Source: Lonely Planet

Aotearoa - the Maori name for New Zealand. The breakdown of the word could be Aotea+roa or Ao+tea+roa.

Aotea - could be the name of the one of the canoes of the great migration, the great magellan cloud near the bright star Canopus in summer, a bird or food.
Ao - cloud, dawn, daytime or world
tea - white, clear, or bright
roa - long or tall

As such, the most popular meaning usually given is "long white cloud". There are two stories behind this naming. The less fairy-like version was that voyagers to New Zealand were guided during the day by a long white cloud, and at night by a long bright cloud.

The other version tells a story where Kupe (the discoverer of New Zealand) saw a peculiar looking cloud hanging over a land after his long voyage. He drew attention to it and his wife called out "He ao! He ao!" (a cloud! a cloud!). Aotea was initially named to the Great Barrier and North Island, but later became Aotearoa, presumably because of its length. Therefore it is also said that Aoteroa was used for North Island at first.
Source: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand.


We took advantage of the Christmas - New Year public holidays, and take a couple of days to make it a nine days holidays to South Island New Zealand. We, in this holidays consists of sis, bro in law, little niece and me. We met up in Sydney during flight transit before took off to Christchurch.

One may ask, why South and not North Island? Mmm.. to be honest, there isn't any science applied on this, we just heard South Island is a more beautiful destination, and so we opt for South Island. However after we made the trip, I have seen beautiful shots of North Island too. So, if you are after any logical or scientific method to decide between North Island or South Island, I have no answer to that.

We were scheduled to land right before Christmas day but due to a small flight delay, we reached just passed midnight, exactly on Christmas day.

Day 0 - Christchurch* (Airport Gateway Motor Lodge)
Day 1 - Christchurch, Lake Tekapo* (Parkbrae Estate)
Day 2 - Lake Tekapo, Mt Cook, Wanaka* (Wanaka Heights Motel)
Day 3 - Wanaka, Te Anau* (Aden Motel)
Day 4 - Te Anau*, Milford Sound
Day 5 - Te Anau, Queenstown* (Shotover Lodge)
Day 6 - Arrowtown, Queenstown*
Day 7 - Glenorchy, Queenstown*
Day 8 - Glenorchy, Queenstown* (this is not a typing error, there's a story to this)
Day 9 - Queenstown, back to Melbourne
*overnight stay

We had 4 nights in Queenstown, both Arrowtown and Glenorchy were day trips. The cheapest flight I could find was one that transit in Auckland. LOL - yes, so I flew out of Queenstown to Auckland before reaching Melbourne.


Side note: Booked my flights to Tokyo in November! Koyo here I come! *happy grins*