NZ Day 1

I love the zoom lens..

Day 1, and its really cold. like its only 3 degrees outside. Got out of the plane wearing
the wrong type of clothes. I was wearing some thin t-shirt and 3 quarter shorts. Froze my
ass off then.


As seen minutes after arriving over NewZealand. Beauty.


Looked like shit from our prespective. but they are actually trees.


flaps at 20 degrees. at the initial approach point.


Final Approach. Landing gears drop and flaps fully open.


touchdown. Open airbrakes, throttle down, open reverse throttle. (yeah, i play too much flight sim)


yeah.. my mom finishing the grapes at the entrance. lol totally singaporean.


awww so cute.


Hahah, their trash bins look like water coolers.


While we waited for someone to pick us up, I decided to see how cold it really was outside.
I immediately changed my mind when i got nearer to the doors as the cold air circled around
my exposed legs.

It was even worse when there was wind. Was forced to wait outside a while later to look out for
our 'pickup' as it was way overdue, standing in the wind with only my usual hoodie as
protection.

As to how cold it was, it feels like sticking your hands inside the freezer for 10 mins.
Another cool thing due to the cold was everytime you breathed through your mouth and then swallowed, it feels like you just melted an ice cube in your mouth.

transport finally arrived and a while later we had our own rental car.


My mom "anointing" the vehicle.

The first thing we did was drive around the block so that our mom was familiar with driving
a car again. Yup, she hadn't driven a car for quite a long time already.

Driving around the block to familarise herself with the car, we saw this patch of grass with miniature hills and tread marks over the top of them. Curious, until some weird artic vehicle 'flew' over the top of one of these hills, then we realised this area was the backyard of an artic vehicle company.


they were like going super fast. say 70-100km/h? one of them flew over that hill.


yup this.


beautiful scenery, bad weather.


the oh so common hedges.

Took some pictures before we decided to move on. Parked at this small supermart and got the chance to hold the wheel of the car...
(of course, holding the wheel was an understatement).

acceleration was a bit jerky as the pedal was not really well oiled, so it kinda of skipped
when you stepped on it lightly. Braking was smooth, and kinda of felt like the one i have back
home. Parking was just like in a game.

Took some pictures there too, as there was this hedge and really high mountians in the background.

Handed the reigns back to my mom and we were off onto highway 1.


their highways...


pardon my poor composition, many shots are taken from inside the car. so its somewhat blur due to the windshield. If i had to stop everytime i saw a really nice scene, we would have never even reached queenstown.




they had quite a lot of rail way crossings too..


some random bird that i somehow managed to catch from within the moving car..cool


giant fish


i like the electric poles.


nice riverside house...


ahh, slightly blurred.


sheep in the background. Taken with wide angle lens, thus my mom looks really short. Perfect lens for weiqi.


this reminds me of top gear for some reason..


if only the sky was blue.


its much much nicer in real life.. sigh.


rolling hills. really beautiful..


more sheep.. all the way into the distance..

Drove a few 100 km before we realised we were going the wrong way, so had to turn back and drive really fast back the other way. Already we were behind schedule, but who cares anyway, its not a tour..

Along the way, there were tons of sheep, cows and horses grazing in the fields beside the highway, which we were very facinated by but eventually got bored of. (what, cant blame us urban hominids...)

The mundaneness of the driving part was punctuated by the occasional need to overtake some
slow vehicle ahead, which involved accelerating over 140 to be able to pass on a 2 lane highway
(1 lane in each direction). Exciting.

Stopped at a few towns for breaks, and once for petrol, before we arrived at our destination, lake tekapo. It was already dark, so only had the oppourtunity to do 1 panorama before returning to the relative warmth of the hotel room.


Reaching the lake...


taken at the lake. It was really dark then, i couldnt even see the mountain, except where it "punctured" the clouds. The wonders of long exposures eh..

Had trouble staying awake for dinner and stuff as i barely slept during the plane trip over here. (you know, the feeling when you study on the bed and cannot seem to open your eyes)

slept really nicely that night, and could only remember dreaming of the twins i saw earlier on. :D




yeah keep guessing who...im never telling :D