New Zealand Retrospective

I’ve had about two weeks to at least partly recover from our trip so perhaps it’s time for a few final comments.

It’s a long way to NZ. Our flight was about 11,500 km. While there, we drove about 7100 km. Then there was the drive from the Koots to Vancouver and back – add another 1600 km. In total, I figure we traveled almost 32,000 km in the space of 6 weeks. With the increasing hassles of air travel, one wonders if it’s worth it. Our experience with Air New Zealand was excellent, though.

My favourite thing about NZ probably had to be the coastline. All of it was wonderful. The ocean had that tropical ocean blue, there were miles and miles (km and km) of beautiful sand beaches, excellent rocky shorelines, great views everywhere. As it turned out, most of our trip followed the coast, so we saw a good bit of the NZ shoreline.

Although there were some very nice areas on the North Island, the South Island appealed to me more. There are fewer people there, there is more “wilderness”, the scenery is more rugged and, well…, scenic, and, interestingly enough, the roads were better. If I were to go back, I’d probably spend most or all of my time on the South Island.

We learned that the weather might be better in their fall – late February and into March. This shouldn’t have been a surprise because it seems fall is a good time to visit anywhere.

NZ is getting to be quite touristy. This was most apparent in prices of some things. For example, there is a Royal Albatross colony near Dunedin on the Otago Peninsula. The whole end of the peninsula is fenced off, which is fair enough if you want to protect the colony, but it would have cost almost $60 per person to visit the colony and we just couldn’t justify the expense. The trip over to Stewart Island would have cost $63/person each way, so a one-day trip would have cost almost $250.

Some places, like Queenstown, seem to exist solely to provide adrenalin-linked activities like bungie jumping, parasailing and so on. Frankly those kinds of things didn’t interest me at all, so I really didn’t give places like Queenstown the time they perhaps deserved.

I was also rather disappointed to see the helicopter traffic over the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. The buzz of choppers was nearly constant and quite annoying after awhile. These are National Parks, but there seems to be some sacrifice of “park values” to accommodating tourists in any way possible.

Internet access is a real issue in NZ. It’s expensive and sometimes difficult to find. I’ve since heard that some businesses have chosen not to set up in NZ because of this, so it’s not just me, apparently. It’s the kind of infrastructure thing that you start to take for granted in a developed country in the 21st Century.

Speaking of infrastructure, roads are also an issue. They are certainly are twisty. I expected this, to a certain extent, because I had been warned. They are also quite rough in many areas. Lots of narrow roads and single-lane bridges. I suppose it’s charming, in a way, but you’d think a country would want at least some efficient transportation links. There comes a time when just paving over a cow path turned into a wagon track just isn’t good enough.

Kiwis are certainly friendly, but we’ve experienced lots of friendly people on our travels, particularly in the USA. I think Kiwis were more interested in what you thought of your travels and experiences than what we’ve encountered in other places.

My least favourite place had to be Rotorua. This is the hot spring center of NZ. It wasn’t that interesting after what we’ve seen elsewhere, not that attractive and so we didn’t stay long.

I liked being able to buy my wine in a grocery store. It would be interesting to know if NZ has more of an “alcohol problem” than more “regulated” countries (like Canada???), not that state liquor stores have anything to do with liquor control in any way.

The wine and cheese were great in NZ and we enjoyed both of them lots while we were there.

Kiwis can’t be into breakfast cereal that much. I was surprised at the small selection of breakfast cereal and what was available was all packaged in small boxes. Maybe they are more into the “full English breakfast”.

It was a good experience being south of the Equator, essentially, so far as we were concerned, on a tropical (or at least sub-tropical) island. It was interesting in many ways. That said, there’s no place like home!