Time in country: 22 days
Money spent: approximately $1800 USD each
Currency: NZ Dollar
Conversion Rate: roughly 85 cents to 1 NZD
Food:
Food here again is similar to the U.S. and Australia: you can get lots of varieties of foods.
There are lots of meat pies and lots of fish & chips shops. The most popular fish in NZ seemed to be blue cod, and it was our favorite. We ate quite a bit of meat pies and fish and chips since they were so cheap. Helped the budget, but definitely not our waist lines :-).
Places Visited (in order): Queenstown, Milford Sound, Southland area, the Catlins, Lake Tekapo, Mt. Cook, Wanaka, West Coast area, Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers, Takaka, Abel Tasman Natl. Park, Picton, Wellington, Rotorua, and Auckland
Random Thoughts:
Both the south and the north islands are organized and set up very well for tourism. It's definitely a DIY (do-it-yourself) place where you can easily travel and see it all on your own. Most towns have iSite centers (visitor centers), for sure the major towns, providing all kinds of maps, brochures on lodging, activities, tours, and restaurants. Basically anything you'd want to know about the area you can find at the iSite center. Not to mention that there are also friendly Kiwis (what people from New Zealand are called) working there to answer any question you might have. When we arrived to Queenstown we had no idea what route we were going to take to get us from the south island to the north island; however, we took a map into the iSite center and a very helpful lady asked us what we wanted to see and then mapped out the best and most efficient route for us.
New Zealand, especially the south island, is full of tourists traveling by campervans. There are lots of rental cars/ vans on the road as well. NZ has an abundance of DOC (Department of Conservation) campsites throughout the country that make it cheap to park and sleep for the night, or pitch a tent like we did each night. DOC sites ranged from free to $12/ person a night.
FYI: NZ may not be the best place for someone who easily gets car sick ;-). There are very few straight roads in NZ. Most of the roads are windy and narrow through the mountains or along the coast. Having said that, you get to see some of the most beautiful scenery along the way. In our 22 days, we covered almost 3000 miles in Wally and were able to see a good amount of NZ.
The south island is much less populated than the north island; roughly 20% of NZ's 4.5 million population lives in the south island and the other 80% live in the north island. The south island is a nice place to go to get away from it all and "be one with nature".
NZ has every kind of landscape you can imagine. In one day you can see mountains, waterfalls, glaciers, lakes, farmland and the ocean. It is one of the most beautiful countries we've been to so far. Although it may be a long flight, it is more than worth it to see all the beauty NZ has to offer.
New Zealand can be a pretty expensive country, especially for items such as petrol (gas), alcohol, restaurants, tourist activities, etc. Yet, with a little planning and attention it can still be done on a backpacker's budget. We were very lucky to get such a deal on Wally, our white wagon. That is what really helped our budget for NZ.
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