NZ'06 (Days 9-12)

7th December'06

After catching an earlybird screening of a 1/2hour movie of Fiordland in all seasons, we caught the coach back to Queenstown. It was yet another lazy afternoon, and we opted to visit the Wildlife Park cum Maori Cultural Centre.

I can hear you guys yawning already.

Well, it wasn't that bad... For 30NZD, I'd say it was fine.

I won't post too many pictures of my feathered friends, okay?

Just a few!


Tutuara

This unique animal from New Zealand is literally in a league of its own. If it dies out, a whole branch in the reptile family will disappear! How dominating, to occupy the entire branch huh? Since I wanted to post more information of this peculiar animal, I went and searched for it on trusty Wikipedia. Horror of horrors, it is described as a snake! Noooooo... It is most definitely NOT a snake. I'm starting to doubt open-source information. Hmph~

Anyway, this funny animal is unique because it possesses a third eye on the top of its head. It is believed that the eye allows UV radiation in for growth in its juvenile stage. This eye could also have been used to detect aerial predators in more primitive times. In adulthood, a layer of skin grows to cover the eye, making it look pretty normal like the one you see in the picture above. Scientists are still amazed at the presence of the eye, especially since it still is connected to a retina and brain and everything. (I figure you guys do not want the scientific terms yeah.)

It is a pretty lethargic animal, not moving much during the segment of the animal show dedicated to it, contented with just laying there on the lady's forearm. The lady explained that they live to such a ripe old age, they don't really do much at all.

Gee what a boring existence.


Maori warriors

We took this picture after a Maori cultural performance. See the guy posing behind me in the picture? I met him at the visitor centre before the performance. Boy, was he shy! (Very cutely so, heh~) He then morphed into this fierce warrior onstage, stamping his feet, popping his eyes, and yelling his lungs out. Whoo~ We chatted with him after the performance, and learned that his name's Patrick.

How disappointing, I thought it might be... Keheko or something. I dunno.

The Maori ladies gave a performance using those two fluffy balls you see hanging around their necks. Prior to that we could only wonder how the heck those two furballs were supposed to be played with when we saw them in souvenir shops. At the end of the show, they made us stand up and learn the "Hokey Pokey song" in Maori.

ringa-ringa - hand
waiwai - thighs
nono - butt

I can't remember the rest. We laughed our heads off when we realised that the Taiwanese compere Nono has a nickname that means "buttocks" in Maori!

Hey there Butt!


Pukeko

The Pukeko is a bird that is similar in appearance to the endangered Takahe, a flightless bird native to NZ. The Takahe was thought to be extinct, until a population was discovered near Lake Te Anau in 1948. (After 50+ years of conservation and protection and whatnot, the species is still endangered. >.<)

The above Pukeko was not in a cage when I took this photo, in fact, it is not even an exhibit at the Wildlife Park. Ironically, we were the ones in a cage, in the Kea cage, to be precise. As usual, the Kea we were viewing was exhibiting interesting behavior, picking away at its own shit and pecking at a piece of leather. Out of nowhere came this low rumbling sound, and it took us quite a while to realise that it was coming from this Pukeko outside the cage! By the time we rushed out of the cage, the Pukeko had wandered off to someplace that we couldn't reach. Aarrgghhh~


Paradise Shelducks

These ducks are so plentiful in New Zealand, they are gamebirds. The male has a black head, and the female a white head. Cute, eh? According to Wikipedia, they live in pairs and often mate for life. 鸳鸯？This isn't a very good photo, but I was the only one who caught both the guy and girl in the same picture. Hee~ You should see Yiling chasing after the ducks trying to capture a romantic photo, the male and the female would typically run off in opposite directions, leaving the frustrated photographer wondering which to chase after!

8th December'06

We showed up at the RealJourney's visitor centre at the appropriate time, to find out that we had to get on a steamship to Walter Peak Farm, on the other side of Lake Wakatipu.


TSS Earnslaw

This coal-fueled steamship was built in the same year as Titanic and is still running! Also known as the Lady of the Lake.


Red flag

Took this picture from the back of the vessel where I was sitting. Can anybody tell me what is the significance of a red flag at the back of a ship? I've been asking around for so long!

And here's Lousy's answer: Maybe a black flag brands it a pirate ship, a red flag means it's legal, and a white flag carries the message of surrender.

Har dee har.

Then i wandered to the engine room...


Passengers are allowed to view the shovelling of coal in the engine room. I took this photo just after the guy finished shovelling the coal and walked away.

I got tired of waiting for him to come back so that I could take a nicer photo, and I wandered off to the captain's room. (What is the proper name for the captain's room?)


Captain


Captain's Lady

Actually, I don't know if it's a she.

Horse trek

We arrived at Walter's Peak and the time came for my first horse-ride ever!


Me on Sharanz

Yiling was quite jealous that I got the white horse while she had to settle for a brown one. Well it helped that Sharanz is so small and that I'm smaller in size than the other 3 Japanese ladies around. Ha~

The scenery was breath-taking, and our guide told us that the "mist" we see at the top of the mountains was actually snow! I didn't know that it looks like mist when it's snowing on mountains. Yiling commented that she wanted to stay on her horse and wait for the snow to come, and our guide replied something like, "Hell no! I don't want to wait for snow! Only silly Singaporeans who have never seen snow would want to wait for the snow to come! You can wait and I'll be going home!"

He also asked Yiling how she found Sydney, to which she responded, "It's nice."

His reply? "How can it be nice? It's full of Australians!"

Geee...

For a beginner, the horse trek was fun, albeit a little slow at times. (The next time I tried horse-riding again, I had a lot of trouble with just trotting.)

Farm visit

We had an extremely hilarious guide who told jokes with a poker-straight face.

Example:

Guide, "You hear the generator running in the background?"

Some of us nod.

"That generator, is switched on for 12 hours in the day...",

Some of us nod some more.

"And, 12 hours in the night!"

PengZ



I don't know why I look like I'm so afraid of the bull.


Sheepherding in action

I love dogs!

Highlight of farm visit... wee lambs!


wee lambs

Prior to seeing the wee lambs, our guide was very excited at the prospect of the lambs crapping on us. To his utter disappointment, the lambs were rather well behaved!


Feeding of lambs

The lambs were just 8 days old!


Licking me face

This one was smart, it knew that my face was in need of a little moisturizing!


Lamb's Ears

The plants is named Lamb's Ears precisely because they're all soft and furry.

We got the opportunity to mingle around with ewes, too.



*Psst... See a GAP shirt wearing a little boy behind me? He (the boy) is the protagonist in a little drama coming right up.


Ewe, close-up

This ewe evidently thought my camera was food...

The guide was rounding the sheep up when the GAP boy ran into the sheep's field together with the sheep. While the rest of us tourists roared with laughter, GAP boy had a fine time running up and down the field amongst the sheep, before coming back to the gate, wanting to be let out.

Guide, "Are you from Australia?"

GAP boy shook his head "No".

"Really? That looked like something an Aussie would have done!"

We cracked up once more.

We got to observe a sheep being sheared, once again, by our hilarious guide. He had us in gales of laughter throughout, engaging in "sheep talk" with the sheep, even proposing to make things simpler by proceeding with the demonstration with a "sheep that has already been shorn".

*more laughter*

It was late afternoon by the time we boarded the TSS Earnslaw to get back to city of Queenstown. We had an extremely nice time with the pianist onboard, singing Christmas carols, campfire songs, a local love song set on Lake Wakatipu, 月亮代表我的心 and even Majulah Singapura!

I'm ashamed to confess that I struggled a little with the lyrics of our dear National Anthem. Aarrgh~



So bad.

9th December'06

Our last full day in NZ was mostly spent on travelling from Queenstown back to Christchurch for our flight back to Sydney the following morning. We did stop at what I think is one of the most beautiful places I've ever ever ever been to!


Lake Tekapo

The water's turquoise because of some glacial or alpine flower, I forgot which.

When I go back to New Zealand one day, I'd wanna stay at Tekapo!



My camera failed to capture the beautiful blue. =(



I don't know why, but we looked very grey-faced in almost all the photos with beautiful Lake Tekapo. =(



Of course, I just had to refill my water bottle with the bluest water that I'd ever seen in my life! =D



Sorry, Lake Tekapo is so beautiful I can't resist slapping pictures of it all over.

When we got to Christchurch, we were lost for quite some time, not knowing if we should take a walk in the city with all our barang-barang, or just head straight to the airport.


Memorial

That was a pretty nice memorial I took outside a church in the city.

Antarctic Centre

After depositing our baggage at the airport, we made our way to our last tourist destination in NZ: Antarctic Centre.


Antarctic Storm

We had the opportunity to experience a mock Antarctic storm, where the temperature dipped to -25degreesC! My hands were so frozen after that they really hurt hurt, and I had to warm them at the hot bar for ever so long.

See my cute beanie? I got it for 5NZD and I think that was the only place I could have worn it without looking ridiculous! Hehe~

I especially love this quote:


How true!

10th December'06

I'd like to tell you guys about how we nearly didn't have enough NZD to gain access to the international lounge and thus the flight back to Sydney! Still... I'm pretty tired of repeating it over and over again. Suffice it to say that we were pretty grateful to get back to Sydney safe and sound!

Labels: christchurch, fiordland, new zealand, queenstown, travel

washed away 11:43 PM*


NZ'06 (Days 7-8)

5th December'06

We went sea kayaking at Milford Sound!

It is one of the best known "sounds" in Fiordland. I double-apostrophied the sound because all the sounds in Fiordland are actually fiords.

See, a fiord is a narrow inlet of sea carved out by glaciers, which was left behind when the ice retreated. A sound, on the other hand, is an ocean inlet that was... not carved out by glaciers. Haha! So, they mistakenly named the fiords in Fiordland as sounds, and had to name the whole place Fiordland as compensation.

It was only the 2nd time I kayaked, but I was lucky to get paired up with an awesome kayaker.


She's a teacher from England. The subjects she teaches are Phys Ed and Geography. New Zealand must have been heaven for her!

Those sea kayaks were pretty stable, and they came with rudders, too! It was thus pretty easy to steer. Since I was sitting in front, though, all I had to do was paddle at an easy pace, and leave the steering to my partner. Breezy~


Bowen Falls

I was quite jittery when we kayaked nearer and nearer the falls, because I kept imagining how the falls would capsize the kayak and suck us under etc etc. So I deliberately paddled slower and slower as we went along, I wonder if my partner sensed anything amiss? Haha~ See the nose of my kayak, I wanted to prove that I was in a kayak, not cruising on some ship! =P


Bowen Falls without my kayak

I like the rays of light in this one.


The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe the Elephant and Mt. Pembroke

The focus of the picture is The Lion, so named because it resembles a crouching lion. The Elephant lies to the left of it, while Mt. Pembroke is the peak on the right. I fumbled so long to get my camera out of the waterproof pouch, the rest were already faaaar ahead of us by the time I managed to snap this picture.

We paddled a little further, and she took this for me.


Well, the cap might have been ugly, but it served its purpose. Half of my face is... shadowed.


Fiordland Penguin

We were so awed at seeing the penguin! For the most part, it just stayed stationary, occasionally hopping from one rock to another. Happy feet, anyone? =P

We did something interesting before lunch. Our guides got us to raft up (4 kayaks in total), and then they unfurled this huge piece of cloth that apparently was supposed to act as sail. Alas~ the wind was not in our favour that day, and the sail kept flopping down on us. The few minutes that the sail managed to remain half-filled with wind, we were crawling at such a slow pace that I wondered if we were moving at all. Ron, one of our guides, commented, "And you thought kayaking was such as adrenaline-pumping sport, huh?" He finally got tired, and suggested that we all return to paddling. He was probably... hungry. Haha~


Beach

Here's the beach that we had our lunch at. It was actually nothing more than a stretch of gravel and sand. It was fun, nonetheless, until I realised that I needed to pee and there was no toilet around.


Toilet

And that was how I came to have my first pee in a bush! C'mon... Don't be so surprised, I never went to any OBS camps or such in Pulau Ubin. Tell me which female urbanite takes a pee in a bush for fun around Singapore?

The drive to and fro Milford Sound from Te Anau was filled with wonderful scenery:


View from where we had Morning Tea


River

My favourite kind of river! Actually, I have many favourites. ^^


Kea

So named for their cries of "Ke-a-a". I've read that they're the world's only alpine parrot. Tourists are advised not to feed them because they're somewhat of a pest to the New Zealanders. That is because they are neophilic, meaning, they just love to play with anything novel. I guess that's why tourists like them so much! They're not very shy, obviously.


Kea on a car

This one was perched on what is probably one of their favourite places, on a car! According to our guides, they just love tearing the rubber off the windscreens of a car with their sharp beaks. Tourists humour them by taking photos of them and basically gawking at them when they do that, but I can just imagine an enraged Kiwi finding his vehicle stripped of all rubber strips. (Actually, I don't know if the Kea is strong enough to do that.)

We did stop by one of the grasslands by the side of the road for afternoon tea, and there an American in our group commented that it made him want to sing.
"The hills are alive...With the Sound of Music..."

Then our guides started asking us where we were from and all that. Upon learning that we were Singaporeans studying in Australia, Ron asked, "So tell me, who's better in rugby, Australia or New Zealand?"

So, while Freaki and I hemmed and hawed, Yiling replied "Singapore!"

And Ron was like "Singapore doesn't even have a team!"

At least Yiling saved us!

After tea, I was so tired out from the day's activities, I just snoozed all the way back to Te Anau...

6th December'06

We went tramping along the Milford Track that day. Milford Track is a world-renowned track that takes about 4 days to complete. We just walked a tiny portion of it!


Lake Te Anau

I'm not sure when exactly Freaki took this photo, but it was probably while Yiling and I were still snoozing away at the YHA. Looking at this picture makes me regret not forcing my lids open earlier to take a walk with her.


Another blown-away photo

This will be the last one, I promise!


Memorial

They erected this cross in remembrance of a famous explorer who went out to sea one day and never came back.

Due to the excessive amount of rain for the past few days, the jetty that the ship docked at was flooded by the lake for an estimated...7 cm? We thus had to take off our shoes and socks to wade across the jetty in icy-cold water to get to land. Yowzarrr!! When we got to land, rocks were waiting to give us a hard time. Double Yowzaarrr!!


Our guide, Richard


Spectacular view

To make this view all the more spectacular, Richard made us promise not to look behind us until we'd reached a certain height on the track. It was worth it!


Water!

We had lunch beside this river. Since it was a hot, sunny day, I was going through my supply of drinking water rather fast. So I conveniently refilled my water bottle from many of these rivers and streams along the way. Cool~ Mummy keeps saying that I look old in the picture, and I keep telling her that it's not easy to look young when I was that sunburnt.

I love rivers, I love rivers. =p


Stripped bark

Part of this bark was stripped away by a parrot somewhat like the Kea, only the Kea lives on highlands, while this parrot lives in the forest. Unlike the Kea, this parrot is rather shy. I forgot its name already! Looks like it's pretty strong, maybe the Kea is really, really strong, too. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody tells me the Kea can strip all the rubber of a car.



We crossed a rickety bridge to get to the other side of this river.


Bridge that swung from side to side


Pretty?

Boy, I never knew green-looking water could be so beautiful, too. I have even more respect for water now.


Robin


Japanese Lady

Here's a Japanese lady who was very friendly to us on the trek. She was really very cute, very clasically Japanese! Everytime Richard mentioned something, she'd say "Ohhh....", just as if she just realised what that something was. I seriously doubt if she understood all of what Richard was saying, though. Nevertheless, I have tremendous respect for her. She, as well as her husband, handled the trek wonderfully well! Not that it was difficult, but well, I can't imagine my mummy doing it, know what I mean?


Another Japanese couple

This couple spoke only Japanese. To get a picture of them, I rushed over when they were taking a photo together and cried, "Chioto! Chioto!", to get this picture. (Actually I don't know how to spell chioto, how to spell huh?)

The guy actually carries a walking stick, but to our knowledge he doesn't need the stick to get around. At the end of the whole trek, Richard declared, "We've done well, team! We made it back in good time!" At the back of the group, the guy raised up both his arms and waved his walking stick in the air.

Like I said, the Japanese are a hardy bunch!


Milford Track

We took this photo at the end of the trek. The more I look, the more I can't stand my sunburnt face!

Labels: fiordland, milford track, new zealand, te anau, travel

washed away 5:30 PM*