Just spent two weeks in New Zealand and it lives up to all of the positive talk I've heard about the place and more! I can definitely see why many people want to move there. I went with a group of other friends from the US including one who had been to NZ before but loved it so much he wanted to go back. We basically did a largely self-guided tour of the country. We spent roughly a week on the North Island and a week on the South Island. We rented a car in Auckland and went to Hobbiton, Taupo, Tongariro National Park, Napier and Wellington. While at Taupo we did a boat tour around Lake Taupo which is the largest lake in NZ. At Wellington we dropped off our car and also one of our party who could only stay a week. We took the ferry across the Cook Strait to Picton on the South Island. There we got a ride from a real NZ character. An middle aged Kiwi guy who could be in a sitcom about NZ and his old camper to Christchurch. In Christchurch we rented a car with this time myself being the driver. Even though I've lived in Singapore and Hong Kong I've never driven for a long period of time on the left hand side of the road. Got a baptism of fire driving up and down mountains on narrow roads with no guard rails on the Banks Peninsula to Akaroa. We then drove down to Queenstown going through landscape that looked a lot like Montana. Stopped off at the glacial lakes of Tekupo and Pukaki which were settings for Laketown in the Hobbit Series. Queenstown is one of the most beautiful places I've seen. It has a similar feeling to South Lake Tahoe but is more intimate and not as petencious, or expensive. We splurged on a helicopter tour of the glaciers and Milford Sound. The scenery of NZ is every bit as spectacular as talked about. Parts of it look like Northern California, Washington State, Montana, and even Florida. A lot of it looks like nothing in the US or anywhere else. In most of the forest are still ancient fern trees and other endemic vegetation. It was interesting noting that there are fern trees in Hobbiton that were edited out of the movies to make it look more British. There are waterfalls everywhere with some powerful and wide and some falling from glaciers turning into mist and trickles before they reach the ground. The South Island is more rugged and varied than the North Island but the North Island has sub tropical regions. Auckland and Wellington are more modern cities. Auckland is very diverse and although it's smaller feels a lot like Vancouver and Sydney. Christchurch is more historical and feels more intimate. Napier is a city that was devastated in an earthquake in 1930 and city center was rebuilt in Art Deco. Worth a visit for architecture buffs. I was worried Hobbiton would be very Disneyfied and overun with Nerds and very commercialized. It wasn't that bad on that regard. The sets are amazing from an architectural standpoint with a lot of detail on the Hobbit doors. most of it is just facade but the Green Dragon Inn is built as a full building which you can go in. Part of the tour is getting a pint at the Green Dragon. The people on the whole are great. Very friendly and they were happy to talk to visitors after being shutdown. A few seem very willing to go out of their way to help out visitors and happy to tolerate dumb tourists like ourselves. One thing I was surprised by was how many Maori there are and everywhere we went ran into Maori. Many were mixed blood but identified as Maori. Many of the signs including traffic signs were in both English and Maori. While English was far and away the dominant language at one bar in Taupo that primarily had locals at the end of the night many of them spontaneously broke out in Maori songs. Unlike in the US where Native Americans are only a tiny fraction of the population and Native American culture while celebrated is largely relegated to musuem pieces Maori culture still appears active. Just can't say enough how great of a trip this has been and don't know if I'll ever make it to NZ again but would go back if I could.
Some pics Bilbo's House in Hobbiton Mangawhero Falls in Tongariro National Park On the Ferry crossing the Cook Strait The Banks Peninsula On the road to the Southern Alps Lake Pukaki Queenstown with Lake Whakipitu I'm going to make YouTube vids of NZ also including the helicopter tour which I'll post when I get the chance.
Beautiful. Sounds like an amazing trip. I’m going to have to make that one day. Appreciate you sharing.
New Zealand is definitely on my bucket list! I'm a huge LOTR fan and the pic of Bilbos's house sent chills down my private parts! Thanks for the mini review and posting those amazing pic's! ....... ....... .......
I did not see a Haka but one of the guys singing did do a stance at the end of the song that seemed like part of a Haka.
New Zealand is a wonderful place. I went there with the wife for our honeymoon. We did a 2-week road trip through the North Island. We started in Auckland and visited Mount Eden first. We stayed at the SkyCity and ate at the Sky Tower restaurant. Then went down to Hamilton and had a hot air balloon ride to see the landscape. It was a very lush rolling hills area. We went further south to Waitomo to see the glow worm caves which was a pretty cool tour. We hiked the Tongariro Crossing to see Mount Doom. That was quite the hike. We've never done a hike that extensive. Most people do it in 8-9 hours but we took 10 and I had to carry my wife's backpack through the last third. There's a section where you go down a steep decline in loose soil. You really gotta stomp to dig your heels in for balance, but my wife side stepped it the whole way. Obviously a bad technique where she held up like 100 hikers lol. After that was to Taupo to see the lake. There's a cool carving in a cliff that most tours stop by. You could actually see this lake from the mountains in the hike we did. We traveled north to Rotorua to see the geysers and visit a Maori park where we saw there haka, culture, and took part in their food where it's cooked in the ground. Pretty tasty food. Next was the Coromandel peninsula where we kayaked to Cathedral Cove and enjoyed time at the beach. A seal ended up swimming alongside our kayak which was a cool sight. Our tour guide said it wasn't common to see them at this time of year. We circled back to Hobbiton and enjoyed the tour there. It was a fun experience. Our tour guide was elated to hear we were from Texas. She could tell we had American accents and weren't the usual Asian tourists they see (which we hate getting mistaken for). The tour guide did ask quite a few stereotypical questions which was amusing, like if we shot guns and rode horses. On our last night before flying out of Auckland to go home, they were shooting off fireworks in downtown because it was the end of the Chinese New Year. We thought it was interesting that enough Chinese tourism goes to the New Zealand casinos. New Zealand was wonderful. I'd recommend anyone to visit. We didn't get to see the South Island, but maybe some day when we feel more adventurous since it's a bit more of the extreme landscapes.
New Zealand was awesome when I visited in 2018. I spent a week on the south island. Can't wait to go back!
Australian's have a bit of a superiority complex over NZ'ers. But the funny thing is every single person I know who has been to NZ - myself included - think it is far greater than Australia.
Now I dont kno about chu But I would like to get wit 2(ah) Nice honnies while im chillin by da pool(ah) Red bikinis and some high heal shoes (ah) Who could think of any dam thing cool(ah) We at the crib so it aint no rules(ah) Im butt naked, sweat socks, and house shoes(ah) 100 bottles of cris in the cool(ah) Im frozen thanks to Jacob the jewl(ah) One day without me and shes shaking like a fiend(ah) Yall tell me whats r&b without the the R(ah)
Sounds like a great trip. Didn’t get a chance to do the glow worm caves and because of my rotator cuff didn’t get to kayak but would’ve loved to. Our Alpine crossing hike was cancelled due to bad weather but we did a couple of other hikes in Tongariro. It was very blustery with blowing rain.
I took a non stop from DFW to Auckland that was 15 hours. American Airlines sucks. They have the least legroom and some of the worst service of US Carriers. Also I had a kid next to me who had the knack of nudging and kicking me every time I started to fall asleep.
