Backpacking New Zealand

gudede

Hi folks,

I'm wondering if you could help me. Im going traveling New Zealand in Feburary and travelling Auckland, Waitomo caves, Blackwater rafting, hobbiton and Rotorua is doing my head in.

So my plan was stay in Auckland, then do a day trip to waitomo caves and do the cave tour along with the Blackwater rafting and head back to Auckland. Then the next day leave Auckland and do the hobbiton tour along the way to Rotorua.

The issue I have is that I cannt stay long enough in waitomo to do the two tours. I checked the busses from Rotorua and Auckland but no joy.

I also looked at renting a car for tso days but costing around $150 a day.

Maybe I'm missing something!!!

Can someone help please.

Cheers ed

Oh we're only in New Zealand for 17 days so we're abit tight on days to see everything, hence I tight schedule above.

cpoh1

No idea why you would choose waitomo as a destination with so many great options around Auckland, its a fair spin up and down. Is "Hobbiton" really woirth it?

Bay of Islands, Coromandel, Rotorua and Taupo (specifically Ruapehy national park) are all better alternatives in my book.

Have a look at national car rental companies like omega and apex for cheaper car quotes.

on_my_oe

Nakedbus.com do tours from Auckland to Waitomo return, but they also do straight bus services too. The bus leaves Auckland at 7am, arrives in Waitomo at 10.50am; the bus then departs Waitomo for Rotorua at 6.10pm.

Try Kiwi Experience for other options. Alternatively you could try staying overnight in Hamilton or Cambridge as both are likely to have pick up points for your hobbit tour.

Try Omega, Apex and Rent a Dent as suggested above.

Last but not least, you could call Thrifty, a Hertz etc and see if they have a 'relocation special' on a car rental.

gudede

Hi,

Thanks for the replies, the reason we want to go to Waitomo is because we want to see the Glow Worms and do the black water rafting, but might have to skip it. The wife wants to go and is the Hobbiton tour so I’ll have to do it, and I’ll be doing on the way from Auckland to Rotorua, so its not to bad.

We don’t want to do to much beach stuff in New Zealand because we’ll just be after travelling a month in Australia going from Cairns down to Melbourne, so we’re looking more at activities in New Zealand.

We get to New Zealand on the 12/02/2015 (Auckland) and leave on 01/03/2015 (Christchurch), we thought it would of been loads of time, but we’re wrong. We could do a tour with Kiwi Express but you only spending a day/half day in each place and there’s no way you get a feeling of a place do that, plus we feel it would be a bit rushed.

How would you recommend travelling..i.e. places to see and places not to bother seeing?

My current plan is
• Auckland (day and half)
• Waitomo Caves
• Rotorua (Hobbiton tour
• Taupo
• Wellington (2 nights)
• Nelson
• Punakaiki (Pancake rocks)
• Franz Josef (Glacier Walk)
• Wanaka
• Queenstown (2 nights)
• Milford Sound
• Christchurch

Would I be wasting my time staying in Nelson, thinking about going straight to Punakaiki. Also is it worth saying in Wanaka and is Wellington worth two nights?

cpoh1 - I know you mentioned Bay of Islands and it looks good but we just don’t have the time to travel up there and back. What’s Coromandel like? Is it worth the trip?

Also where’s the best place to do a bungy jump?

Thanks for your help, for some reason I can’t get my head around New Zealand.

cpoh1

Looks like a hectic schedule to be honest! Bucket loads of driving which is not ideal. It really looks like you'll be just arriving at a place and gone the next morning with most of your time stuck on the road.

If I was you I would be looking at 6 days in the north island (rotorua, taupo and the tongariro crossing along with waitomo caves), fly to Nelson, a few days in Abel Tasman (3 days) - a national park on the coast but Oz has nothing like it. Drive down the west coast and stop at the glaciers and then 7 days around Queenstown and Wanaka and fly out of there. Use those two areas as a base.

Bungees can be done in either Taupo (~40m) or Queenstown (much bigger).

If you try to do everything in such a small space of time you'll end up seeing nothing! Personally I would spend less time in Oz and more in NZ, ive been there with the drive from Cairns to Sydney and while there are some amazing sights a lot of the drive is meh.

gudede

Thanks cpoh1, will have to rethink New Zealand alright because the last thing we want is to run around for 17 days.

Cheers.

MrCreosote

If it was me I would

-forget about Auckland, especially as you won't have much jet lag. Try to hire a cheaper car and head straight from the airport to Rotorua/Taupo/Tongariro/Waitomo.
-Once you get back to Auckland airport fly to Christchurch. That way you don't have the one-way fees for the car to Wellington. Drawback is that you miss Wellington.
-From Christchurch do either Arthur's Pass/Punakaiki/Nelson/Abel Tasman/Kaikoura/Christchurch or Wanaka/Queenstown/West Coast/Arthurs Pass or Wanaka/Queenstown/Te Anau/Milford. I wouldn't plan on staying in Christchurch either.

cpoh1

MrCreosote wrote: »

If it was me I would

-forget about Auckland, especially as you won't have much jet lag. Try to hire a cheaper car and head straight from the airport to Rotorua/Taupo/Tongariro/Waitomo.
-Once you get back to Auckland airport fly to Christchurch. That way you don't have the one-way fees for the car to Wellington. Drawback is that you miss Wellington.
-From Christchurch do either Arthur's Pass/Punakaiki/Nelson/Abel Tasman/Kaikoura/Christchurch or Wanaka/Queenstown/West Coast/Arthurs Pass or Wanaka/Queenstown/Te Anau/Milford. I wouldn't plan on staying in Christchurch either.

Great advice. another option would be to fly from rotorua to queenstwon or from auckland to queenstown and look up the west coast and back down to ChCh for the trip home.

Car for that short a time is definitely not the answer!