arthur's Pass National Park from Hokitika, and come back from Christchurch. Though the there's nearly noithing interesting from Christchurch to Dunedin, we still managed to see some boulders - a story to tell later.



So after 5 hours driving, we arrived at Te Anau. We stayed in a hostel beside deer farms with unexpected nice view outside our window.