It may look like your situation is never going to change
but in a split second God can completely resolve it.
#SpritualQuotes #Ayutthaya #Thailand #TTOT #UNESCO
So, in my previous post, I wrote about how we traveled from Te Anau to Christchurch by going East before traversing along the coastal road to the South until night caught up with us in Oamaru.
Our hotel in Oamaru
So after spending a night in a quite expensive room in Oamaru, it was time to leave the historic city and return to Christchurch from where we would be flying back to Auckland to spend our last days in New Zealand before flying back to Malaysia. The journey was quite uneventful probably because we couldn’t wait to reach Christchurch. We had been traveling all over New Zealand for the past 2 weeks so I guess there’d be a time when you finally feel like coming home and Christchurch felt a step or two and Auckland was probably a few more steps closer to home.
Upon arriving in Christchurch we went to look for a guest house called Delamain Holiday House and B&B that we had pre-booked via online. It was quite near to the airport so that it would be convenient for us to go to the airport the next morning. It was located in one of the nicest and probably the quietest neighborhoods that I’ve ever been to.
Delamain neighborhood in Christchurch
I mean, I’ve been to quite a number of neighborhoods in other first world countries and they were mostly quite but this one in Christchurch was just so quite I did not see any person – not a single one – walking around in the neighborhood. I wonder if the residents there were hiding from something. The lawns were so well-trimmed and well-tended flowers placed at appropriate locations. Nobody was in the house when we got there so I had to call the landlady who then gave us the password to the guest house via phone.
I instantly liked the guesthouse. The room was quite small but the spacious living room that co-joined the kitchen made up for it. The bath room was quite spacious too and there was a big tub that could probably accommodate up to 3 persons at once. But then it was shared with other rooms so I don’t think it was possible to stay immersed in the tub without having somebody knocking on the door. Not that I had intended to anyway. LOL.
So after dumping our luggage at the house it was time to return the car back to the rental company. Out of so many things that I was worried about prior to the trip to New Zealand it was the things regarding the rental car that got me worried most. There were so many horror stories regarding rental cars that I had heard or read on the internet but all the worries were finally put to rest when we returned the car without a single problem.
The only problem that we encountered was when the car would not start after having it parked in Te Anau for four days while we went for the trekking. The handy man at the hostel that we stayed at helped us start it back to life in no time at all. Apart from that, there was no problem at all. I guess we underestimated the car when we first set our eyes on it. It looked quite old and overused and we were about to embark on a journey that would bring us some 2700km across New Zealand so we had every reason to be worried but then – everything went just fine in the end.
Returning the rental car at Jucy Rentals
After returning the car back to Jucy Rentals whose office was somewhere near to the airport too, we walked our way back to the guesthouse. It was such a relaxing walk. We walked past the Christchurch airport, then an equestrian field where I made eye contact with some of the most beautiful horses that I had ever seen.
I used my phone to navigate my way back to the guesthouse (my travel buddy half-ran his way and left me way behind). The landlady was already there waiting when we arrived. She was a Chinese, probably in her early 40s and he told me how she came to New Zealand with her parents when she was still a kid. She told me how it was very difficult for them in the beginning and that they had to work their asses off to get to where they are today.
I took the opportunity to ask her about the earthquake that almost ripped the whole of Christchurch apart back in 2011. “It was very difficult for us. Everybody was in shock because we never experienced something like that ever before. We were very much under-prepared”
“The epicenter was right under the city of Christchurch so you can imagine how strong it was. The devastation was so great that many of the people in Christchurch decided to move to somewhere else – mostly to Auckland”
“Even until today we are still afraid that it might happen again but then there’s nothing much we can do. We can only pray” she said in a bitter tone.
Unfortunately Christchurch has been quite prone to disasters. Even when we were there a big bush-fire was raging over Port Hills and a lot of people had been evacuated from the area. Apparently the news had made its way to my family and friends in Malaysia and I was getting messages from them – conveying their concerns. The fire was actually quite far from where we were so I had to tell them not to worry. It was funny (and sad) because we were up there at the Port Hills just the other day enjoying the view of Christchurch on one side and the Governors Bay on the other.
We had to wake up early the next morning because we had to pack up before heading out to the airport. The landlady was there to give us a lift (we paid NZD 20 for two which was quite a good deal) and I took the opportunity to thank for all the hospitality that we were served with while staying at her place – even though it was only one night.
Taking one last photo in front of Delamain Holiday House
We took a Jet Star flight back to Auckland. It was longer that I had anticipated for and it felt even longer when there was a kid who kept making faces to me almost all throughout the flight. Just earlier at the airport he tried to peek through under the door while I was in the toilet so I had to yell to make him stop.
Unfortunately he didn’t despite his daddy’s stern warnings. In fact his daddy could not even control his kid’s erratic behaviors when they were seated in the aircraft later. The boy pushed the crew button several times that the cabin crew who came to attend him almost lost her cool. The father himself looked quite ill, which I assumed was due to hangover although my friend did not quite agree, so much so that the cabin crew always did not let him fly. He had to keep assuring them that he was OK to fly.
Naughty boy
Another lady that was sitting next to me was super-excited when we told her that we were from Malaysia (although she could have acted the excitement out. New Zealanders are quite good at creating excitement which was not necessarily a bad thing depending on the situation).
“I would never forget her because she’s the one who taught me how to use chop sticks” she said with an all-out laugh. I couldn’t help but joining the laugh too. She told us how she had a good and steady job before but she was not happy. She then quit the job and opened a baking shop, which was what she had always wanted to do. “Well, just as how it is for other businesses, there are ups and downs but I’m happy with what I’m doing now. I feel more in control of my own destiny” she said as if knowing that I’ve been thinking of starting my own business for quite some time now.
It was raining when we landed in Auckland about one hour or so later.
It was good to have finally ticked something off the bucketlist. Milford Track was great but there’s much more to New Zealand than the beautiful track across the Fiordland National Park which is considered the finest trail in the world. After soaking in the much-missed sunshine on the lakeside of Te Anau, it was time to move on.
Te Anau Lake
I was in a deep dilemma actually, whether to return to Queenstown and take my chances to do the sky-diving since I missed it due to bad weather just a week ago, or just forget about it and take a different route back to Christchurch from where we’d be flying back to Auckland. Then I thought, returning to Queenstown would not guarantee me a sky-dive because the weather in that part of the country is so fucking unpredictable. And – once we returned to Queenstown we may have to take the same route that we took last time and if that was the case we’d miss the alternative road on the East Coast entirely.
I decided to forget about the skydiving. I may not return to New Zealand just for the sake of doing the sky-diving but then there are so many other places in the world where I could actually do it. Wheeling off towards the east coast of South Island, I began to feel glad that we decided to skip it because seriously, we would have missed a lot of New Zealand’s other and largely unexplored attractions (at least among tourists and travelers I guess) if we had decided to go for it.
There was one beautiful little town called Gore for instance that we happened to drive across. Neither of us had ever heard of this town before but I had come to find out later that it was actually New Zealand’s capital of country music. I mean, most of Ne
w Zealand’s 103,483 square mile area consists of countryside which is very much associated with country music so it is only right to have a capital town dedicated especially for it. We stopped there for a while and I took time to enter its public library which really impressed me its huge collection of books and most especially for its neatness.
Then we continued on East-bound, stopping a few times including once when we came upon a Chinese food restaurant (amazing how Chinese food restaurants in New Zealand are mostly operated by one single person) from where we bought our lunch to be had at one of the roadside stops with a beautiful view of the expansive farmland. Our diet had always been dominated by Western food ever since we first set foot in New Zealand not only because of their availability but also for their prices which are usually a few dollars cheaper than Asian dishes.
After driving across so many little towns and countless number of villages we finally found ourselves back on the east coast of South Island. We were in Dunedin, which I later learned is the second largest city in the South Island – after Christchurch of course – and it amused by the fact that I had never heard of this beautiful city before. But that is the beauty of traveling. You’ll tend to bump into things that you least expect to.
I liked Dunedin almost instantly when we got there. It was the kind of cities that I could probably settle in if I had to. It has just the right size and the traffic is not that bad compared to those in Christchurch and probably Auckland. After parking the car on a roadside parking lot, we took a little walk around town. My attention was instantly on a tall sphere-shaped building that jotted out over other buildings in Dunedin. I later found out that it was The First Church of Otago which was built in 1848 by early settlers from Scotland.
The First Church of Otago
It was undergoing some major restoration works so the indoors were heavy with scaffolding and all. I went to the shop at the back of the building and had a long chat with the shop keeper. He told me a little bit of the history of the church and how the Scottish settlers had first come to Dunedin about 170 years ago. He seemed to be too carried away that he would not stop talking, probably because he did not have anyone else in the shop so he had to depend on visitors to have a conversation with. I was so glad when an elderly couple came in and I just seized the opportunity to ask to be excused the moment his attention moved over to them.
I wish we could stay in Dunedin for a little bit longer but we had to get as close to Christchurch as possible because we only had one night left before flying back to Auckland – excluding the last night that we were going to spend at a guesthouse near to the airport. I googled for a place among the rolling hills from where we could get a good look at the whole city and it came back with Signal Hill so off to Signal Hill we went. The beauty of Dunedin impressed me even more when I looked at it from the top of Signal Hill. The city is located at the end of a beautiful bay which is flanked by rolling hills which are blanketed by green farmlands. The view was just so break-taking.
Dunedin from the Trig Hill
From Dunedin we wheeled off along the coast towards the North, stopping here and there along the way if we found anything worthy to stop for. We were glad that we put in the GPS as part of the car package that we took. There was a little bit of argument in my head whether we should take it because we could actually use a cell phone to show us the way around so long as we had the internet connection. But it turned out that the GPS was not all about the directions alone but it would tell if there was any interesting place within the vicinity. It would also tell about each town that we passed through so the information that we got from that little device was enormous.
There was one place called Shag Point for instance that we wouldn’t have known the existence of if not for the GPS. Based on the information it gave, Shag Point is a place that we could find penguins at if we were lucky. Unfortunately we were not (lucky) but still we managed to catch up with a group of seals. And they gotta be some of the cutest animals that I had ever come upon.
They seemed to enjoy the sun very very much and they’d roll around on the grass totally in oblivion to the surrounding. They only looked at us when we were close enough to see into their sparkling and watery eyes. I was filming when one of them suddenly came charging at me and in a panic state I stumbled but managed to get back on my feet and run before the animal caught up with me (although I have no idea if she was coming to hurt me or just being playful).
Then another place that we heard about on the GPS is the Moeraki Boulders. Our curiosity had led us to a beach where boulders of near-perfect round shape were scattered all over. The existence of the boulders remains a mystery and of course when there is something mysterious there’ll be a lot of theories. I refused to fall for any of them. LOL.
Moeraki Boulders
Our final destination of the day was Oamaru. Based on the information facilitated to us by the GPS, this beautiful seaside town is said to be the town with the highest concentration of historical buildings in New Zealand. Being in Oamaru is like being thrown back to the colonial time – except that the colonists never left unlike in most other countries where the colonists left after the country that they had colonized gained independence. The buildings were beautiful. There was a beautiful church and for a moment I wished we had arrived there earlier so that we had the time to explore more.
We did not book for our accommodation in Oamaru, or anywhere else for that particular day and it had proved to be quite of a mistake. We went all over looking for a room but all the hotels that we went to were full. It was getting dark and chilly to stay outside so we were quite desperate to look for a room. We finally managed to get one but it had cost us way beyond our average budget for nightly accommodation. The double-story building was more like a motel but the rooms were spacious. It was such a long day for us so we had some of the beer that we had bought back in Queenstown. I never fancied drinking in a hotel room so I stopped after the second bottle. It would be another long day back to Christchurch the next day.
