So in the interests of making this travel blog useful for future visitors to this wonderful country, we thought we would share a list of eleven things that we would do differently the next time we visit New Zealand.
*****************************
1) Rent a more powerful car
We rented a Toyota Vitz through Omega Rental Cars, which cost only NZ$900 (about US$500) for an entire month. The size and fuel efficiency made navigating New Zealand (and many of its skinniest roads) easy, but when it came to going uphill, I felt like I needed to get out and push. A small but slightly more powerful car, like a Honda Civic, would have been a lot more fun to drive and wouldn't have cost that much more. Plus, we wouldn't have had to watch all the trucks we passed on the downhill slopes go screaming past us on the next uphill.
2) Bring hiking pants
This is the first of a series of wardrobe and packing mistakes we made. It turned out to be a bit cooler than we expected on both islands, and we ended up wearing shorts less often than we thought we would. And even in hot conditions, it often paid to have extra protection from sandflies. So, a pair of convertible dri-fit hiking pants (here are links to mens'
and womens'
from Columbia Sportswear) would have been perfect, and we saw lots of them being worn by better-prepared tourists than us.3) Get a bigger, floppier hat
Another wardrobe mistake. We both had baseball caps, which failed to protect our necks and ears. See our post on dealing with the sun Down Under for more on this subject.
4) Skip the hiking boots
We lugged our hiking boots to New Zealand, dreaming that we'd be hiking over rough terrain. And yes, there is plenty of rough terrain in this country, but the trails here are almost universally sneaker-worthy. After all, Kiwis take great pride in their "tramping trails," which are essentially walking trails. We ended up wearing our hiking boots--the single bulkiest clothing item we brought with us--only once the entire month.
5) Bring fewer socks
Despite the cooler weather, we hardly ever wore socks the entire month. Our Teva sandals
served as hiking wear and allowed us to wade around in the water too.6) Get a good New Zealand bird guide at the beginning of the trip, not at the end
New Zealand hosts so many unusual--even downright weird--birds that even if you have only a passing interest in birding, you'll find it worthwhile to have a bird guide handy throughout your visit here.
7) Spend less time on the internet, and be less ambitious blogging about our trip
Don't get me wrong, it's easy to find broadband internet access throughout New Zealand (with the exception of some of the least-populated areas of the South Island, such as the Caitlins). But if we did our trip over again, I think we'd try to be a bit less ambitious with our blogging efforts, as well as with our efforts to stay in touch with people back home. We could have easily done this by being a bit less anal about keeping up with email correspondence (batching our email in once-weekly sessions would have done the trick), and by taking brief notes and doing most of our blogging once we returned. This could have saved at least an extra hour or two per day of time and mental bandwidth that we could have spent experiencing the country.
8) Buy more--and eat more--local produce
New Zealand grows some of the best food in the world, and as we drove all over this country, we realized that we could practically feed ourselves just by going from roadside farmstand to roadside farmstand. Next time we come here, we will do just that. The food is reasonably priced, fresh and delicious.
9) Buy more--and drink more--local wine
This was perhaps one of the greatest pleasures of our trip to New Zealand. We knew we'd find some great wine here, and we assumed we'd be both buying and drinking quite a bit of it. But we should have had more! The experience of going to a Kiwi winery, any Kiwi winery, should not be missed. And also, every bottle is conveniently capped with a screw-top cap, allowing you to open and re-close it without the need for a corkscrew. Standard Kiwi utilitarianism.
10) Visit only one island at a time
This was our first trip to New Zealand, and we wanted to see everything. But as our friends Jacqy and Theo, veterans of multiple trips here, warned us: you can't see everything--you have to choose. One of the best choices we could have made was to see one island at a time. It would have allowed us to explore that island more thoroughly and at a much more relaxed pace. And it doesn't matter which island you choose; both are amazing.
11) Spend an extra day in nearly every place we visited
A corollary to point #10. We knew our first trip to New Zealand was going to be a broad survey of the country, but we attempted to see more than we probably should have. At one point during this trip, we slept in 12 places over 13 nights. Travel is tiring enough as it is, and we made ourselves truly, cumulatively exhausted. Just remember: you cannot see everything here. Better to see fewer things--but see them well--than to rush around the country, cramming everything in with grim, exhausted determination.
Besides, we know we're coming back.
No comments:
Post a Comment