We stopped by the Christchurch Botanical Gardens for an early visit before our flight back to North Island
The garden was quite pretty, full of interesting plants, small streams, bridges, everything you'd expect.
Beautiful Sakura trees in the garden... again, I can't seem to get a good photo of these beautiful trees.
White and pink trees, next to each other.
This might be my favorite shot of the tree...
Giant Eucalyptus tree.... People there for scale...
Another "Have a seat" photo inspired by Alex: http://picasaweb.google.com/antermoia/HaveASeat#
Color version of the bench shot.
Shooting up to catch some interesting colors and patterns. Inspired by Joe's nature album: http://picasaweb.google.com/joekuo/ReturnToNature#
This is a monkey tail tree I believe.
This tree is rather interesting as it's leaves change completely as it grows from a sharp blade like leaf as seen on the bottom to more bushy as seen on the top. Believed to be a defense mechanism.
Hagglund, an Antarctic vehicle still in use today.
A C-130 Hercules transport plane, specially designed for the Antarctic program
A C-17 Globemaster III transport...the amount of equipment these things can carry is just scary (170,900 lbs)...
Check out the sleigh landing gear modification.
Sorry for the lens flare, but this was the effect I was trying to go for :)
Our wonderful driver, Robin. He is retiring at end of this season... he was simply amazing and really funny too.
Child crossing signs... :)
Some aerial photos taken as we headed to North Island (supposedly Rotorua...)
Christchurch from the sky... the plane had some equipment failure so we were forced to land in Christchurch instead of Rotorua... the captain assured us it wasn't critical... :)
We ended up having to take a bus from Christchurch to Rotorua which added 4 or 5 hours to our trip... the up side was that we get to drive through Matamata (or better known as Hobbiton) and really check out some beautiful North Island scenery
Beautiful flower fields along the road...
Visitor center in Matamata/Hobbiton...
The tour is so... expensive. I hear all the houses are torn down and you really can't see much now...
More gorgeous flower fields. Man I will never get sick of this
This was one of my favorites from the day. Just liked that giant tree in the foreground, almost feels like a painting to me.
Under the silver leaf fern, using flash to bring out the "reflective-ness" of the fern...
Again, inspired by Joe's album. I really like the shadow against the bright green leaves and sky.
Everything in New Zealand is huge... here you see giant redwoods. Unfortunately they are not suited for building things as they aren't nearly as solid as other redwoods (though keep in mind these trees are relatively young)
Not sure if this was done by some animal or by humans....
Liked the contrast of the 2 trees in the foreground.
Just playing with more post processing...
Our dinner show, native Maori performances
