21 day trip in New Zealand

Some people may ask how New Zealand got its name. For a long time, I wondered the same thing. Until I spent 21 days in New Zealand, where I learnt many things and had my questions about the island country answered. For the record, like all other places with "New" in it, New York, New Jersey etc., New Zealand was found by a sailor by the name of Captain Cook. He named it after a place in Holland called Zealand.

We(my family and I), arrived in Christchurch on the 6th of December. From there, we picked up our campervan, which we would be living in for the next few weeks, and drove around to get groceries after a short tour inside. It was our first time in a campervan so we were quite excited. One of the many things I learnt there was that New Zealand was very advanced and built up (well, at least Christchurch was anyway). There were many holiday parks around so we just picked one to spend the night in. Such holiday parks could be found all around New Zealand, and I thought that pretty cool.

The next morning, we made our way South for 200+ km to Oamaru where we spent our 2nd night in. there wasn't much to see except for big fields and farm animals. On the 3rd day, we drove further South for almost the same distance to Kaka point where we spent the 3rd night. Again there was not much to see but some good views of mountains and hills. We then headed West the next day Queenstown, which is a city built on hills, a very modern and urban place. We did loads of shopping and buying souvenirs.

Our trip was very coastal and we got to see a lot of sand and sea. We headed up North once we were West and carried on with many tours to Milford Sound and all. After 2 weeks, we took a ferry to the North island (with our campervan! we drove it on board) 2 days earlier than scheduled so that we could spend more time in the North island where I could visit my old classmate, Jonathan Chan, who has been living there for almost a year and my mum's old secondary school friend.

We arrived in Wellington at 1am but I was asleep so I didn't quite know what was going on. It took us 2 or 3 days to reach Auckland where both my mum's and my friend were living as we had to rest somehow. Auckland was great and we spent a day and a half with my friend, where he showed us around Auckland,and slightly longer with my mum's.

So after 3 weeks in New Zealand it was a plane back to Singapore. We're planning to go back again in 2011 if possible.