Escape Plan to South New Zealand December 2009

A brief summary on the itinerary

Escape Plan to South New Zealand 2009:

Total duration 14D13N
New Zealand is 5hrs ahead of Singapore.
Flight time is 9hrs 45mins to Christchurch, South New Zealand.

Flight was overnight flight on Singapore Airlines on the 24th December at 7:45pm and arrival in Christchurch at 10:30am.
Return flight was on Singapore Airlines on the 6th January at 11:50am in Christchurch and arrival in Singapore at 5:25pm.

Day 1/2 – Arrive into Christchurch and explore Christchurch on Xmas
Day 3 – Lake Tekapo, Church of Good Shepherd and Mt Cook
Day 4 – Otago Peninsula and see blue penguins at Penguins Place
Day 5 – Explore Dunedin and drive to Te Anau
Day 6 – Lake Manapouri hydro station and Doubtful sound cruise
Day 7 – Drive to Queenstown, Arrowtown visit and Puzzling world
Day 8 – Hang Gliding at Coronet’s peak, missed LOTR tour, visit Kiwi Birdlife Park and TSS Earnslaw NYE celebration
Day 9 – Fantail Creek, Thunder Creek, Monroe beach, Lake Matheson, Fran Josef Glacier
Day 10 – Pancake rocks and blowholes, Cape Foulwind, Buller gorge
Day 11 – Abel Tasman National Park, Pupu spring and Nelson
Day 12 – Merhau Sound, Kenepuru Sound, Queen Charlotte sound, flight tour to see whales at Kaikoura and drive to Christchurch
Day 13 – Lyttelton and Akaroa
Day 14 – Home Sweet Home

This escape plan was planned as a trip to celebrate the new year at another country and we thought it would be great to do so at one which was not cold. We ended up choosing to do a road trip around the south island of New Zealand.

Budget nature: Expensive

Due to the distance of New Zealand, the direct flights are pretty expensive. Food were expensive too for takeaways and getting from places to places require a car as towns could be at least 200km to 300km apart. Furthermore, we had actually missed not one but two tours because we were late!

Complexity: Not too difficult

There were just one road most of the time from town to town and not too difficult to navigate!