We departed at 6.05 am.
Flight’s duration : 1 hour and 25 minutes
Flight Ticket Pricing: About RM 500++ one way trip per person via Jetstar Airlines from Auckland→ Christchurch.
Auckland is situated in the North part of New Zealand.
Christchurch is situated in the South part of New Zealand.
Refer to map below.
(Map from LonelyPlanet)
After Reaching Christchurch Airport,
My family and I decided to explore South New Zealand by motorhomes or also known as campervans.
Britz Christchurch branch, (the motorhomes company that we were dealing with) is located only 2.5 km from the airport which is a great location to start exploring New Zealand. They offered complimentary airport transfers on pick-up and drop-off.
I will be posting more details about motorhomes in my future posts. In this posts, I will be focusing more on what I did on my Day 2 activities.
After getting our Campervan;
The first destination after getting our campervan, was hitting the supermarket, to stock up the food for our journey. We stopped by a supermarket called Countdown, located nearby the Christchurch Airport.
The things that we bought to stock up the campervan were:
- Food (Oil, butter, rice, veggies, snacks, bread, candies, sugar, salt, cereal)
- Tea, Coffee, Juices, Mineral Water
- Living Essentials (Hangers, toilet rolls, sponge, dishwashing liquid)
**Groceries in New Zealand is more expensive as compared to Malaysia’s groceries.
Bringing in food from Malaysia to New Zealand may sound like a good idea to save up money but you might want to check if the type of food you want to bring in is allowed or not. New Zealand is pretty strict when it comes to bringing in food into their country. If you are curious to know what food is allowed in the country, click here
As for our meat source, we opted for the halal meat so we had to go to a specific shop for that, we went to a shop called ‘Maihan Supermarket & Halal Meat’. It is a Middle Eastern Grocery Store in Christchurch.
We bought chicken meat, lamb meat and beef there. Enough for our 10 days trip. Reason for stocking up right from Christchurch is because my mum is too lazy to find out the availability of other halal shop in other places which may be limited at some areas. You may also find more halal meat shops in Queenstown etc.
Details of this shop is as below (This may be useful for Muslim Travellers):
Address: 303 Colombo Street, Sydenham, Christchurch 8023, New Zealand
| Saturday | 9am–6:30pm |
| Sunday | 9am–6pm |
| Monday | 9am–6pm |
| Tuesday | 9am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 9am–6pm |
| Thursday | 9am–6pm |
| Friday | 9am–6:30pm |
(Disclaimer: Information retrieved from google search, it may be incorrect)
Off to Lake Tekapo !
We didn’t get to explore Christchurch, we just shoot straight to Lake Tekapo instead.
Duration from Christchurch→Lake Tekapo (by car) : 3 hours
Arrived at Lake Tekapo;
Lake Tekapo is picturesque by day and dazzling by night. It is part of UNESCO Dark Sky Reserve, making it the perfect spot for stargazing. The township faces north across the remarkable turquoise coloured lake to the mountainous drama of the Southern Alps. Lake Tekapo gets its intense milky-turquoise colour from the fine rock-flour (ground by glaciers) which is suspended in the water.
It was Summer at the time of visit, but we were sort of unfortunate because it was usually cloudy at that time and it was very cold. All of us packed our summer clothing, and we didn’t bring jackets because we thought it wasn’t necessary as it was summer, so we had to suffer for a bit with the cold during the first days until we bought light jackets to keep warm. I would recommend travellers to always bring something warm all the time.
Highlights of Lake Tekapo:
- Church of the Good Shepard (We did)
- Stargazing at Mount John Observatory (We didn’t do)
- Mackenzie Basin walking tracks (We didn’t do)
- See Lupins! (We did)
Church of the Good Shepard;
The Church of the Good Shepherd is situated on the shores of Lake Tekapo amongst the natural beauty of the lake and the mountains. It was built to the glory of God as a memorial to the pioneers of the Mackenzie Country. There is a famous sheep dog statue on the lake’s edge is in memory of the hardy mustering dogs “without the help of which the grazing of this mountainous country would be impossible.”
(Photo by: John Bullen)
(Photo by: churchofthegoodshepard.org.nz)
Details about Church of The Good Shepard:
- Public Access Time: 9am-8pm.
- No fees were imposed upon visiting.
Overnight at Lake Tekapo;
We decided to overnight at Lake Tekapo and continued on our journey the following day.
We parked our campervan at a powered site at “The Lake Tekapo Motels & Holiday Park and the Lakefront Lodge Backpackers” which is located at 2 Lakeside Drive off State Highway 8. Only one minutes drive from the Lake Tekapo Village and only a short 10 minute walk.
Lake Tekapo Motels & Holiday Park and the Lakefront Lodge Backpackers are set amongst mature trees on the picturesque shores of beautiful Lake Tekapo, with magnificient views across the turquoise lake to the surrounding mountains. It offers a wide range of accommodation options. Since we came with a motorhome, we only opt for a powered site at this Holiday Park.
Price of Stay: RM 150 / 56 NZD per campervan for the powered site (EV friendly) nightly which limits up to six people.
Visitors on powered sites have full use of holiday park facilities including:
- Shared kitchen
- BBQ area
- Showers (on a 6 minute timer)
- Toilets
- Laundry (coin-operated)
- TV lounge
- Wi-fi (Range of plans available for purchase)
- Holiday Park map here
I will be posting more about holiday parks, powered sites, etc in my future posts.
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