New Zealand nutshell

In reality this is a South Island nutshell, as we’re only going to be stopping three days on the North Island. We spent four enjoyable weeks here. New Zealand is a very civilised country, small enough to be manageable, majoring in natural beauty and outdoor activities but with a strong supporting cast of good food and interesting wildlife.

Accommodation

You know what you’re going to get in New Zealand. A motel room will always be clean, well-equipped and characterless and a decent one will be around £50. En suite rooms at backpacker places will be very simple, hard to heat, but clean and good enough for £40 or so. You can find both these forms of accommodation in every town and at least one pretty much anywhere tourists go. B&B tends to be more expensive but has a good chance of having lots of character. In fact our accommodation in New Zealand has been consistently good and sometimes great, and by western standards great value.

Food

We’ve only had one, maybe two, duff meals in a month and that’s a very good record. Good food is very easy to find in New Zealand, and even a really good restaurant probably won’t go over £18 for a main course. The range of food is wide, pretty much as wide as you’ll find in England. We even managed to have a perfectly good rogan josh with a great daal makhani. Seafood is really good anywhere and we love specialities like the green-lipped Havelock mussels or the big Bluff oysters. In a cheaper restaurant you can get two mains and two glasses of wine for £30 although of course you can triple this if you go fine dining and include starter and dessert. Which you can do, because portion sizes aren’t crazy like they are in Australia.

Drink

The quality of coffee-making in New Zealand is very good indeed, with just a few milky horrors amongst lots of great flat whites. Just in case it hasn’t completely flooded England yet, the ‘flat white’ is basically a cappuccino with less foam on top and no chocolate sprinkle. I like it. Hm. I should add that it’s an Australian invention, for the pedantic.

I’ve been awoken to the goodness of New Zealand wine, having only previously been aware of the sharp and ‘refreshingly’ acidic Sauv Blancs and Reislings from here that I don’t enjoy at all. But now I find that they do very drinkable Pinot Noir and a lot of good Chardonnay which at its best is more drinkable and as satisfying as many Burgundies. I even found a Sauv Blanc that I would willingly order in a restaurant. Anyway, wine is decent value in NZ, often £4 for a glass in a restaurant and perhaps £15 for a really good bottle purchased at a cellar door.

Finally, they do good beer here. There are a bunch of small breweries in New Zealand, producing lager but also ales and dark porters. Still with a disturbing tendency to be served chilled, though. My favourite beer was Mac’s Black, a nicely burnt-oats porter that goes down very well with smoked fish or pretty much anything.

Transport

You’ve got to hire a car, really. There is public transport but if you want to tour the island properly it’s going to be a frustrating exercise. We went for a second-hand car from Jucy (one of several companies that offer this) which turned out very cheaply, only £16 per day. However you ought to be aware that these are typically Japanese imports which are bad for the environment in their emissions and fuel consumption, will cost more in petrol of course, and which may if you are very unlucky break down on you. Still, at half the price of a new rental it’s hard to resist.

Hiring camper vans is incredibly popular too. I have never seen so many campers.

Driving in New Zealand is easy, the roads are not busy and are all very well made and signposted. There are a lot of twists and turns due to the mountains or coastlines (or both) along which you’ll inevitably be driving but that only adds to the fun.

Weather

New Zealand makes the weather in Wales look consistent. Not only do conditions change from day to day, they can change from morning to afternoon, in extreme cases from hour to hour, and in many places from one valley or bay to the next. From our own experience, over a month in summer/autumn travelling throughout the South Island you could see about 30% sunny days, 20% rainy days and 50% cloudy or randomly mixed. And you will need warm clothes; it’s impossible not to find yourself somewhere cold at some point on any trip to New Zealand longer than a week.

Scams and hassle
New Zealand seems a very civilised place, and we had no hassle or scams. It was also good to find that everyone in the tourist industry seems happy to work together to keep visitors happy, rather than competing fiercely against rivals for business.

Crime and security
We didn’t encounter any criminal behaviour either.

Hiking and wildlife watching

Someone will have to challenge my assertion that New Zealand is the best country for hiking in the world. Not only are there the world-famous long distance trails like the Milford and Routeburn tracks, but most parts of the island can offer lots of great day walking and short strolls. This compares well with wildernesses like British Columbia, South Africa or Western Australia where you find a lot of short walks for tourists, epic hikes for rugged outdoorsmen, but very little in the middle for people who like a long hike but don’t want to pitch a tent at the end of it. And of course, there are very few natural dangers in New Zealand either; nothing will eat you or poison you badly.

Which brings me on to wildlife. The richest wildlife in New Zealand is actually to be found off the coast, with an amazing collection of seabirds and some interesting sea mammals. There are plenty of opportunities to spend money on trips out to see these things, but lots of other places where you can sit on the shore (weather permitting) and hope to see them too. The other area to concentrate on is the native bush which still hides the endemic birdlife of New Zealand. There are nowhere near as many species to find as Madagascar or Australia, but they’re unique in the world. The forests of Fiordland and the west coast are the best (though remotest) areas, the Marlborough Sounds and Abel Tasman NP are also full of birdlife. Perhaps the most remarkable thing is how tolerant of humans many of these wild birds are.

Regional variations

There’s not much cultural variation, that we could tell. The landscapes and seascapes are endlessly varying, though. The south and west coast are rugged places, the south more rural and the west quite remote. The east coast is where all the development is, the north is more sheltered and rounded wilderness.

Conclusion
New Zealand packs more epic and varying landscape into a smaller space than perhaps anywhere else. It’s close to being a perfect tourist destination: natural wonders abound, transport is easy, accommodation is good value, food and drink are excellent, everyone is helpful, everywhere feels safe and hassle-free, activities are plentiful and tourist information is the best anywhere in the world. It really deserves its place as one of our favourite destinations in the world.

We liked best:

• The stunning views on the second day of the Routeburn trek
• Watching Hector’s dolphins playing in the clear green waters of Queen Charlotte Sound
• Smiling at seal pups plucking up courage to investigate our kayak in the Abel Tasman NP
• Strolling about and eating out in Queenstown
• Hurtling along between lofty peaks in a powerful jetboat

We liked least:

• The nasty sandflies, offered in New Zealand as an unpleasant alternative to mosquitoes
• Chill winds on sunny days
• Not swimming with dolphins, or seals, on three different occasions!

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