Hawaii or Cuba?

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Alright John…don’t say I didn’t warn you…Round ONE :smiley:

  1. How accessible is Australia? We’re thinking about maybe flying in to Sydney and spending a few days there, visiting friends and then jumping over to NZ a day or two before the tour starts. Is it an expensive trip?
  2. What is the public transportation like? Cheap and easy to get from place to place?
  3. Is it safe enough for 2 girls to walk around by ourselves? Aside from the tour we’ll probably be in Auckland for a few days and then possibly up to a week in the Christchurch area. Anything we should be warned about in those areas or are they fairly safe?
  4. Is it a fairly travel friendly country? ie. Easy to find hostels and other cheap accomadation
  5. What are the Christmas and New Years rituals like over there? Does everything shut down on those days or will we be able to do some sight seeing and stuff and find a good friendly place to spend Christmas eve?
  6. What are the people like?

I’ll leave it at 6 for now…but don’t think you’re off the hook! haha

Here’s a link to the itinerary of our trip. Any comments you can make on that would be great!
http://www.contiki.com/en-CA/Tours/New.Zealand/Grand.Adventurer/Itinerary.htm

Thanks!

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1. How accessible is Australia? We’re thinking about maybe flying in to Sydney and spending a few days there, visiting friends and then jumping over to NZ a day or two before the tour starts. Is it an expensive trip?
Sydney to most places in NZ is about 3 1/2 hours. As for the price it varies a bit but for an idea here is a link to the Virgin site. http://www.travelinfo.co.nz/newzealand/bookNow/

My suggestion would be to get a price off your travel agent and compare that with online.

An online currency converter is http://www.xe.com/ucc/

2. What is the public transportation like? Cheap and easy to get from place to place?

Do you mean within cities? It varies, some aren’t bad but remember the population is not that high so don’t expect the same regularity as many overseas places. As much as Aucklanders complain about their public transport I have found it fine whenever I have been there, Welllington and Christchurch are also good.

Also NZers aren’t big users of public transport, we have the 2nd highest number of cars per capita :eek: (U.S. is no. 1)

As for between cities it is fine but I would suggest buses, we looked at rail for our holiday for a change but it was pretty expensive.

3. Is it safe enough for 2 girls to walk around by ourselves? Aside from the tour we’ll probably be in Auckland for a few days and then possibly up to a week in the Christchurch area. Anything we should be warned about in those areas or are they fairly safe?

Is anywhere safe? :cool: Generally though I would say yes, but like anywhere the chance of personal injury increases between say 10pm and 4am.

There are parts of Auckland that are less safe than others but I would be surprised if you ended up there, they are somewhat away from the main tourist type areas.

Most of Christchurch (ChCh) is pretty good. Ilived in ChCh for about 14 years so know the area well. I’ll give you some pointers on where to go at some stage.

4. Is it a fairly travel friendly country? ie. Easy to find hostels and other cheap accomadation
Yes

Here is a site I found http://www.backpackerboard.co.nz/

5. What are the Christmas and New Years rituals like over there? Does everything shut down on those days or will we be able to do some sight seeing and stuff and find a good friendly place to spend Christmas eve?

Remember that is our summer so it is very different to what most are used to. Shops are closed Christmas Day but reopen on Boxing Day (the 26th). I am not 100% sure they close the 1st but don’t think so.
Where will you be on Christmas Eve? Once I know that I should be able to give you more of an idea.

6. What are the people like?

Overall friendly :smiley: Ethnic wise it is quite diverse. The North Island has a lot more Maori than in the South, Auckland has a very large Polynesian population and there are a large number of Asians. The further South you go the more white it is but that isn’t to say it is redneck far from it!!! The South is a lot more relaxed.

I’ll leave it at 6 for now…but don’t think you’re off the hook! haha

Bring it on :stuck_out_tongue:

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I had another look at the itinerary and see it finishes in Ohau which is pretty much in the middle of nowhere :rolleyes: Do you need to find your own way from there?

You also mentioned you plan a week or so in ChCh, why did you decide on that? ChCh is nice but I wonder if it is the most suitable place to spend a week. :cool:

What sort of things are you into? Outdoors? Adventure sports etc? Let me know and I will give you some options.

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The itinerary includes an optional extra day which would take you from Ohau to Christchurch. We probably won’t decide until we get there but may end up doing that. Would it be difficult to find our own way from Ohau if we chose not to? How “middle of nowhere” are we talking?

The reason we are thinking about spending so much time in Christchurch is a possibility of free accomodation, a family friend lives there. Do you think a week is too long? I don’t know much about the city so I’ll look into it a bit further, I was under the impression though that it is a decent size town and it wouldn’t be too hard to occupy ourselves there. Any comments? Where would you recommend spending the bulk of our free time? Keeping in mind we will be flying into and out of Auckland!

As far as things we’re interested in…pretty much anything goes. Outdoors stuff would definitly be the preference, rainforests, volcanoes, horeseback riding, whatever you’ve got we wanna do it. Definitly want to meet lots of new people so social events are big thing. We’d like to take in as much of the true culture as we can in the short time we’re there, as opposed to lying on a beach at the resort the whole time. But as far as “adventure sports” I don’t think I’ll be up for as much of that as I normally would be, due to the injuries…ie. definitly no bungee jumping this trip. :frowning:

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Optional extra…cunning sods :rolleyes:

Where is Ohau? See Christchurch? It is on the right had side about 1/2 way down. Follow that coastline down, past Timaru and very slightly inland you will you will see a place called Waimate. From there look inland to about the middle and you will see a place called Omarama, just above that is a number 8…THAT is where Ohau is.

I haven’t been to Oahau for about 10 years but know the Lodge you’ll be staying in. The Lodge is about 30- 40 minutes drive off the main road so to get out you are pretty much reliant on them to get back out. My suggestion would be to plan on that optional extra to ChCh.

Don’t get me wrong re ChCh it is a nice decent city and if you can get free accomodation then that has to be a factor and you could do a lot of activities from there. The people you are staying with could well have some stuff planned too.

Here is a link to the cities site http://www.christchurchnz.net/

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Sorry I haven’t been on the site for the last couple of days. And also have some disappointing news about the New Zealand trip as I wasn’t able to find flights for anything less than $2,600. Adding that to the cost of the tour (about $1500) and I just couldn’t convince my self to spend as much on a 3 week trip as I was planning on spending for 3 MONTHS in Europe. We’ve decided to go with Cuba instead, we’ll be able to get an all inclusive deal for about the same cost as just the FLIGHTS to New Zealand so that seemed to make more sense at the moment.

However, NZ is definitly high on my list of places to go. Will plan for a longer trip in the future though. At least a month or two. Thanks so much for the advice though and I’ll certainly be coming back for more when we get that trip planned.

For now however, any more info on Cuba would be awesome!
Thanks!

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No probs, pity it didn’t work out although I must admit I always thought Cuba would be a cheaper option.
It will also be more culturally diverse than than Canada…enjoy :smiley:

PS The invoice for my consulting fees is in the mail :stuck_out_tongue: