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Ten New Zealand Travel Tips

Traveling in New Zealand is pretty easy all in all for Americans. A fast Kiwi accent can be a challenge but we caught on fast enough. Still, there were a few things we had to learn the hard way once we got here. We’ve heard some of the exact same things come up from other travelers, especially Americans.

Here is our Top Ten to speed up your learning curve:

1. Expand Your Lodging Options
2. Confirm Your Reservations
3. Study the Traffic Rules
4. Adjust Your Driving Time Expectations
5. Exploit Domestic Flights
6. Investigate Your Bus Passes
7. Respect the Weather
8. Adapt to the Wildlife
9. Reconsider the Environment
10. Practice Proper Etiquette
    

1. Expand Your Lodging Options

Holiday homes, homestays and backpackers are often excellent alternatives to B&B’s.

• For two or more people staying anywhere two nights or more, you can often find a bach (short for bachelor) or holiday home  where you have full amenities and complete independence for similar prices to B&B’s. They do take some effort to arrange, though. Check such sites as http://www.holidayhomes.co.nz/ or http://www.holidayhouses.co.nz/.
• Homestays are often like B&B’s with fewer guests.
• Backpacker hostels are not just for YHA members. The NZ version is a unique type of budget lodging that can vary from the standard youth hostel to a low budget B&B.  We have even found small backpackers with rooms for $60 night that compare favorably to $150/night B&B’s.

2. Confirm Your Reservations

Personal contact makes things happen.

• In the US, it’s often easier to use online booking, but here you are better off visiting or calling directly and talking to someone. Visiting an iSite and letting the staff call for you counts. In fact, iSites outshine tourist bureaus in most other countries giving excellent, free personal travel planning help.
• Plane, ferry and bus ticketing are a positive exception- we have had very easy and trustworthy online booking.
• Confirm anything booked over one week ahead. You can prevent all manner of headache by contacting a day ahead to reconfirm, but Telecom rates are very expensive, so if you have a mobile phone and they provide a mobile contact (all 021 and 027 numbers), try texting. If using phone booths, get a calling card (widely available in corner shops and internet cafes) but ask about payphone surcharges.

3. Study the Traffic Rules

Although NZ will let you drive with a US license, you still need to learn to walk and drive carefully.

• Cars on the wrong side of the road aren’t the half of it. Outside signals, pedestrians do not have right of way except in zebra marked crossings. This means that at an intersection without a signal or zebra, cars don’t check for pedestrians, at all. In zebra crossings, though, people will step out without even looking and cars will be irritated if you hesitate.

• Driving, the single weirdest driving rule is the extreme to which they take the “right of way” concept. This means you always give way to the right, even if you are slowing to turn left and an oncoming car is turning right across traffic into that street. (In the US, if you are making a left turn across traffic you give way to all oncoming cars, even right turners. Here, that would be making a right across traffic, and you still give way to cars going straight, but cars turning left must give way to you.) Expect to get honked at for forgetting this. Right of way does work well in roundabouts, though.

4. Adjust Your Driving Time Expectations

The roads are almost all small, country roads, even if they appear on a map to be a main highway.

• Americans used to estimating driving times at 60mph need to rethink things a bit.  Here, using 50kph (that’s 30mph) is often a much more accurate guideline. That makes every trip effectively about twice as long you would think.
• Driving here is hard work and you will be more tired after 4 hours than after 8 hours of cruising a US highway. Even a passenger expecting a nap will instead get a stomach muscle workout just trying to stay upright.

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This article was written on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 and is filed under Destination. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.