Travel around New Zealand in 2017. Main points
Main points
So, it was late November 2016. My girlfriend Sveta and I suddenly realized that a dull, cold, snowy winter was about to begin and drag on forever, so we started thinking about an escape plan: turning part of winter into summer. The decision was not easy. A trip to New Zealand is expensive, so we had to weigh all the pros and cons. For two days we kept changing our minds, first deciding to give up on the idea and then deciding that we really should go. Another concern was timing: we started thinking about the trip only at the end of November, and New Zealand visas are not issued as quickly as, say, European ones. In total, the NZ visa was supposed to take 25 business days, but that was not the whole story. After getting it, we also needed an Australian transit visa, because the cheapest tickets almost always went through Australia. Once we finally decided to go, I prepared all the documents in two days and bought Etihad tickets. The tickets worked out well, too: while paying on the airline's website I noticed a field for a promo code. Of course I did not have one, so I rushed to Google, found a code for this airline in about five minutes, and the total price for Sveta and me dropped from 154,000 RUB to 143,000 RUB. That was 11,000 RUB saved in five minutes.
We took all the documents to the embassy. By the way, in 2014 I had been to the New Zealand embassy before, and it was at a different address. Now it is near Savyolovsky station, and in my opinion it finally looks like an embassy. Back then it was more like some shed with one or two Indians and a cashier inside, and everything was slow and exhausting. In the new building there are several other embassies nearby, Canada for example. No queue, two Russian women at the windows, and everything is explained clearly. There was one more visa-related detail. When we filled out the paperwork at home, we prepared everything as two separate applications but put it in one envelope. That meant paying 1,900 RUB twice. There was also an option to specify your partner, which would have meant filling in the form only for me and adding Sveta as my partner. But the form said the partnership had to be documented, so we did not do that and prepared two separate applications. At the visa center, though, a girl told us we could save money and apply as partners even without documentary proof. So we rewrote everything and submitted it that way. Then came about three weeks of waiting. At the end of the first week the embassy wrote back and asked for Sveta's employment history by email. We sent it immediately, and about two weeks later we got the answer that the visas were ready. That was December 20. Since our departure date, January 21, was getting close, I wanted the final Australian visa decision before New Year so I could start planning the route right away. So I immediately went to the NZ visa center, picked up the documents, and took them straight to the Australian embassy. A courier would also have worked, but I knew it would take longer and we would not make it before the holidays. Two days before New Year I got the Australian approval. That was when the actual trip planning began. By the way, you can see my map of the selected places here.
By the way, before making the final decision and choosing the dates, I resurrected my old app that parses gismeteo.ru for selected cities and, based on a 10-14 year archive, shows the warmest time to travel. Using that program, I figured out that the warmest day in New Zealand was somewhere around January 25, so that became the anchor. For example, if we wanted to spend three weeks there, we should have been in New Zealand roughly from January 15 to February 5. But I decided that if we flew out on January 15, the holiday season might prevent us from getting the visas in time, so I shifted the trip by a week.
All right, I will stick to the usual format of my blog posts. In this first post I will talk about the main features of traveling around New Zealand. What I have already written can go under the "Visa" section. This time I will not write too much because a lot is already covered in my 2015 post. I will just add what mattered this time.
Our goal was to drive across all of New Zealand, visit the places where I had not been yet, and also revisit the most beautiful spots I had already seen so Sveta could see them too. So I planned it like this: fly into Auckland, rent a car there, drive across the whole country from one island to the other, and then back again. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to do it right, where to pick up the car and where to return it, because taking a car on the ferry both ways is not cheap. On top of that, from the very first day we were moving farther and farther away from the pickup point, so if something happened to the car on the road, ending the trip well could have become difficult.
This trip was very different from my 2015 one. Back then I followed a pre-planned route and did not deviate from it by even a centimeter. This time we arrived in New Zealand with a tent and a gas stove and could live and travel wherever we wanted. I still had a plan, but it was only approximate. As usual, I drew a map of attractions in my Google account, exported it to KML, imported it into MapsWithMe, and used it as a navigator. Sometimes the weather forced us to skip places, and sometimes we hit the perfect moment. Overall, we managed to see almost everything from our plan.
Accommodation
As I said before, on this trip we brought a tent with us. At Auckland airport, by the way, we had to hand it over for biosecurity inspection. They did something to it and gave it back. Maybe they treated it with ultraviolet light. I had planned that in New Zealand we would be able to camp in it for free on some days, but in reality that happened only once: at a self-service campsite in the far north. Nowhere else on the islands did we see people wild camping in tents. So we had to stay either in hotels, cabins, or campgrounds. In New Zealand, just like in Norway, there is the notion of a cabin, a small house without a toilet or bathroom, but here they were more expensive than in Norway. Very often we stayed at campgrounds where you could pitch a tent for a fee and in return got a civilized shower, toilet, and kitchen. Twice we also stayed at self-service campsites where you just drop money into a box with a slot and leave a note with your name, the number of people, and the car number.
There are several campground networks in New Zealand. One of them is DOC. Sometimes you can stay there for free, but they are hard to find: in some areas there are many of them, in others almost none. There is also Holiday Park, a type of campground with space for tents and campers plus cabins.
Climate
We really struggled in tents and cabins. Even though I had chosen almost the warmest possible period for New Zealand, we were freezing there at night. It was colder than Norway. The coldest night was on the South Island: +9 C. But the warmest day was there too, up to +27 C. That was the only truly warm day of the whole trip. Back home at the same time it was -25 C. In reality, after flying 30 hours and arriving in a warm climate, you stop remembering how cold it was where you had been the day before yesterday, and it becomes hard to imagine snowdrifts and deep frost outside your window.
What to pack
A tent gives you freedom of movement. It means you do not have to worry so much about where you will sleep tonight. It is also a good idea to take a gas stove, because food in cafes and canteens is very expensive. Meals there are cooked by people whose wages have nothing in common with those at Russian cafes, so a gas stove and cookware are must-haves for a budget trip. Here is a short list of what we take with us:
- tent
- sleeping bags
- travel pillows
- blankets
- foam sleeping mats - they do not fit into a suitcase, so we buy them on arrival
- gas stove
- gas canisters - bought after arrival, because they cannot be taken on a plane
- a pot, two metal plates that can be placed on a fire, spoons, forks, an immersion heater, two cups, and a peeler
- a container for all of that
- an ice pack and a cooler bag
- a thermos
- as for clothes, that is personal, but I would strongly recommend rubber slippers. When you step out of a tent, you do not want to spend time putting on proper shoes, and slippers are perfect for wet grass
- sunscreen
- a bed linen set - it lets you save money in campgrounds when renting a cabin, because linen is often charged separately
- vacuum bags and a pump - they save a lot of space in a suitcase. Sleeping bags, for example, shrink by a factor of two or three
It is better not to bring food or seeds into New Zealand. They may inspect you at the airport, and if they find something, the fine can be around 400 NZD.
Internet and mobile service
Just like last time, I bought a Vodafone SIM card. This time, just in case, I bought 8 GB for 88 NZD (3,800 RUB). You can get it right at Auckland airport. Before the trip I googled where the SIM card kiosk was.
Crime
On my previous trip, just like on this one, I felt some kind of safety there because people are kind and friendly. But even in a country like that you cannot relax completely. On the second-to-last day of our trip we parked near a crater in central Auckland and went for a short walk, about an hour and a half. When we came back, we found the car window smashed. A suitcase that had been lying on the back seat was gone, along with several bags. Three guys were standing by the car. They called the police and helped us report the incident to the rental company. Later the police arrived and documented everything, while we drove to the rental office and got a replacement car for one night. While filling out the paperwork, a policewoman gave me her email and asked me to send the serial number of the laptop that had also been stolen. Back in Russia I did that and asked her a few more questions, but she never replied. As I later read, such crimes are often committed by indigenous New Zealanders, and they are not particularly eager to catch them. And if they do catch them, they release them quickly because it is not politically correct. So now I can formulate the main rule for traveling in New Zealand, and really in other countries too: if you rent a car, take a larger one so everything can be hidden in the trunk and nobody can see belongings inside. It is also better to get a car with an alarm right away. Most likely the thieves knew that this rental company did not install alarms, so nothing prevented them from smashing the glass and grabbing everything quickly. In our case they acted fast: they cleared only the back seat, while two mobile phones and a Swiss Army knife on the front seat were left untouched. There was also another suitcase and other things in the trunk, and those were untouched too. Maybe something or someone prevented them from cleaning out the whole car.
Trip cost
The trip was not cheap, of course, although we tried to save where we could. When I was preparing for it, I looked at hotel prices on the South and North Islands, and it seemed that the North Island was generally 1,000-2,000 RUB cheaper, while the South Island looked expensive. But that was only the first impression. If you search in the morning for a place to stay that same evening, you can often find discounts. In advance I could not find anything below 3,700 RUB per night, but on the day of check-in I sometimes found places for 2,000 RUB.
One more thing: before you go, try to understand the fees on your bank cards. Almost always you do not pay a transaction fee when purchasing abroad, but there is usually some fee buried in currency conversion. I use cards from several banks and later noticed that one of them had a dramatically inflated conversion fee. I will not use it again.
It is also worth carrying some cash. I handled that by bringing US dollars from Russia and exchanging them for NZD at a national bank exchange office. Cash may be needed for deposits or to pay at self-service campsites.
Here is how our expenses were distributed for the trip (3 weeks and 6,600 km on the road):
- 143 000 airfare
- 56 000 accommodation
- 51 000 car rentals
- 45 000 fuel
- 28 000 ferry
- 28 000 groceries
- 17 000 entertainment
- 8 000 taxi
- 8 000 visa
- 3 800 internet
- 3 600 fine
- 1 800 other
- 1 300 parking
- 1 000 mobile service
Total: 394,000 RUB.
Roughly speaking, it came to 400K RUB. But I think that once in a lifetime you can spend that kind of money to see the other side of the planet and hang upside down relative to your home.
Links
Ferries
Accommodation
Campgrounds
Weather
Trip reports that I used while planning
- http://sashaberzina.com/info-new-zealand/
- http://forum.awd.ru/viewtopic.php?f=1193&t=150101
- http://ru.atlasofwonders.com/2014/10/hobbit-mesta-semok.html
- http://staskulesh.com/2012/07/lotr/
- https://www.tourister.ru/world/oceania/new-zealand
- http://silvar.livejournal.com/192934.html
- http://forum.awd.ru/viewtopic.php?f=600&t=150105
- http://practic-travel.livejournal.com/171469.html