Right after breakfast, pick-up of the rental car and check-out... we went to the nearest attraction... the International Antartic Centre... just outside Christchurch Airport...
It's the place to go if u're about to head off to antartic for research... Almost all researchers in the Antartic use this place as their final stopoff point prior going on their stint in the freezing lands south.
It was a costly entrance... and if u actually watched tru "March of the Penguins" and heard the entire commentary, you could excuse all the informative displays and head straight for the only 2 things worth experiencing...
The Hagglund Ride - WOO! Roller Coaster on tracks! the ride was fun and the driver a jovial chap to chat with... This is the actual thing they use in the Antartic to get around. Built like a tank and quite spacious.
the next thing is the Ice Storm Room, where they simulate the icy Antartic storms to the 1/3 of its actually degree. Bear in mind even at that contitions, it was still -8 Celcius and with super strong winds... it literally was freezing, with real snow too!
The penguin display / feeding was all right... & the penguin chicks display was interesting... but other then that... THAT was ALL!... kinda ex for a short/little displays... it was NZ$45 per pax!... i suppose u could stay longer in the Freezer or enjoy the unlimited Hagglund Rides... but not very much value lah...
outside were all these big soft toys for kidz to take pictures with... 
The whole family was to meet-up and spend the night at Christchurch prior to us heading out to Akaroa, 75km out of the city for the week....
Julie's dad had booked us in this nearby motel... just to crash for the night... we rented 2 units... theirs was bigger and had a full kitchen... for cooking our meals... cooking is definately cheaper then eating out... they also managed to get a set of walkie-talkies so we could communicate between cars or rooms... cheap... NZ$50 for a set of 2
They picked up their rental car one day earlier and got a bigger car... a mitsubishi lancer...
We got our car the next day... a smaller one... mitsubishi colt... it had a cool automatic boot opener (our total rental plus petrol came to NZ$860 for the entire trip)
One things for sure... there were lots of beautiful flowers all over... even just planted all around this simple motel. 
So after one night of rest, we checked out and headed to the Antartic Centre nearby first. Check-out times in NZ are way early... 9.30-10.00am latest! so we had to kill time before heading to Akaroa, where check-in was 3.00pm...
woo! back from Aotearoa / New Zealand - The Land of the Long White Cloud... it was awesome....
i will try to blog our progress of these past 2.5 weeks overseas... as fast as i can filter out the 1.6k of photos i took... but first off!... our flight out of Kuantan to KLIA! We were all excited and someone was also a bit sleepy... :) At KLIA we had enough time to get some grub then board the next leg to
Auckland - we had a transfer here, it was quite a long wait... and phoebe & Julie had a snooze whilst Hannah poked around till we boarded up via Quantas to
our final destination Christchurch! WE HAVE ARRIVED! it was quite cold, with strong winds... a bit blur but the excitement was still in our blood!
Julie's bro came to pick us up, to take us to our overnight accomodations in a nearby motel... and we already had warm food waiting... yum!
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