Exterous' trip to New Zealand

[ponyo]

Wow! Those are gorgeous pictures. Some of those mountain shots with the snow, water, and the greens are unreal. I could live in New Zealand. Beautiful country with mountains and surrounded by water. Thanks for the trip report! It kind of motivates me to visit some of the beautiful natural parks we have in this great country of ours.

 

[Exterous]

You can only get to some hikes by driving or hiking through farmland

One of her friends was walking in front of us along a hiking path. She then decided to cross the path diagonally and let out a liquidy stream of shit across the entire path which seemed unnecessarily hostile

For some parts of this incredibly bumpy road there were giant muddy water filled holes in them. For the more remote ones where I wasn't certain if anyone else had driven through them I waded through in my sandals to make sure the car could pass

Tasman Glacier:

Arthur's Pass - which was much wider than I've seen in a 'Pass' before

 

[Exterous]

Wow! Those are gorgeous pictures. Some of those mountain shots with the snow, water, and the greens are unreal. I could live in New Zealand. Beautiful country with mountains and surrounded by water. Thanks for the trip report! It kind of motivates me to visit some of the beautiful natural parks we have in this great country of ours.

Thanks! Yeah its definitely a beautiful place

 

[KMFJD]

Tips:

• Book lodging well ahead of time if you are going in their summer. They have a shortage of rooms and most of the towns\cities we went seemed fully booked
• Get to popular sights early (before 8:30am) if you go in their summer. Places got busy later in the day but early on were empty. We still went to other places later and dealt with the crowds but the earlier visits were better in terms of crowds and parking
• Rent a car. There are sooo many places you cant get to without a car. But plan ahead - it can get expensive close in due to demand
• Be prepared for a lot of hiking to see some awesome things
• Grocery stores are great places to get food and snacks for breakfast or hiking picnics
• Yelp and TA are not as useful in NZ as a lot of other places
• Take a debit or credit card with a PIN. Not all places take credit cards though. We got $300 NZD in cash which was more than enough for us
• Orakei Korako was our favorite geothermal park
• If you see the Glow Worms do a private tour. I'll put a plug in for Spellbound as a small, private tour provider. This avoids the thousands of people a day visiting the more well known ones
• Go to Milford Sound or Doubtful sound
• The AKL airport is fairly far outside of town and mass transit options to the city aren't great. If you get a car rental there are a fair number of downtown parking lots that are notably cheaper than hotel parking. Rates are often capped on weekends at $10-$12 NZD but no in\out options. Holidays are often free. Parking everywhere else we went was free

Our itinerary:
Day 1: Auckland (Mostly Piha area)
Day 2: Coromandel
Day 3: Rotorua
Day 4: Taupo (Geothermal parks on the way from Rotorua to Taupo in the morning)
Day 5: Waitomo\AKL airport (Glowworm caves)
Day 6 Glenorcy\Te Anau
Day 7: Queenstown (Milford Sound in the morning)
Day 8: Queenstown
Day 9: Mt Cook
Day 10: Arthur's Pass
Day 11: Kaikoura
Day 12: Christchurch
Day 13: Auckland
Day 14: Auckland

I would potentially consider taking out Aurthur's pass for something else. Kaikoura was a bit tough to get to with our plan but thats where you can get very close to Seals and Dolphins. This cuts out a ton of things like Franz Josef glaciers, Blenheim and Dunedin but hit the largest number of things we wanted to see. You might want to make a map of places you really want to go and see if you can construct a route that hits most of them

There's a bus that drops you off from the airport to downtown Auckland, it was around $12 last time i used it.

Bakeries are great place to stop for a quick breakfast or snack, those meat pies are awesome

Kiakora was amazing, went out to see wales and on the way back a pod of close to 80-100 dolphins followed the boat back, that was awesome.

 

[quikah]

I did NZ about 15 yrs ago with a couple of friends, we traveled all over over ~3 weeks, camping and staying in Hostels. I want to go back and stay in proper hotels now that I have some real money.

When I went I did the Blackwater Rafting Co tour in Waitomo for the glowworms, super awesome, of course this was about 12-15 yrs ago, no idea if it has changed (looks like the prices have gone up considerably). Was a guide with a group of 6 I think.
http://www.waitomo.com/Black-water-rafting/Pages/default.aspx

If you go to Rotorua you need to try sledging, it is super fun.
http://www.kaitiaki.co.nz/sledging/

Also we did a Maori Hangi (similar to a Luau), I don't remember which one. It was nice.

 

[brianmanahan]

You can only get to some hikes by driving or hiking through farmland

that is a gorgeous hereford

 

[Exterous]

There's a bus that drops you off from the airport to downtown Auckland, it was around $12 last time i used it.

Bakeries are great place to stop for a quick breakfast or snack, those meat pies are awesome

Kiakora was amazing, went out to see wales and on the way back a pod of close to 80-100 dolphins followed the boat back, that was awesome.

The bus is now $18 pp each way so $72 round trip for 2 (You can save a tiny amount buying online). It also makes quite a few stops so they say to leave a lot of time for it. We thought about doing that when we went back to Auckland but the car rental was $70. It cost more because of gas and parking but, for us, the flexibility made up for it. Maybe for 1 person for a day or so it wouldn't be bad depending on car rental pricing

I did NZ about 15 yrs ago with a couple of friends, we traveled all over over ~3 weeks, camping and staying in Hostels. I want to go back and stay in proper hotels now that I have some real money.

Another week would have been great. There were quite a few things we didn't get a chance to do (like sledging)

that is a gorgeous hereford

Got another pretty good one as we slowly drove by

 

[KMFJD]

Did you see any Kea's ? We saw them a couple of times, they where not shy either, attacking our rental car for the rubber door lining for some reason.

 

[twjr]

Some nice familiar sights there. My dad owns a property in Queenstown and I'll be getting married there in March. The Nelson/Tasman region at the top of the South Island is beautiful in summer.

Anyone suggesting doing NZ and OZ in 2-3 weeks is dreaming. Australia is the similar size as the contiguous US but without anyone living in the interior. Roads in both countries are poor outside the cities. NZ still has single lane bridges on the State Highways.

Exterous, had they reopened State Highway 1 between Christchuch and Kaikoura when you were there? Also, the photo of the fish and chip shop is so typically Kiwi. Tell me you tried orange-choc-chip ice cream?

Good tip about having a PIN on your card. Most places in NZ and OZ won't accept cards otherwise. A lot of places won't accept cards without chips now either.

Also, if you are going in summer don't forget the sun protection. Burn time can be as low as 15 minutes and skin cancer is one of our biggest killers.

KMFJD, Kea are wonderful birds, if a little cheeky. They have been known to strip all the rubber seals from cars parked in skifield carparks.

 

[Exterous]

After Arthur's Pass it was off to Kaikoura for (hopefully) swimming with wild dolphins and seal watching.

Close to shore the rocks were quite sharp and a slip would probably result in a nasty gash

But the tide was out so I saw some seals out a bit farther without a crowd of people in the way. I was so focused on where I was stepping that I suddenly heard a BARK quite close to me. I turned and looked and a seal was staring at me from about 10 feet away. A large outcropping of rock had been hiding him from my view. I slowly backed up and he laid back down for some pictures

Lavender farm

Unfortunately this evening and the following morning would bring the worst weather of the trip. A storm was moving through NZ and flooding had already caused a few deaths in the north island and was stranding fliers at airport. Sadly our Dolphin tour was cancelled due to rough seas. The first trip of the day had gone out but turned around with everyone, including the Captain, getting at least a little seasick. On the positive side this did relive some stress as there were warnings they were going to shut down the roads out of the town and we needed to be in Christchurch for our flight to Auckland the following morning. So we headed out early. They did end up closing two of the three roads out of the town

 

[Exterous]

Did you see any Kea's ? We saw them a couple of times, they where not shy either, attacking our rental car for the rubber door lining for some reason.

We only saw one from a little bit of a distance

Some nice familiar sights there. My dad owns a property in Queenstown and I'll be getting married there in March. The Nelson/Tasman region at the top of the South Island is beautiful in summer.

Awesome and congrats on getting married!

Anyone suggesting doing NZ and OZ in 2-3 weeks is dreaming. Australia is the similar size as the contiguous US but without anyone living in the interior. Roads in both countries are poor outside the cities. NZ still has single lane bridges on the State Highways.

You could do 3 weeks. It wouldn't be ideal and yes you would have to cut a ton out (You have to with 2-3 weeks in either country anyway) but you could still fit in something like the Great Barrier Reef or the GOR. If you don't think you'll ever be able to get back to that area of the world I'd take seeing a small part of a country over no part

Exterous, had they reopened State Highway 1 between Christchuch and Kaikoura when you were there?

Yeah, Christchurch to Kaikoura opened earlier in 2017 and it had been fully open to Picton in early December IIRC. They still had flags and stop lights for a few areas of 1 way traffic though. And both directions closed when the heavy rain moved in. We left Kaikoura via the inland route which, while there was some concern the streams might over flow the road, they didn't end up needing to close it too.

Good tip about having a PIN on your card. Most places in NZ and OZ won't accept cards otherwise. A lot of places won't accept cards without chips now either.

It looks like if you have a chip you're fine most places without a PIN but those gas stations. We used ours heavily and the only (and consistent) place we had trouble were the automated gas stations.

We actually didn't get any ice cream while we were there. It was a clear miss on our part but the timing + lines never worked out well

 

[KMFJD]

Some nice familiar sights there. My dad owns a property in Queenstown and I'll be getting married there in March. The Nelson/Tasman region at the top of the South Island is beautiful in summer.

Anyone suggesting doing NZ and OZ in 2-3 weeks is dreaming. Australia is the similar size as the contiguous US but without anyone living in the interior. Roads in both countries are poor outside the cities. NZ still has single lane bridges on the State Highways.

Exterous, had they reopened State Highway 1 between Christchuch and Kaikoura when you were there? Also, the photo of the fish and chip shop is so typically Kiwi. Tell me you tried orange-choc-chip ice cream?

Good tip about having a PIN on your card. Most places in NZ and OZ won't accept cards otherwise. A lot of places won't accept cards without chips now either.

Also, if you are going in summer don't forget the sun protection. Burn time can be as low as 15 minutes and skin cancer is one of our biggest killers.

KMFJD, Kea are wonderful birds, if a little cheeky. They have been known to strip all the rubber seals from cars parked in skifield carparks.

Yeah we had to chase them away and we had only moved about 10 feet away from the car and they attacked it....beautiful birds though.

 

[slayer202]

wow great photos

 

[Thebobo]

Rocket Lab is launching a rocket this evening if you can get there, at of course a beautiful idyllic setting.

 

[Exterous]

Back in Aukland it was supposed to clear up and be sunny but most of our remaining time it ended up being cloudy with some rain. The rain was problematic for some of our plans so we decieded to play some mini golf in the rain.

It was pretty fun. We basically had the whole place to ourselves so we could redo the holes. It was a pretty good course too with lots of different obstacles

We also learned that, despite the wharf seeming to have a heavy and solid foundation it still moved enough to ruin most of our attempts at night photography

After that it was back home on American Airlines

The shoulder room was wider than United, screen bigger and foot cubbies a tad larger. It was also nice that you just got a mattress pad instead of having to fight for the limited number of them on United.

Overall a fantastic trip and I really want to go back to do and see some of the things we just didn't have time for. That said I don't know if I would try going again between the end of December and mid-January. A lot of the small towns dotting the general wilderness of the South Island are absolutely packed with people. Trailhead parking lots overflow with cars. Lots of places are closed or you have to deal with hotel\rental vehicle minimums (which exceeded 2 weeks in some cases). If the choice was between not going again ever and going during peak season I would choose to go again but going in the shoulder season seems more of a consideration here than most places we've been. Sill a beautiful place with a lot of very friendly people

 

[Exterous]

wow great photos

Thanks!

Rocket Lab is launching a rocket this evening if you can get there, at of course a beautiful idyllic setting.

I listened to an interview with their CEO or VP and I thought it was interesting how they note how much different planning launches are down there. In the US you have to notify all kinds of agencies and airlines to find and work with a launch window. Down there there are so few competing for airspace its barely an issue. The downside is that if they get super popular I would imagine that would result in a huge economic influx - probably negating much of what was so wonderful

 

[brianmanahan]

me irl

 

[Exterous]

me irl

Did you manage to snag any of those $250-350 RT tickets to New Zealand a couple of days ago? Deal was dead before I came across it but I guess it was up for a couple of hours

 

[brianmanahan]

Did you manage to snag any of those $250-350 RT tickets to New Zealand a couple of days ago? Deal was dead before I came across it but I guess it was up for a couple of hours

no i didn't even see them!

been too swamped at work to think about anything but deadlines

i'm thinking about subbing to scott's cheap flights premium for a year

 

[brianmanahan]

Did you manage to snag any of those $250-350 RT tickets to New Zealand a couple of days ago? Deal was dead before I came across it but I guess it was up for a couple of hours

oh actually i just saw the comments for that deal on theflightdeal.com - many people were saying that air new zealand just said it was a mistake and canceled their flights

 

[Exterous]

oh actually i just saw the comments for that deal on theflightdeal.com - many people were saying that air new zealand just said it was a mistake and canceled their flights

Yeah I looked at Flyertalk and it seems like everyone is getting their flights cancelled regardless of how they booked. Too bad. They actually had some legit ~$300 fares a year or so ago so a lot of people were thinking these were legit too.