Lake Takepo to Christchurch: final stop

On our last morning at Lake Takepo, I ran around the lake once again because I love it so much. It’s probably my favorite stop of this trip. So peaceful, stunningly beautiful, and magical.

look the color of the water! I can’t get over how amazing it is.

I found the little statue by accident and stop to take a pic

One of the black box was our airbnb, the best one in this trip.

It was 227km drive and we stopped several times. First was Burkes Pass, a quirky old-time village

then fairlie bakery which everyone told us to stop by as they have the best pie around. As expected, it was a popular place for tourists to stop by

we also stopped by Geraldine bakers and got some local fruit jams, and finally Waipua studio that was closed

We arrived Christchurch at 2pm. Got lunch and checked in our airbnb. We then explored the city by foot, went to New Regent Street where cool cafes are located

spotted the trams which is like hop-on hop off tourist bus. It was 4pm already so we didn’t feel like doing it

and we ended up at Margaret Mahy Family Playground, just 10 min away from our airbnb. Girls love exploring local playgrounds and this one is super big.

We started the next late, super sleepy everyone and it was raining a bit. We spent few hours at the Willowbank wildlife reserve, very nicely done with a magic show

Our favorite animals from the farm were capybara, soo soo cute!

and ducks are super cute too and we got to feed them. We tried to see Kiwi, but as they are nocturnal, the place was super dark. We saw two but not very well.

next we went to the International Antarctic center. Our favorite activity there was the Antarctic Hägglund, a truck that transports people in Antartic

the bumpy ride was fun

and we saw the blue pinguins, they are small pinguins rescued by the center in rehabilitation, super cute as well

and that concludes our 16D/15N trip to New Zealand!

I am tying this post in Melbourne transiting back to Jakarta. We got up at 3am to catch 6am flight. I’ll do a final recap and lesson learned once we get back home, for 24 hrs as I’ll catch another flight to DC. Hopefully during the long flight, I start thinking about my 2025 goals as I feel FOMO when reading others.