Along with thousands of Chinese nationals, I went to New Zealand for the Chinese New Year holiday week. It’s an expensive country and a bit far (11 hour flight from Guangzhou), but so beautiful, clean, and friendly. We toured both the North and South Islands, driving over 2800 km plus hundreds more in a ferry ride between the islands and the Kiwi Rail Tranz Scenic Alpine Railway that crosses the South Island. Everyplace we went to was interesting and worthwhile, with highlights at Rotorua (Thermal Wonderland, Redwood Forest, etc.), the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, the Shotover Jet Boat near Queenstown, and the hike to the Fox Glacier and also the hike to the Hooker Glacier near Mount Cook.
Some travel tips: Be prepared for Internet challenges. Many hotels offer very limited Internet access, such as a maximum of 20 minutes free or, frequently, a limit of 20 Mb or 50 Mb of data. When there is a limit to the amount of data you can access, be sure to turn off automatic updates on your computer because your system can upload many megabytes of system updates in the background and eat up your free or paid account quickly. Also turn off background backups such as Carbonite, Even then, a few unexpected large emails can eat up the bandwidth and leave you without service. A real pain.
The lack of good Internet service at hotels is one of the very few problems we encountered in New Zealand. We love the country and found it very safe and hospitable, with lots of healthy and delicious food as well. Be sure to try to Pavlona dessert, the various honeys (Manuka honey is famous for its healthy properties, but also try the delicious Rata and other types of naturally thick, creamy honeys unique to New Zealand), the delicious seafood, lamb, and beef, and even the pork belly that is popular in Queenstown.
I hope to come back sometime soon!
