Country Girl Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 This week my dh came home and suggested we look at taking a vacation to NZ in Jan-Feb time frame. So what can you tell me about vacationing in NZ? What are the must see places and things to do? Is it as expensive as vacationing in Australia (another place we are considering)? Also, researching on the internet, we came across the idea of renting an RV and touring the country that way. Has anyone ever done that? Any tips? Would we be able to do the trip justice if we were only staying for approx. 10 days? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Murmer Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 Rotorua, Aukland, many of the beaches are fun....as for 10 days I was there for 6 months and feel like there was so much that we could have done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarymelon Posted September 3, 2011 Share Posted September 3, 2011 We did a ten day road trip years ago. If you are a little pressed for time, I would definitely concentrate on the South Island vs. the North. Christ Church and Wellington are both nice towns. Abel Tasman park is amazing. We did not make it down to Queensland and we really regret it! Aukland and the North Island were nice, but not as spectacular as the South Island. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deb in NZ Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 (edited) 10 days is really short, so choose one island. Highlights in the North Island are: -Northland: Kai-iwi Lakes, Waipoura forest -Auckland: Kelly Tarltons Aquarium, Auckland War Museum, Maritime Museum, One Tree Hill-great for views over the city -Rotorua: Rainbow Fairy Springs + farm park, thermal areas, Maori culture area -Thames: Museum of Mines, great beaches, including Hot Water beach -Waihi: Martha Gold Mine -Waitomo: great caving -Taupo: earthquake/volcano museum, National Park volcanoes, trout fishing -Wellington: NZ's capital, Te Papa Museum, cable cars, maritime museum **Dolphin cruises in Paihia, Northland & Tauranga. Great beaches all over the North Island. Highlights in the South Island include: -Kaikoura: whale watching / dolphin cruises -Christchurch: Antarctic Centre near the airport, penguins on Banks Peninsula (please note CHCH is recovering from the big earthquakes of the past year & many of the tourist spots are not open or simply no longer exist, like the ChristChurch cathedral or the historic buildings of Littelton) -Dunedin: a beautiful city -Queenstown: cruise on the lake to a farm stay, tour nearby arrowtown -Milford Sound: great bus tour + cruise, well worth the visit There are many more places worth visiting, but with only 10 days you'll really be pushing it to see much. Australia is even larger than NZ. Compare it to if someone from overseas was coming to the US for a 10 day holiday. Where should they go? You won't see everything, but choose one general area & you'll have a great trip. You'll get more for your US$ in NZ than Australia as the Au$ is worth more than the US$ at the moment. With so little time it may be worth googling some bus tours to see where they stop on a 10 day tour. Renting a RV is a good idea, if you are confident driving on the left side of the road ;). January-February is summer here in NZ. January is still summer holidays, so places will be more crowded. The first 3 weeks of January many families are on vacation & simply move to the beach, so campgrounds will be very crowded. February kids are back in school & its a great time to tour NZ as the weather is still warm, but campgrounds aren't as crowded. HTH, Edited September 4, 2011 by Deb in NZ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grover Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 If you were only coming for 10 days I wouldn't recommend driving unless you're planning to stick to a small area of one Island. It depends on what you're looking for in a holiday - if you want to do lots of attractions then Auckland, Rotorua/Taupo, Wellington, Christchurch (we wobble but we're still here and there's still stuff to do) and Dunedin would be my picks, but if you want to go tramping, maybe sailing, spend time in the bush or see 'natural' NZ then Stewart Island, Marlborough Sounds and the West Coast of the South Island would be my pick. You could base yourself in one of the main centres (Auck, Well, ChCh) and take day or 2 day trips via plane to other places - it's only up to an hour to fly most places, and fairly inexpensive if you book in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keptwoman Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 We have RVed (called campervans in NZ) in both the North and South Island, it's a great way to travel, but agreeing with others that 10 days is a very short time. In my opinion, if this is to be your one and only trip to NZ, double the time. However, you could see more in that time by flying between places, you could definitely do Rotorua, Wellington and Queenstown in that time by flying. There are lots of places you can pull up for free in the RV, as long as you don't discharge water waste to the ground. There are lots of dumping stations for the toilets etc, from what I've seen though, you can expect smaller and simpler RVs compared with the ones in the US. In January, the whole country is on holiday. Many coastal campgrounds are fully booked for the entire month, definitely wait until February, the same applies with Australia. If you choose Australia, make sure you choose one State to visit rather than trying to see it all, alternatively, one state and one other city for a few days. Australia is approx the same size as the USA. Have fun planning, I think the planning is half the adventure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penny_P Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 My dh and I rented an RV and traveled for about 12 days on the south island. It was a total blast. It would be fun with older kids, too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nd293 Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 This week my dh came home and suggested we look at taking a vacation to NZ in Jan-Feb time frame. So what can you tell me about vacationing in NZ? What are the must see places and things to do? Is it as expensive as vacationing in Australia (another place we are considering)? Also, researching on the internet, we came across the idea of renting an RV and touring the country that way. Has anyone ever done that? Any tips? Would we be able to do the trip justice if we were only staying for approx. 10 days? Thanks! I absolutely recommend the RV / campervan option. It was really stressfree, particularly on the day we had a flat tyre, and were able to wait happily on the side of the road with toilet and cooking facilities for the repair crew! The holiday parks are great, and you can get a card for one group of holiday parks which allows some discounts. Parks often have good facilities for kids (pools and playgrounds). Remember that if you are coming from the USA, you will be driving on the "wrong" side of the road - consider resting up a day or so before starting off. We were told to do this because there had been a terrible accident at some stage with a tired straight-off-the-plane traveller forgetting which side of the road his RV belonged on. The roads were often narrow and windy. I think if you only have ten days you would probably want to consider North Island or South Island, not both. I think we had seventeen days, of which 12 were spent outside Auckland. We travelled as far as Rotorua and back. I am sure you could do more, but we had a car-phobic 5 month old. Some of the highlights that I remember off-hand were a kiwi sanctuary where you could see the birds in a darkened environment (because they are nocturnal), the hot springs in Rotorua, a farm tour where we saw sheep being sheered and picked some kiwis (the fruit, not the birds), a Maori "experience" with traditional dancing etc and a cave with some sort of glow worms which involved travelling through the caves in a boat. The acquarium in Auckland and a large maze in Rotorua were also hits with dd, then 6yrs. There is a train ride at the top of South Island which comes highly recommended, but we never got that far. New Zealanders are very friendly and proud of their country and the whole experience was really good, although we did the trip in mid-winter, which I would not opt for again! I think as a family trip, the best thing about New Zealand is that it is very "outdoorsy", with lots of adventure type activities. We live in Australia now. I think New Zealand is more expensive to live in than Australia, but I am not sure of the relative costs of travelling. Australia would be hot in February. Personally I would not want to travel then, but, of course, heat is a plus for some people. The school year starts in early February here in the Southern Hemisphere, so you might perhaps want to look at dates to avoid the school holiday crush. Nikki Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karen A Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 (edited) Went to NZ for 2 weeks in 2003, and I agree with choosing one island. We are outdoorsy, so I would ABSOLUTELY choose the South Island only, if we were to do it again. We landed in Christchurch, and took some sort of van transport (there is a lot of this kind of thing--look in guidebooks) to Mt Cook area for hiking, and then to Queenstown, where we went "canyoning" and did the 4 day Routeburn Track. At the end of that we were picked up by a prearranged van and had a guided daytrip to Milford Sound, which included kayaking and hiking. We then got back to Q-town and rented a car to go to the glaciers, and then back across to Kaikura for whalewatching. We could definitely have spent more time in the Mt Aspiring and Mt. Cook areas, and there were entire regions of the island (far S and far N) that are also beautiful that we had to skip over. I thought the North was a bit anticlimactic after the South, esp. as far as natural beauty goes, though we still had some great hikes and fun (esp. cave river "rafting" and glow worm caves.) Addendum: We had to make reservations for the Routeburn quite far in advance. We stayed in hostels, and our trips agenda was somewhat determined by the availability there as well. And about the driving--we were in a 4 hour traffic delay which was a tourist/wrong side of the road accident, where helicoptors came to airlift the injured. NZ is a fantastic place to visit. Edited September 4, 2011 by Karen A added info Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted September 4, 2011 Share Posted September 4, 2011 We did the South Island only for two weeks one January. It was a wonderful holiday - so much variety in a small area. We toured round the island, starting at the top. We stayed at farmstays (farms which take in guests) which was comfortable and welcoming. The whole experience was highly recommended. The boys were aged eight months and four years. Laura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Country Girl Posted September 5, 2011 Author Share Posted September 5, 2011 Thank you to everyone for the tips and suggestions. We are really starting to get excited about the possibility of doing this trip. We are thinking we'd focus on the South Island predominantly. However, we're thinking that we may be able to extend the trip to 2 weeks and spend a few days on a beach in the North Island before heading home. So, for those that have done the RV thing.... do you have a specific rental company you have used that you would recommend? Also, I know a few of you mentioned that it would be best to wait until Feb. so school would be back in session by then. However, we are trying to do this over Chinese New Year which happens to be early this year and begins on Jan. 23. So, how busy will things really be at this time? Would you recommend waiting until next year when Chinese New Year is later in Feb? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mom0012 Posted September 5, 2011 Share Posted September 5, 2011 We've just finished studying New Zealand with SL Core 5 and last week we watched Globe Trekker New Zealand 2. I was able to get it at the library. If you have access to it, I think it would be really helpful to you in making decisions about what parts of New Zealand you want to see. On the dvd, there was this one really cool place you could stay where the "rooms" were things like renovated airplanes. Lisa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Country Girl Posted September 6, 2011 Author Share Posted September 6, 2011 We've just finished studying New Zealand with SL Core 5 and last week we watched Globe Trekker New Zealand 2. I was able to get it at the library. If you have access to it, I think it would be really helpful to you in making decisions about what parts of New Zealand you want to see. On the dvd, there was this one really cool place you could stay where the "rooms" were things like renovated airplanes. Lisa Thanks for the suggestion. I just checked and it is available for rent from Amazon as an instant video, so I think we'll try to watch it that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keptwoman Posted September 6, 2011 Share Posted September 6, 2011 23 January shouldn't be too bad, as long as that is the beginning of your trip, rather than the end. I can tell you who NOT to use...Backpacker! We hired from them last time and had so many issues, they are the old vans from Maui and another company and ours had so many things wrong that we lost a day of our holiday (we only had 3 days where we weren't booked for family stuff, and it was one of those precious ones we lost) sitting in the depot while they made the repairs. I know that Maui, Britz and Pacific Horizon are all good, we used Pacific Horizon the time before. Although I dare say other companies are good too. Probably the company you choose to use will be based on layout of the van and possible pick up locations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Country Girl Posted September 8, 2011 Author Share Posted September 8, 2011 23 January shouldn't be too bad, as long as that is the beginning of your trip, rather than the end. Thanks Sandra. Yep, the 23rd will be the beginning. I'm glad to here it shouldn't be too bad. I'm afraid the longer we put off the trip, the less likely it is to happen, so waiting until 2013 isn't appealing. I can tell you who NOT to use...Backpacker! We hired from them last time and had so many issues, they are the old vans from Maui and another company and ours had so many things wrong that we lost a day of our holiday (we only had 3 days where we weren't booked for family stuff, and it was one of those precious ones we lost) sitting in the depot while they made the repairs. I know that Maui, Britz and Pacific Horizon are all good, we used Pacific Horizon the time before. Although I dare say other companies are good too. Probably the company you choose to use will be based on layout of the van and possible pick up locations. Knowing who *not* to use is just as helpful as knowing who to use, so thank you for the info! DH found a company online that he seems partial to at the moment. They look like they have good reviews and a van that would fit our needs. From our research, it looks we need a van with seatbelts for everyone and that limits our choices somewhat. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
keptwoman Posted September 8, 2011 Share Posted September 8, 2011 Yes, you definitely need seat belts for everyone. I think Kea have some of the nicest vans, I saw one in person a couple of times on our last trip when we were parked next to them. I like the layout of the 6 berth with the table (and seat belts) near the front, and the quality was fabulous. Having sat right down the back on our first trip, if anyone is likely to get car sickness the back of the van is not a good place to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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