Guess I can consider this to be a backpacking-like trip except that I stay in min 3 stars accommodation instead of bunk bed style hostel. Nice to have all the time under your control, you get like what time should we wake up next morning kind of stuff to think about which is pretty good on a holiday. Rather than being forced to wake up at certain timing for breakfast cause you gotta go to place X by time Y as a tour group. The trip took 13 hours in total with transit at Sydney, which is enough for me to fly to Charles De Gaulle direct but thank goodness the time zone difference is just 5 hours instead.

The flight to Christchurch had a breath-taking view of the southern Alps and here's some photos taken of the beautiful landscape there. Any artifacts you see in the photos are most likely to be due to the dirty plane windows. Plus these 3 shots were heavily photoshop to put back contrast and saturation.