Exterous' trip to New Zealand

[Exterous]

So for this years Winter\NYE trip I got lucky with flight scheduling so we headed down to New Zealand for 2 weeks. This is definitely up there as one of my favorite trips that we've been able to take. It also sits high atop the list of 'most physically punishing' and 'toughest to plan'. Everything in New Zealand is both up hill and downhill to get to. See a waterfall that appears eye level with you? You still need to go up and down steep hills to get there. Now someone like NuclearNed might be fine with it but Michigan is really freaking flat. The most elevation change I usually get in a day is the staircase in my house. For this trip we averaged 33 flights per day with a high of 73 flights (which was also our peak hiking\walking day at 12 miles). We covered 18,420 miles by air, 1,864 miles by car and 104 miles on foot. We only stayed at the same hotel once. I realize that is not for everyone but I am glad we did it that way because we had to cut out so much as it was.

Which leads into the toughest to plan part. See something amazingly beautiful you want to see? Well, too bad. Can't do it. Not enough time to see that and this other amazingly beautiful thing. Or that one. Or that one. Or that one. Figuring out the best path for our trip took a lot of time. Also - a lot of the South Island isn't on the internet yet and some of the establishments that are only list a phone # as a way to contact them. For some of the tracks you need to locate the nearest gas station because you need to fill up there as its the last option for a long time. Same with food. We spent a night in a mountain lodge that didn't serve any food and the only other option (besides bringing your own) was an obscenely over priced restaurant nearby with terrible hours. Between situations like this and food being fairly pricey we got to know NZ grocery stores quite well

Anyway we headed out from DTW during peak holiday travel time. Which was, surprisingly, not bad. Apparently the leisure travelers in First\Business didn't know they could use the Lufthansa lounge so we had the entire thing to ourselves - which has never happened to me before

Finally got a chance to try the highly touted United Polaris business class seat on a 2 month old 77W

For all the hype it wasn't all that impressive to me. We were on an AA 789 on the way back and I preferred the B\E seat on that to the United one.

Christmas Dinner:

(The bottom plate has some sliced Ostrich on it. Interesting to try but I wasn't a huge fan. The little rolls off to the side actually contained small presents like candies and a tiny measuring tape)

Even in Auckland the streets can be steep enough the cranes have to improvise:

 

[brianmanahan]

nice! i JUST missed the 600$ roundtrip flight to AUK deal last month, i was so mad. maybe next year.

 

[Exterous]

Waterfalls Pt 1 (There are waterfalls all over the place)

Geothermal parks:

For hotels we stayed at everything from Hiltons to tiny motels. There are few chain hotels in NZ but we managed to stay at 4 of the 6 Hilton properties. My hope was that with a small footprint that they wouldn't have a lot of Diamond members and that seems to be true. Despite visiting during their peak travel season I got a suite upgrade at 3 Hilton properties and 1 IHG property. (They don't have Exec Lounges though)

Hilton Taupo

 

[Exterous]

nice! i JUST missed the 600$ roundtrip flight to AUK deal last month, i was so mad. maybe next year.

You never know. I think there were quite a few cheap fares last year so there still might be a chance for this year

 

[KMFJD]

Awesome pics as always, making everyone on ATOT jealous....I really enjoyed NZ when i went and i definitely want to go back some time.

 

[deustroop]

Looks great. I'm planning a trip there. Can you post the itinerary ? Tips and tricks ?

 

[BoomerD]

WHAT? No hobbit pics?

Or did you keep all those in your...."special...private" folders?

Nice pics though. NZ has always been one of the places I wanted to see. I know I'll never make it though, so thanks for sharing.

 

[clamum]

Nice pics! Looks great; thanks for sharing.

 

[Exterous]

So one of the things we thought was awesome were these little gas stations out in the middle of no where:

That was until we had to pass up a manned station due to closed freeway exits, our gas light came on and the automated payment station didn't accept our credit cards (No PIN), paper money, Samsung pay, apple pay or our debit card. I was about ready to offer someone NZ cash to put gas in our car when my wife tried running through our debit card as a credit card instead of a 'cheque card' - which thankfully worked. These were the only places we ever had issues using credit cards in NZ

Redwood light display using those Christmas light projectors:

For our trip we decided to spend more time in the South Island which seems to be fairly typical. So we flew from Auckland into Queenstown which is now my favorite airport in the world. The views landing are stunning as you decend between mountains and over vibrantly blue water to land. Its just a one runway airport so no waiting to taxi or for a gate. You disembark onto the runway, surrounded by mountains (Sadly no picture taking allowed) and bags were on the belt before we got to the carousel

While we knew places would be closed for Christmas and New years. What we didn't expect was that places would be closed for more than 3 weeks. Fortunately there were quite a few restaurants we hadn't seen online that were open but this occasionally caused some issues.

Small grocer + Fish&Chips+Chinese food+Ice cream shop:

(Their food was quite good)

 

[Exterous]

Awesome pics as always, making everyone on ATOT jealous....I really enjoyed NZ when i went and i definitely want to go back some time.

Thanks! Out of curiosity what were the favorite parts of your trip?

WHAT? No hobbit pics?

Or did you keep all those in your...."special...private" folders?

Nice pics though. NZ has always been one of the places I wanted to see. I know I'll never make it though, so thanks for sharing.

Wait - is this why you always try to get me to walk around barefoot while you sit at the top of the stairs, naked and murmuring about your precious?

Nice pics! Looks great; thanks for sharing.

Thanks!

 

[Exterous]

Looks great. I'm planning a trip there. Can you post the itinerary ? Tips and tricks ?

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

 

[KMFJD]

Thanks! Out of curiosity what were the favorite parts of your trip?

On the South Island

Milford Sound, Mount Cook, West Coast, Kiakora and Abel Tasman Park Area

On the North Island i really like Taranaki and the surrounding area, the road from Mt Taranaki to Lake Taupo was amazing, also really enjoyed the Bay of Islands and the drive up to Cape Reinga. Also Hobbiton was just getting started up again and was really cool to see.

 

[Exterous]

Oh man, I really fubar'd my photo uploads. I grabbed the wrong folder so here are some things back on the North Island. (I also replaced some of my earlier pictures with better ones from the 'right' folder)

'Mud plops' from the geothermal parks

The next one is from one of the Glow Worm caves. These are crazy cool worms (maggots actually) that hang from the ceiling and emit bio-luminescence to attract small insects that get stuck in their small sticky strands. With the lights off its a beautiful sight. Unfortunately its also completely pitch black since they are often deep in caves. They also congregate where there is good airflow so the little bastards sway a bit - making long exposure times tough:

If you're ever in the area I recommend going to a small private tour. We picked one where they move about 75 people through per day (15 per tour) instead of the 3,000 people a day through the 'main' one

Bridal Veil falls

I climbed down 291 stairs to get to the bottom. Also - 1 in 3 falls in NZ are named Bridal Veil. I don't know if thats true but we visited 4 different falls with the same name

 

[Exterous]

As we got closer to Milford Sound the weather worsened with the rain picking up

When we got to Milford Sound it was low clouds and heavy rain but they get 23' of rain per year so par for the course. On the plus side there were tons of waterfalls and the rain started easing up towards the end of the cruise we took (only to quickly come back as we docked)

 

[Exterous]

On the South Island

Milford Sound, Mount Cook, West Coast, Kiakora and Abel Tasman Park Area

On the North Island i really like Taranaki and the surrounding area, the road from Mt Taranaki to Lake Taupo was amazing, also really enjoyed the Bay of Islands and the drive up to Cape Reinga. Also Hobbiton was just getting started up again and was really cool to see.

Sounds like we have similar favorites although we didn't make it to the west coast of NZ. We also skipped Hobbiton. Originally we were going to go there but it was ~$100 pp and neither of us was quite that interested when compared to other things on our list

 

[KMFJD]

Sounds like we have similar favorites although we didn't make it to the west coast of NZ. We also skipped Hobbiton. Originally we were going to go there but it was ~$100 pp and neither of us was quite that interested when compared to other things on our list

Glow Worms where really cool, did one of the smaller tours, went out on someones sheep paddock and went into some caves an there they where....pretty cool....It was around 65$ when we went and worth it if you like LOTR , went to a few of the locations actually.....i'd like to see Doubtfull SOund next time, supposed to be really neat, the two glaciers on the west coast where amazing...and the kea birds are neat

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Thanks for the pics. What a beautiful landscape.

 

[dainthomas]

nice! i JUST missed the 600$ roundtrip flight to AUK deal last month, i was so mad. maybe next year.

Where did you see that? NZ is at the top of my list, so I'm always on the lookout for good deals.

 

[radhak]

Wow! What a thread - fantastic pictures, and great info - thanks!

Aus / NZ is on my bucket list. I am sure I cannot do two trips so I want to cover both countries in one, and that sounds so crazy to plan that it might be infeasible. Or not - maybe 3 weeks for two countries might do it...? But your itinerary for just NZ feels perfect...

 

[brianmanahan]

Where did you see that? NZ is at the top of my list, so I'm always on the lookout for good deals.

i check www.theflightdeal.com pretty regularly and am also subscribed to the "scott's cheap flights" free mailing list. that deal was on both but i saw it too late, i think it was a pricing mistake because it only lasted a few hours.

 

[Exterous]

Thanks for the pics. What a beautiful landscape.

You're welcome - its a crazy beautiful place

Wow! What a thread - fantastic pictures, and great info - thanks!

Aus / NZ is on my bucket list. I am sure I cannot do two trips so I want to cover both countries in one, and that sounds so crazy to plan that it might be infeasible. Or not - maybe 3 weeks for two countries might do it...? But your itinerary for just NZ feels perfect...

I don't know if I would try to do both countries in 2 weeks. There is a ton to see in areas that are not fast to get in and out of which makes quick switching difficult. Plus you'll eat up 5-6 hours getting from one to the other. I'd try for 3 weeks total with 2 weeks in one and 1 week in the other. I will say our itinerary was pretty aggressive. Towards the end there was a lot of coffee involved and one person sleeping while the other was driving. No way we could have done another week at the same pace with the same amount of walking\hiking

i check www.theflightdeal.com pretty regularly and am also subscribed to the "scott's cheap flights" free mailing list. that deal was on both but i saw it too late, i think it was a pricing mistake because it only lasted a few hours.

For whatever reason any time I've looked at a deal Scott sends for DTW when I click through to buy the fare through Google flights the resulting fare provider's website (sometimes OTA sometimes airline directly) has never priced it remotely close to what Scott or Google says it should be. I've had better luck with ORD, BOS and NYC but even then have occasionally run into issues

 

[KMFJD]

You're welcome - its a crazy beautiful place



I don't know if I would try to do both countries in 2 weeks. There is a ton to see in areas that are not fast to get in and out of which makes quick switching difficult. Plus you'll eat up 5-6 hours getting from one to the other. I'd try for 3 weeks total with 2 weeks in one and 1 week in the other. I will say our itinerary was pretty aggressive. Towards the end there was a lot of coffee involved and one person sleeping while the other was driving. No way we could have done another week at the same pace with the same amount of walking\hiking



For whatever reason any time I've looked at a deal Scott sends for DTW when I click through to buy the fare through Google flights the resulting fare provider's website (sometimes OTA sometimes airline directly) has never priced it remotely close to what Scott or Google says it should be. I've had better luck with ORD, BOS and NYC but even then have occasionally run into issues

I actually like DTW, it's a nice airport, so few direct flights from it to places i want to go that i end up at Toronto instead

 

[Exterous]

After Milford Sound it was back to Queenstown for NYE, some luge rides and paragliding

(Apparently its a thing to strip down to your underwear and run into the water on NYE)

Despite it being NYE there was a suite upgrade waiting for us at the Queenstown Hilton. I no longer travel enough to maintain my Diamond status so it was last hurrah.

View from balcony:

Then it was on to Rob Roy glacier with various stops

 

[Exterous]

After Rob Roy it was on to Mordor...er Mt Cook.

We were in a remote village with essentially no gas or grocery stores but we did have full LTE coverage.

NZ is supposed to have some great astro photography options but the moon was full while we were there and it was very cloudy at times so we didn't have as much luck with it as we were hoping. It also got bright early so our 4am attempt didn't work out well. We tried again at 2am another night but that didn't work as well as we had hoped either

4am shots:

The next day we were up and out on the trail early which worked out very very well. Less than 5 minutes after we got to this spot a group of small kids started throwing rocks into the lake and it got crowded so we would not have gotten the smooth water appearance if we had left much later

 

[Exterous]

I actually like DTW, it's a nice airport, so few direct flights from it to places i want to go that i end up at Toronto instead

I like DTW as an airport but the prices out of here suck. We've flown out of Chicago, Toronto and even Windsor airport to save $. I dislike separate positioning flights\drives but I'll do them to save $500 per ticket