Planning the New Zealand Trip
I didn't know anything about New Zealand other than it was scenic and consisted of two islands (I'm not sure if I knew even that). So the first thing I did was order Fodor's New Zealand Travel Guide. I read it cover to cover, taking notes of things to do for each geographic area. It had some sample itineraries which were useful. I had to work Maggie,s schedule into the mix. But I was able to put together a rough itinerary that looked pretty good.
The next step was to make reservations. I started with the Air. As you might expect, it's not cheap to fly to the other side of the world. I was a little nervous when it was time to click the the [Submit] button for the non-refundable tickets. Now we were committed.
It was pretty obvious that to do what we wanted to do on this trip, we would need a car. So next I made car reservations. The unusual thing with the car concerns going from the North to South island. It's too expensive to ferry a car across so the car rental places have you drop the car in Wellington on the North Island and pick up a new one on the South Island. I made the Cook Straight ferry crossing reservation was I saw at it.
So all the travel stuff was done. The next step was the big event stuff. We wanted to do the Tangariro Alpine Crossing, considered the best one-day tramp in New Zealand. I booked a package of lodging, shuttle bus, and bag lunch for that. Another must do was a Milford Sound cruise so I booked that.
That left the lodging. Lynnette and I like to stay at Bed & Breakfasts as opposed to motels. But where to find them. When we went to Scotland, a web travel agency arranged all that. This time I was on my own. I finally hit on two tools: Tripadviser.com and Google Maps. Tripadviser.com was invaluable for finding the B&Bs and based on comments, picking the best one in my price range. Google Maps to estimate driving times. It took me awhile but I finally ended up with a detailed itinerary and B&B reservations for each night.
