The Matriarch
made good her escape -- at least for a couple of weeks -- by dint of a
cheap Internet fare on Freedom Air and a lot of hours on the
'Net. Definitely worth the effort, though. I ended up with a trip
that packed most of the country into 16 days; I did (nearly)
everything I hoped to do; stayed within budget; AND all my
carefully-plotted travel arrangements worked out spot-on. What
more could a girl want?
Seeing I could
reasonably take only a couple of weeks, I had to be strict with
myself about priorities. New Zealand is a country I've always
wanted to visit, and it offers so much. After much to-ing and
fro-ing between brochures for self-drive and unescorted coach
tours, maps, the Lonely Planet guide and a zillion websites, I
whittled down my list of must-dos to:
- the geothermal area of Rotorua
- visiting my friends Luke and Esther in Paekakariki
- the Kapiti Island fauna reserve
- Te Papa national musem in Wellington
- whale-watching in Kaikoura
- royal albatrosses and yellow-eyed penguins on the Otago Peninsula
- Milford Sound
- getting as close to the snow as possible!
- climbing on a glacier
and decided I'd have to hire a
car for at least part of the trip. I wasn't keen on the idea of
driving alone in the remoter parts of the South Island, though
(particularly not knowig what to expect with weather and road
conditions mid-winter), so coach travel the rest of the time
seemed the best bet.
Luckily New Zealand is well-supplied with
very competitive car hire firms, so I had little trouble
organising a small car through Ezi-Rent, the budget-priced arm of
Nationwide. A five day, 3-in-1 New Zealand Travel Pass took care
of the rest (intercity coach travel, ferry crossing from
Wellington to Picton, and 2 long-distance rail journeys), again
for a very reasonable cost and all booked on the Internet.
I did
splurge on a domestic flight from Christchurch to Auckland at the
end of my itinerary, but at less than AU$100 it was as cheap as,
and a lot more convenient than land transport back to Hamilton
for my flight home. Internet bookings took care of all my
accommodation arrangements: similarly, I was able to pre-book all
but one sightseeing excursion by email.
Obsessive-compulsive
creature that I am, I felt eversomuch more comfortable with the
prospect of a solo trip knowing that I didn't have to worry about
finding motels and booking agents or hassling around with
timetables once I got there. I even printed out my very own,
highly professional-looking tour itinerary in A5 booklet format,
which proved to be a very good idea: I had all the information I
needed every day tucked in my handbag like a security blanket
(yes, I know, I SAID I was obsessive). Still, I had the
satisfaction of having done it all myself and having got exactly
what I wanted.
And the trip
was BRILLIANT.