Category Archives: NZ

Apr22014

Posted in NZ • South Island

Te Anau

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Anne here catching up with the last few days … Weds 2nd April

I’ve loved Queenstown and am not really ready to leave this breathtaking scenery. Although I am slightly fed up of the comment “Why you haven’t done a bungee jump yet?” Queenstown is teeming with extreme sports fanatics, mostly under 30 years old! But everyone here has a fascinating background and I’ve loved chatting to strangers and people watching. Everyone is genuinely friendly and I love that. And we will be coming back briefly.

So off to Te Anau, about 2 hours drive from here. The roads are so quiet, and there are two men operating stop/go boards at the roadworks instead of temporary traffic lights. After half an hour, we are into farming country. I have never seen so many sheep in each field, about double the density compared to Wales. Also dairy and deer farming.

And Lake Te Anau is just as stunning as Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown. The weather is still gorgeous although some of the trees are just starting to get their autumn colours.

We are staying in cheapish motel style rooms but they are brilliant so far. Clean, ensuite, a small kitchenette and usually guest laundry facilities. And so far with outstandingly breathtaking views.

Lake Te Anau is genuinely stunning but has one downside . . . Sandflies! Which like mosquitos suck blood. I’ve been taking vitamin B1 tablets for a month (I don’t like marmite) which is meant to deter mosquitos but it has no effect on sandflies at all. I am still tastier than Paul, who does eat marmite!

Apr22014

Posted in NZ

Photos

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Anne here. We are having a few technical problems posting photos to the blog. Paul is on the case. But send me a Facebook friends request if you would like to see more photos in the meantime.

P. S. Hannah we did get to Glenorchy and it was just as special as you said it would be. We also did our good turn for the day and gave two hitchhikers a lift back to Queenstown. I’ll post about  it fully later. 

Apr22014

Posted in NZ • South Island

Bob’s Peake

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Anne here. Wow wow wow. Amazing stunning breathtaking awesome stupendously awesome. We got the gondola cable car up Bob’s Peake  overlooking Queenstown and the lake and the Remarkable mountains. They genuinely are remarkable! The cider I drank sat on a bar stool, gasping at the view, was very good as well.

Mar302014

Posted in North Island • NZ • Travel

Jet-lagged

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We’re a couple of days behind with our blog mainly due to being off the net for a few days and the effects of jet-leg. We’re much better today but our first day in Auckland totally knocked us for six, Paul especially. It seems that being a seasoned traveller in Europe doesn’t qualify you for long-haul!!
About to fly down to Queenstown from Auckland. Gorgeous weather here.

777 painted with the Hobbit's Smaug

Feb242014

Posted in NZ • Travel

Booking our NZ flights

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Gandalf riding the Hobbit's Eagle

Eagle from the Hobbit

Wouldn’t it be great to travel around for free like Gandalf on the back of a Hobbit Great Eagle?

Unfortunately the rest of us have to suffer the delights of long haul so the first activity for our journey to New Zealand was to book our air tickets. We started early, about 10 months ahead of when we wanted to travel.

I’ve quite a lot of air-miles from KLM which is part of the SkyTeam alliance so this seemed like an obvious starting point. It quickly became obvious though that using air-miles was going to be difficult. The airlines like you to travel when they want you to travel, rather than when you want to travel. Due to our work we had fairly restrictive dates and this limited our choice dramatically. Although air-miles are free to use you still have to pay the air taxes which can often work out as much as some cheaper cash tickets. So we quickly gave up on using air-miles which was a shame.

After a short piece of research on Opodo we realised that apart from the really obvious holiday periods the prices were relatively static throughout the year. The cheapest flights were via China but after that most carriers were relatively similar in price.

View of AirNZ multi-stop screen

AirNZ Multi-stop

Of course the obvious airline to investigate was Air New Zealand – airnewzealand.co.uk. Their Opodo prices were comparable to everyone else. They have a great multi-stop booking facility on their website. You pick the start of the journey, the furthest point, and then you can add stops into the outward and inbound segments by just clicking on the line between airports. It works really well and is recommended if you fancy a multi-stop trip. Each segment gives you a choice of possible routing depending on what’s available.

Using the AirNZ multi-stop booking screen we quickly came up with a round the world itinerary that will allow us to stop over at some great places on the way to and from NZ.  Hopefully we’ll adjust more gradually to the jet-lag as well. The round the world ticket was about 30% more expensive but is allowing us to stop over in Hong Kong on the way out, and Fiji and LA on the way back to the UK. As it turned out some of the legs are with AirNZ but we’re also flying with BA and Cathay Pacific.

British Airways A380

British Airways A380

We booked Economy tickets but we decided to pay for extra leg room seats or a guaranteed pair of seats on different legs of the journey, hopefully to make it a little more comfortable.

We had one small problem booking the exact flights that we wanted, and the schedule has changed slightly since we booked and the Air New Zealand service centre has been nothing but helpful. My only comment is that they seem overly familiar for us Brits!! A sign of the NZ friendliness to come maybe?

The first leg of our journey is London to Hong Kong on the new British Airways A380 double decker which should be interesting!

Look out for later posts on how we got on.