SWMBO & I are planning a trip to NZ sometime next year and in an attempt to balance out her choice of scenic locations to visit, I'd welcome suggestions of 'must see' locations for an engineer/scientist/woodbutcher like myself and like most readers of this NG.
Suggestions please (polite or at least humourous naturally!)
Weblinks to events too would be good. visit is possible next November or just maybe sooner - next February.
TIA
Bob
Lord of the Rings was filmed there:-
We went last year, fantastic country particularly South Island. Milford sound was the highlight for me and the road tunnel on route a feat of engineering.
The mount St. John University Observatory is a worthwhile diversion if you are in that area.
Mike
This place is a "must see".
Tim
MOTAT up in Auckland
There was an interesting tram.trolleybus museum somewhere, too - I think it was at Foxton.
I did restoration work at Wrights Hill for a while - fascinating place, but they're not open to the public very often so plan your visit around that :-)
There's also the old power station up at Palmerston North, but I lost touch with the people who used to look after it (and possibly still do), and they never did have a big web presence - try here:
Museums in NZ were very casual I found - expect personal tours at many of them, wandering around stuff "off the beaten track", sitting down for a cuppa or ten with the owners etc. :-)
(Regarding LOTR, I seem to remember they did a lot of the stuff to do with the Ents close to where I was living, but I was overseas at the time and missed it. I did get to wander around Weta Digital's machine room once though, which was a rather vast and impressive pile 'o SGI machines
- I suppose they're all on PCs these days)
cheers
Jules
I forgot to mention one highlight of North island. The aircraft museum at Tuaranga is fantastic, we even had a flight there in a Bell helicopter that was used in filming the MASH series. There are a few photos of our trip at
Well *obviously* you need to visit MattyF and check out his projects! A master-DIYer.
John
You beat me to it:-)
But the orcs were real weren't they? Or is that just in Yorkshire?
NZ hasn't much of interest in the engineering/scientific line, the attractions are more to do with nature - mountains, rivers, lakes, beaches, trees, birds, fish... There are a couple of exceptions, of course. If you are in Wellington, it's worth going to the Te Papa Museum just to see the Britten motorcycle.
Depends perhaps on how high-brow the engineering/science needs to be? I thought some of the bungee jumping platforms were quite interesting from an an engineering viewpoint (sic) - eg the Nevis Highwire. I also found that Zorbing demonstrated beautifully several aspects of the laws of motion. But then I suspect that, counter-intuitively, my brow lowered as my hair receded :)
How long do you plan to stay? Any idea of the split between N & S island? We were there for four and a half months over last UK winter, so saw quite a lot.
Fascinating place on the Otago Plain, S. Island (people called Hates IIRC) where they are preserving an engineering works where loads of cool stuff was invented, and which you still see in use. e.g. wire strainer for wire fencing.
Some nice railways - one out of Dunedin up into the central uplands, one at Kawakawa up in the Bay of Islands.
Barry Bricknell artist's railway in Coromandel Town is a must see - loads of engineering there!
HokiTikli on S. Island (west) for stone and wood carving. Also Rotorua.
For the scenincs there is Russel in Bay of Islands, Golden Bay at the top of S.Island, Akaroa near Christchurch. We did an overnight trip on Doubtful Sound instead of Milford Sound - wedding anniversary and a wonderful place :-)
If you like wine, set aside a day for a wine tasting tour at the Marlborough vineyards around Blenheim. Blenheim itself is a pit but the wineries are superb.
Just a quick note - with a bit more time no doubt the memories will flow.
Cheers
Dave R
Thanks David & everyone else who has replied. We expect to be away from home for possibly a month with 1 week in San Francisco/LA at one end of the trip or other. The North/south island timing split is completely flexible. We plan to book a couple of nights hotel wherever landfall is (Auckland or Christchurch) into order to recover from the journey and then pick up a car. From then follow our noses staying in basic motels for about 3 weeks.
Bob Minchin :
Internal travel is more difficult than you'd think. Best to arrive in Auckland and leave from Christchurch or vice-versa. If Christchurch still exists. :-(
Mike Barnes wrote: .
Could you expand on that comment please Mike? TIA
Bob
A couple of corrections in case he is led astray:
Barry Brickell
Hokitika
SF is nice, not so sure about LA.
That's the way to do it or use public transport (donno what PT is like in NZ though).Do some homework before hand so you can get an idea of how long it will take you to get between places and search out the places you would like to see. Nothing worse than finding out about a "must see place" 24 hrs before your flight out...
Some one mentioned "round the world" tickets. Be careful of the restrictions. IIRC you have to keep going in the same direction all the time, no back tracking, so flying into Bali means you've missed Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and possibly Beijing... I don't think you can do overland sections either, you have to fly out from the airport you flew into. So no landing in Bangkok exploring Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore overland then flying out of Singapore.
Our experience was the opposite. Ok few of the roads are motorways but they carry so little traffic that driving is a pleasure. We loved dawdling along at 30-40 MPH knowing that we were not delaying anyone.
Your idea of just booking hotels for arrival nights is a good one. Make sure you book hotels with an airport transfer bus, then take that back to the airport next day to pick up the hire car.
South island is best accessed in and out via Christchurch. The alpine train over to Greymouth is well worth the ride. You can then pick up a hire car at Greymouth and return it to Christchurch as we did. This all assumes Christchurch is still as accommodating as it was, we were there between earthquakes and although lot of the city was damaged then it was "business as usual".
As for the Auckland sky tower see.
Mike
LA? A city the size of Belgium, filled with traffic jams, where even the air has a suntan. Not my idea of a nice place.
The reason for choosing LA was that it seems from web searches that it is better connected for direct flights to NZ from the west coast compare to SF. So we would fly in and out of LA, pick up a car and headout to SF only returning to LA airport.
Bob
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