We left Rotorua early early in the morning (7am) and start heading towards Wellington. Reason for this early departure is because we estimated that it will take us 6-8 hours to drive to Wellington...
The morning sunshine
Tree-shaded roads
An interesting event happened on the way to our first stop, Huka Falls. While driving on the seemingly alright road, our car started to become uncontrollable, banking left n right forcefully outta my hand. I managed to slow down the car and stopped by the highway before crashing into anything. We were lucky to have no other cars nearby us.
A snap-shot of that moment
My initial thought was that there is a burst tyre. But after checking the car by the roadside, i see no problems with the car. Though the road is iced up that might cause the road to be slippery, other cars that passed by us doesnt seem to have any trouble driving on the road in high speed.
Icy road. The green stuff are actually some frozen plant -_-
Stopped on the roadside, unsure what to do.
After trying to drive again and stopping again when it got uncontrollable again, we decided to just push on by driving real slow. I drove at 30-40km/h for the next hour.
When i try increasing our speed an hour later, suprisingly nothing happened and the car seems to be normal, thus continuing our "normal" journey towards our first planned destination of the day, Huka Falls, which is located right outside the town of Taupo.
Huka Falls
Huka Falls is a waterfall created by this huge mass of water entering a long narrow passage, thus causing this rush of water to rush through this narrow passage and come tumbling down at the end into a lake/river/im not sure =P. Anyhow, you get my point.
When we arrive to Huka Falls, its still very foggy thus we cant see much. But we still do manage to catch a glimpse at the waterfall itself and an unique, cool, scenary.
Huka Falls
Foggy with limited visibility
Still iced up branches
The fall itself
From another angle itself
Me n Jia
The girls
Where the roaring ends and peace returns
Tranquil yet mysterious
Special effect
After enough picture taking and freezing our ass off, we head back to our car and continued our journey...
Entering Taupo...
As we were driving towards Taupo the sky cleared up and a beautifully sunny weather shone upon us...before entering the town itself we made two stops: one at this small hill where we can see Lake Taupo and part of the town, another one at this unknown part of a river we discovered that is quite a nice place to just stand around n take pictures.
Seeing Lake Taupo from the small hill
HY
SH
Jia
Me
The river
Still a lil fogged up
The girls
Me n Jia
The car
And finally...we enter the town of Taupo, to visit Lake Taupo...
Lake Taupo
Lake Taupo, one of the biggest lake in NZ. And its the size of Singapore. =_= A very very beautiful place and particularly for that moment we were there, blessed with extremely good weather ;)
SuperLoo requires an entrance fee to be used...
Thus i had to walk around to find a free public toilet to use... ><
Lake Taupo
Now...I'm not sure why did i climb that tree....
The girls
The Jumping Girls Episode 2, continuing from Great Oceans Road
Duck
An attempt for a group pic, with the lake visible
The lakeside that looks like a beach
Coolio
After Taupo, we commence our straight drive to Wellington, hoping for the good weather to stay.
Lindale
Jia speaks about a place where her dad always brings her for ice-cream right before entering Wellington. Since we are all quite interested in having it as well, we kept our eyes open when we were nearing Wellington for that mystical place speaks about yet cannot remember its name. As she saw the familar sign and shouted out at it, we turned in and here we are, at Lindale.
Rather than an ice-cream shop, its actually more of a barn yard with restaurants and shops for familis to visit during the weekends. A further lookup in the Lonely Planet guidebook shows that their ice-cream, are indeed famous as well =P.
On the way
On the way
On the way - Desert Road that snowed the day before
On the way
On the way - Discovered snow mountains, which later we realized is extremely common in Queenstown
SH took over the wheels halfway through
Lindale
Geese shooing us away
Approaching Wellington outer suburbs
Arriving Wellington's outer suburb
The sight of Wellington excites us, not just because we have arrived finally after long drives, but we arrived almost 3 hours earlier. Always better earlier than later eh? =)
Dinner in Jia's Aunt House
We get to stay in Jia's Aunty place in Wellington, thus upon arriving we went straight to the suburb of Johnsonville, where her aunt live, and where Jia used to live as well. Upon arriving Jia's Aunt's house, we were welcomed warmly and unloaded our luggages, washed up, and had a really nice home-cooked dinner
The view of Jia's Aunt's House at the back
The stumpous dinner
Helping with the dishes
HY with fridge magnets from around the world
Jia chattin with cousin
After dinner and cleaning up, we decided to fully utilize our time and decided to visit Mt. Victoria.
Mt. Victoria
I have to say, its not easy to drive up there. From the very beginning of trying to find the way up within this complicated arrays of roads, till finding the correct alley to turn into has been a big headache. After driving rounds and rounds around the city and Jia calling some friends up for directions, in the same time looking at the maps, we finally, found our way up.
Nightview from Mt. Victoria
Nightview from Mt. Victoria
Me n Jia
It was very very dark up there, and as a few more cars came up filled with teenagers, we decided to head back down as the girls are feeling a little unsafe.
We parked our car at Courtney Place in the city and took a walk around. As an opportunity came when both HY and Jia went to the toilet, me n SH came up with a plan for a surprise birthday party for Chin Chui Jia.
And thus....a surprise birthday party for Jia that night!
A Mini Birthday Party
The surprise is supposed to come at 12am but by 1130pm we were all tired and ready to sleep, including the birthday girl herself. Thus, when she said she was gonna go sleep, we decided to just initiate the plan and gave her the shock of her life =P (yea, a little exaggerated there... )
The birthday cake, which actually consist of 5 different pieces of cake since the only place that sells cake that night has no full cakes anymore
Jia's bday present from all of her ji mui
Sorry, no pics of the bday girl herself since she refused to let me post her in pajamas =P
And thus...the end of Day 4...
