We finally got to go on holidays at last!
We went to New Zealand’s South Island to do some of the things we did on our honeymoon that we really enjoyed, and to do some of the things we missed out on doing while we were on our honeymoon.
We have been through Sydney’s T1 international terminal once before when we came back from our honeymoon, we had a bit of a rush trek through though to get our connecting flight from T3 and didn’t really get to check it out. We also flew in with QANTAS last time, and there was not much to see between the gate and the domestic transfers.
This time though we were flying with Jetstar, so we literally had to walk the length of the entire terminal to get to our gate. Our flight was also delayed by an hour so we had plenty of time to check the airport out along the way. The delay was a bit of an inconvenience to our plans at the other end, but the pilot did explain to us the reason which was nice. Apparently the plane had to fly from Christchurch the night before, arriving in Melbourne that morning. It then had to come from Melbourne up to Sydney before we could take it back to Christchurch. It seems weather delayed it from taking off from Christchurch which put it behind. While it did inconvenience us, the explanation was definitely appreciated. Thanks Jetstar!
We flew across the Tasman to Christchurch, just like we did last time, only last time we flew through the night. This time we had a day time flight and got to actually see the Island and it’s majestic Southern Alps appear.
The way they just rear up out of the ocean and then onwards through the clouds is just breathtakingly beautiful! I don’t know exactly where we crossed them, but it was such an amazing sight.
Coming from Australia where there really is no sight like this, it just took our breath away!
Before long though, the snow capped peaks begin to lower and the snow disappears.
As we came towards the end of the mountain range, the snow caps began to disappear, but we also started to see more valleys with snow or glacier fed rivers running through them which on their own were quite stunning as well!
The further we got down some of the rivers the more we saw what looked like rivers of rock or gravel. From my understanding, this is a result of glaciers grinding against the rocky mountains and breaking them up. This ground-up rock and gravel gets carted with the glaciers down the mountains and is gradually released as the glacier melts.
This in turn flows into beautiful blue glacier fed lakes such as this one. I didn’t take any photos of the Canterbury Plains that we then flew over, but it looks find of like the banks of the Lake, criss crossed with fields in all different colours.
After a 3.5 hour flight, we were there. Landing in Christchurch it was pretty quiet (definitely not like when we arrived at 4am last time, but still quiet compared to Sydney).