New Year in Twizel

This year hubby and I decided to celebrate New Year and our fifth wedding anniversary in Mount Cook. Since hubby had to work half-day on the 31st, we only started our journey in the late afternoon.  Now that it's summer, it's still okay to set off a bit later because the sun sets around 9.00 p.m. Plus, the journey to Mt Cook is an easy 5 hour drive from Christchurch.

We left Christchurch on State Highway 1, driving towards Timaru. At Rangitata we followed SH79 through Geraldine and from Geraldine we drove on towards Fairlie and then to Lake Tekapo.  Along the way, we passed through the scenic Canterbury plains and we saw acres and acres of farming area with sheep, cattle, deer and cows. The cows reminded me of that Fernleaf ad on TV, the one with the caption "Kami ada 1 juta ekor lembu di New Zealand". Remember that one? Well, I didn't see 1 juta la but I saw lots and lots of them. Since I didn't get to take any pics of the cows, I'll show you the adorable sheep instead :)

The botak ones have just been sheared

After a long drive, we finally reached our first pittstop, Lake Tekapo. Lake Tekapo is breathtakingly beautiful with turquoise blue water, surrounded by snow-capped mountains. We really wanted to stay at Lake Tekapo but the hotels were all fully booked so we had to settle for Twizel instead. After taking a few photos we carried on to our destination. Another 53 km on the road brought us to Twizel. Several scenes from the Return of the King were filmed here and a  tour called Lord of the Rings Twizel Tour is available for LOTR fans. Twizel is actually a small town in the Mackenzie Basin and it is known as the Town of Trees. Pine trees to be exact.  Everything about this town reminds me of Forks in Twilight. You know that scene where Bella arrives in Forks? The part where she's in the car with Charlie, monologing about the town's demographics? Well, that's my first impression of Twizel and I felt like Bella arriving in Forks. Population:  1,017. It's so Twilight!! Lots of trees, small, secluded, quiet and mysterious. The only thing missing is Edward Cullen. Deliciously handsome, Edward Cullen. Hehe.

Lake Tekapo

 

Anyway, we stayed at a pretty nice hotel called the Mackenzie Country Inn. The room was really clean and cosy, with a flat screen TV and cofee/ tea making facilities. The basics. The downside of this hotel is, wifi  doesn't come free. They charge $6.00 per hour so if you're staying here, you better forget about internet. Apart from that, everything else is great. After settling down in our room, we had dinner and waited for new year. There were no fireworks, no big party to welcome the new year. But it was perfect. After a long day on the road, all I wanted was a quiet new year's eve with just the four of us.

*Our visit to Mount Cook will be posted later. Too tired right now :)