63 and free

Since departing New Zealand on February 14th, we have let our memories simmer, hoping to at least adequately summarize the pluses and minuses of our experience.

On the “Awesome” side of the ledger:

• No eloquent way to say it, other than the people are utterly fabulous.

• As you have hopefully noticed, the natural and cultural beauty is stunning. The history is fascinating.

• Rarely is tipping expected or even possible. When one is here for 68 days this is a significant issue.

• The vast majority of the time you pay for your food & drink first. NO time spent waiting endlessly for the bill!

• The NZ to Canadian dollar works FOR us for a change.

• PIES, salmon and beer. 🤤🤤🤤

,• Public washrooms are common, nice, clean and easy to find.

• Restaurants have help-yourself water stations. We loved this. Lawyers would not allow this in North America.

• Great signage on highways. Also many “this way” arrows for dumb tourists. 🤪

• The 220 volt current boils water REALLY fast!

On the “Not perfect” side of the ledger:

• Not one hotel room had an ice bucket. Only one hotel had an actual ice machine. Yours truly had to do some major scavenging for the solid water.

• Unless your hotel room has a kitchen listed, you won’t get a microwave. On the other hand, bar fridges are common.

• The highways – especially on the north island – have no shoulders. The driver cannot lose focus…EVER. Bernie needlessly jumped more often than a Mexican jumping bean!

• Unless one is in a top notch hotel, a/c is either absent or inadequate. I had to rig up fans on more than one occasion. There were a few tough nights.

• Not sure if this is a consequence of covid, but store/restaurant hours are…sporadic at best. Google was wrong more often than it was right. In smaller places it got annoying.

• There are a lot of National Holidays here, and EVERYTHING closes on such days.

• WiFi is often very poor.

• Standard fare such as salads and martinis are hard to find. I had to tell two bartenders how to make a martini. He was good though in that he had no problem with me supplying the olives. I don’t think bars/restaurants usually carry olives. 😱

• Despite plenty of cattle, they really don’t know how to cook a steak. Stick with seafood.

• Hotels have an annoying lack of plugs. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

There you have it. Words of wisdom to help with your own trip to New Zealand.

Don’t hesitate. It’s fabulous (you undoubtedly noticed that our “negatives” were incredibly minor in the big scheme of things.)