That's a shame. It's a beautiful hike. It was fairly cloudy at the top of the mountain so there wasn't the best views, and the emerald lakes didn't get to sparkle with the sunlight. Our bus driver back to the hotel said his best time was under 2 hours which put us to shame lol. At least you got to experience the South Island. It's got more breathtaking scenery. We felt it was too hard to do it all within 2 weeks so we took a more casual trip through the North Island.
Yeah we crammed a lot into our trip. I was thinking many a time that I could’ve spent at least a day more in every place we were at including Auckland.
Did you look into something like Qatar Airways or Singapore Airlines? If I'm flying that long a trip, I'd rather do it in some kind of comfort.
That would've been nice except that American Airlines had the cheapest flight from the US. I'm flying a series of one way flights and my ticket was less than $500. Apparently you get what you pay for.
Damn. Long flight but not as long as I thought. Was thinking of a day + of going to Australia or something.
Australia is a bit further from the US. Also from the tickets I saw it was cheaper to fly to NZ direct than to Australia first. As it is I still went through Australia leaving. It's more expensive to fly directly from NZ to Singapore than to go NZ-Australia-Singapore. And I got two days in Sydney which is a pretty cool city.
United and Air New Zealand code share a nonstop from Houston IAH to Auckland. Several years ago United was supposed to have a 787 Non Stop Houston to Auckland, but they canned that flight. Their plane has "sky couches" in economy. If you're family has an entire row, the row can convert into this sort of bed/couch thing that's fairly comfy. Their business premier class (1st class) is OK, not the best, not the worst.
I flew American airlines to China and Spain. Def agree on the legroom. We also didn't get to pick a seat and we were towards the very back. I flew Air Zealand to NZ non-stop. It was great. I think I paid around 900 for round trip nonstop in 2019.
Thanks for the video! Would love to go there one day. Would probably love even more to live there one day. It's still at or near the top of the places for me to move to if I ever leave the US.
I’ve been to Auckland @rocketsjudoka They got that Seattle needle thing and this fruit called feijoas they got more Polynesians than a usc football team
My cousin and her wife just went back after their annual month with family in Texas. They're in Wellington...would you mind if I send some of your pics and/or thoughts, travel ideas? I'm very much tempted to go there and maybe not come back.
Of course you can send them some of the info here. Send them the link to the YouTube vid so I can get my channels view up and make some big money like @bobrek son. If they have any specific questions you can post them here and I or @Duncan McDonuts might be able to answer them.
