New Zealand total 8D/7N expenses

In here, I would like to share more information about our New Zealand 8D7N Tour from planning of route, accommodation, transportation and budget allocation.

Our air ticket was booked on December 2010 which is the first promotion launched by Air Asia to travel to New Zealand. We booked it almost half a year before the travelling date when he suddenly have an idea about travelling to New Zealand and coincidently there is a promotion.

Next is to plan the travelling itinerary as we are doing self-drive tour. It’s depends on which attraction you wish to visit. But considering to have relax and free and easy tour, we didn’t visit the west coast. You must remember to do research on the travelling time from one destination to another as it may take 4-5h time just for travelling. Also, take note on the road condition. I can say most of the road is in good condition, but some may have a very crooked road and travel along hill and valley. Beware of the dead animal on the road too. Take into account some time for a stop to photo-shooting as panoramic view is everywhere when travelling. Then you can plan the activity when you reach an attraction. We also include the must see attraction and any famous food in a certain attraction in our plan. This will give you a perfect arranged schedule and save time on searching. But of course, we need to explore more new things when we reach a destination, not only based on the plan.

For accommodation, we have chosen all types of accommodation, from backpackers, motel, bed and breakfast to luxury hotel. It’s recommended to search and booked online by considering the location of the accommodation and budget before going there. This helps to save some money as online promotion is there for early bird, and you can compare price for each accommodation. Find accommodation which is convenient to have food and attraction depending on your budget. I have done some research on this and one can always refer to Trip Advisor for comment before choosing.

The Car Rental fee with insurance is NZ 345. Our car is a hatch which is Hyundai Getza and itis suitable to travel for couple. More info about transportation can refer to my car rental blog.

Total petrol expenses is NZ 227. Every gas station will have different petrol rate. Also, petrol price will be cheaper in city, for example Lake Tekapo will have a more expensive petrol rate as it’s a small town. Always remember to fully fill your car with petrol before travelling as petrol station is not easy to found along the journey.

Others expenses for activities, daily meals and shopping with total of NZ 600. One can have a self-cooking by choosing some accommodation with kitchenette. For us, we have two self-cook dinners. This gave us great experience cooking with many friends in a backpacker’s kitchen and we enjoy buying groceries in the shopping mall too.

You can check out Air Asia latest deal for New Zealand through https://www.airasiago.com/travel/arc_process.cfm?search=true

New Zealand Dunedin to Timaru 28 May 2011

The longest journey in our trip begins from Garden Motel, Dunedin to next destination at Timaru. We are going up all the way along the east coast. The strong wind has brought us to border of east coast, and we collected some miniature rock as our souvenir. Thanks for the god blessing, today is a bright and blue sky day.

East Coast of NZ

Let give a stop at Moeraki Boulders where you can see huge spherical stones. There is nothing much there but at least we left our footprints.

Moeraki Boulder

Previously, I was planned to stop at Oamaru town as it is famous about blue penguin colony and Waitaki District. After considering all our backpackers, hotel, motel and this time I want to try out farm living experience. Therefore, I cancel my thought and choose to stay at Timaru. Ok, let’s come back. Oamaru, is a beautiful town with culture and heritage. I was fascinated by the magnificient historical building in Oamaru. There are the criterion motel, one of the well-known bed and breakfast accommodation themed in a Victorian style of refurbishment, oamaru botanical garden, very pleasant place for people who like greens, the woolstore, selling souvenir specially for Oamaru, and a it is served café.

Criterion Motel

I-Site Oamaru is just in the corner of the street

In Oamaru, you can’t miss to go for blue penguin colony (yes, you need to pay) and yellow eye penguin colony (free of charge). This is such regret that the blue penguin colony is only opened for visit around the time of 4 – 5 in the evening. In order not to stay longer and waste the other half day, we took a quick lunch at one of the Chinese restaurant in Oamaru to continue our journey.

After 1 hour of driving, we are finally reached Timaru. Timaru is almost similar to Oamru which preserved much of its historic heritage, both in terms of its architecture and through local treasures housed in the excellent local museum. Art gallery is one of the activities you can found but our destination is not absolutely Timaru but is a 19km distance away, the Pleasant Point. It took us 20 minutes to reach and we begin to search for our last accommodation, Long View Bed and Breakfast. Well, it is an urban place and undoubtedly it is quite far from the town. We are so excited when we finally find our farmstay accommodation and we are welcomed by one of the host, Alan where his wife, Anita has no yet return from visiting her grandchildren. Alan is such a friendly man and bringing us to our room. Oh my god, the view is so panoramically great!

Our room, Mt Dohbson

Paranomic field

Garden yard

Booklet filled with guest comment

Comfortable living area

Without wasting the 2 hour left before the sun sink, we drove back to town again to have some walk and food for dinner. The place we went is Botanical garden and Caroline Bay. In New Zealand, one need to try out the local famous beer, the Speight and I got it from liquor store that is still open at 8pm.

Botanical garden

A swarm of duck

Caroline Bay

After dinner, we went back to Long view and take a bath. For the night, we spend time talking with Alan and Anita. They are friendly and the environment in living room is cosy. Making me to spend few nights here.

On next morning, we are walking out to the host’s planting olive grove and watching the sun rise. It is so freezing cool and my hand was shivering pressing the shutter. The grass has already icy and winter is about to come more early this year. We have been served the best breakfast we had in NZ. The meals included are cereal, yogurt, coffee, juice, full breakfast set, and toast. After that, our long waited farm visit has come. Alan is taking us to his cattle farm. When the time we stepped into the cattle farm, there are walking in rush towards us because they know this is their breakfast time. Alan mentioned in winter the grass is growing slower, and he needed to control the fresh grass area that is sufficient for their daily intake. He separated the field with some electrical shock fence to prevent cattle from crossing fresh grass. Cattle has a wet nose and it looks funny way out. Conclusion, the farm stay experience is the best I can say among all the accommodation we have stayed. In here, we can feel the warm and harmony immersed from the host. I would highly recommend this bed and breakfast.

Olive

Icy grass in the morning

Delicious breakfast served

Cattle farm

Transportation in New Zealand

It was head-scratching when come with the kind of transportations to take in NZ.

I will first talk about driving car in NZ:

Personally, this is best choice because the driving experience in New Zealand is so much easy with GPS (I’m using garmin Map).

http://nzopengps.org/

• Remarks: this is an open project and map is updated frequently.

Advantage of taking car

- Stop and drive without any constraints. It is best suits for photo taker. You know you can’t miss a good shot by stopping by.

- Easy to plan itinerary with car. Some places need to depart in early morning in order to get there before too late.

- Economical if not rent high-end vehicle.

- Good for exploring. Bus will not make to that place if the road can’t fit a huge vehicle.

Things to remember when choosing Car Rental Company

- There are plenty of car rental companies, there are fall into these categories budget (ACE, OMEGA, thrifty, Jucy, budget, apex, go) and normal (Avis, Thrifty, Hertz, Europe car) and etc can’t remember that much. Choose your car by considering your budget.

- Get the promo code (if any) to get discount

- Some companies offer discount package tour or ticket admission when you rent a car from them. Check for their promotion before you choose.

- Always ask the customer service if you are unsure anything. I kind of like the online chat services just like ACE and JUCY and I got the response from them in so fast by chatting and save the chat log for reference. Trust me, you can do it in quick.

- Print out the booking details for your future reference.

- I’m personally advised to take insurance. There is no guarantee that you can drive without any accident. Rock fall is always happened in hill road and you have no control what will happen to you. Windscreen damage is most common. To driving with release, take risk free insurance and we don’t want a disappointing ending at the end of your trip.

- If you are not plan to take insurance, check the excess you need to pay in the event of accident. Some companies may charge the excess goes up to 2500 NZD.

-

Things to remember when renting and taking the car

- Renting a car in NZ need not to own a local driving license. One can use his/her country license or they may use their international license. For my case, I need to get a translated license (of course it must be written in English) and hand it to Car Rental Company for their verification and that’s it.

- Make sure when collecting your car, it is in perfect condition where no scratches or defect found in car body.

- If you are collecting your car after-hour (it will cost you 20 NZD), make sure you find your way to pick up location (for my case, I walked for 2km from airport to collect my car) and normally they will provide you the password to open the unlocker to get car key.

- Normally, your car is filled with full tank and you need to return in full tank gas.

- Always fill your gas fully because some urban areas have no gas station and the petrol is higher prices than in the city.

- Use your grocery receipt to redeem some discount for gas filled.

Things to remember when driving

- New Zealanders drive on the left-hand side of the road and driver is driving on right-hand side.

- Road distances are measured in kilometers unlike in US it is measured by miles.

- Speed limit is 100 km/h on the road and 50km/h in urban areas. Don’t ever speeding because you may get caught.

- Cutting the car in crossing lane ONLY. It is very dangerous act because all roads in NZ are mostly single lane.

- As usual, drive with enough of rest and no alcohol taking.

- Beware of dead animal body, don't let your steering lose control

If you need any help, please leave me a comment :)