After Australia, it just made sense to head over to New Zealand. It’s not everyday I’m on the right side of the world to take a side trip there after all.

Unlike Australia, and the other countries I’ve been to over the last year, though, I did have to book my flight out before I got to New Zealand. You need to be able to prove you aren’t staying long term on the visitors visa before you even get there. Not a big deal, but definitely a bit different as I’ve gotten use to deciding last minute where I wanted to go and when I wanted to leave a country.

After a lot of thought, I booked my flight out for the end of July. I figured if I loved New Zealand than I would want 2 months, if I didn’t then it was still plenty of time to work on other things and relax. I’ve committed to being back in the Netherlands in August to meet up with friends and attend the Redhead Festival again, so I also wanted to make sure that I left myself enough time to make may way back there. Not sure if I’ll head back directly or take a couple of days somewhere. We’ll see.

Getting Around

There aren’t a huge amount of options for getting around New Zealand. Public transit is pretty limited, especially outside of the cities. There are buses, but they have limited routes. Besides that, your option is to rent a car or a campervan. Campervans are one of the most popular things to do in NZ, that being said – as a solo traveler in winter, they aren’t the best idea. The affordable campervans don’t have heat options and it does get cold enough at night outside that they aren’t the best option. The campervans that have heat were for a minimum of 4 people which is way too much space and money for just me.

So I decided to do a month of getting around by the bus system and stay in Hostels. More limited, but more comfortable too – and still affordable. I ended up getting a Flex bus pass that you top up on hours, the amount of time the bus takes is deducted from your pass rather than a cost. However, it does end up being significantly cheaper than just buying the individual tickets.

I was limited in where I could go with this, but I had a lot of fun. I did have to strike a couple of places off my list since while the bus goes there, it was in a roundabout way that would take longer, or not possible from a location I was already at. But that’s okay – I still got to quite a few places that first month.

Auckland

Auckland was my first stop. I flew in and stayed about a week before moving on. Auckland is pretty, but it is a city like many others. That being said – my favorite part of it was going to the Auckland Domain – basically a park. It was wild to be essentially hiking through the forest in the middle of the city. I spent a full day just wandering around there and it was fun. Oh, and the fun to find out that one of their major bus company’s was called Ritchie’s. 

Bay of Islands – Paihia

My next stop was Paihia. Honestly, I would’ve extended my time in Paihia if I hadn’t needed to pick up something from a tailor in Auckland (that I had already paid for). If I had a car, I would’ve just made a day trip down to Auckland and then head back to Paihia. Paihia is in the Bay of Islands up in the northern part of the North Island. As the name suggests, there is a large number of islands in the area. Some of them are connected, some of them are not. I loved just hanging out in the area. Being on the water is one of my favorite things for sure. 

In addition to the different options for the ocean, there are a lot of hiking trails as there are some mountains. I had a blast just wandering around the area, sitting and enjoying. On one of the days, I took a walk with the plan to do one of the hikes in the area that someone at the hostel told me about. He told me it was probably about 2ish hours there and back…he was wrong, so very wrong…

I headed out with that timing in mind, and did actually end up spending some time walking and talking with a local that was doing a portion of the same route that I was. We walked a good distance together before she turned around and I continued on. It was a great walk and I have some amazing pictures from some of the higher vantage points. The ‘end’ of the hike (where I would then turn to head back) was a beautiful waterfall. I watched it for a bit and talked to some more locals for a little while. The complicated thing? I was now at the 2 hour mark of my hike and still had another 1.5 hours back and I was about 30 minutes from sundown.

There were three options for heading back to town. 1. A hiking trail. 2. A rural road that would eventually lead into a main road. 3. Hitchhike. Now before everyone freaks out about that option – there are two things to rememeber/know. 1. I have already hitchhiked (in Slovakia). 2. Hitchhiking is actually a pretty big part of the NZ backpacking world due to their limited public transit. I’ve seen multiple hitchhikers while I’ve been traveling here and heard stories from more people who have done it. So I wasn’t worried about that.

That being said – I decided not to hitchhike, mainly because I was determined to walk it all. I ended up making the decision to do the hiking trail, I had taken a road to get there originally and I knew both options would be limited for visibility once the sun went down, but the hiking trail was guaranteed to not have cars and many of the rural roads I had taken to get to the waterfall in the first place hadn’t had sidewalks. I didn’t want to take the chance to be walking on the road at night and a car not see me.

It was dark! So dark haha, but it was a lot of fun. I ended up texting with one of my friends back in Arizona as I went. I did have to turn on my phones flashlight, but I made it through and got back to the main road and was able to walk the last way back to where I was staying on the sidewalk and besides the ocean. I also got to see a huge amount of stars as there was no light pollution in the area. It was so pretty and peaceful, even if it was pitch-black!

Taupo

Taupo…Taupo was probably one of my least favorite places to visit. The lake itself was gorgeous and I enjoyed spending my time walking around part of the lake (read previous of how I love being on the water). However, there wasn’t much in the way of public transit, so I couldn’t get too far out of town to do a lot of their local hikes because I had no way to get there and back. The town itself had a section that was really nice (right by the water) but some of the other parts were more industrial.

Honestly, I spent more time at their library working on things. And that’s okay. I enjoyed my time at the lake there, but I did also need some time to just buckle down for a bit, and since I wasn’t really connecting as much to this location – it was the perfect place to do so. I did also do a long day hike to a waterfall which was great! But it was really the only hike that I could do without a car and it took basically all day due to how far out it was. 

Whanganui

My last stop in June was to Whanganui – I stayed at this little B&B that also had two rooms for hostel goers. There were two other people there for the duration of my stay. It was nice to have someone to talk to about random things and take a walk in the evenings with (or go get ice cream / mochi with). I spent my time there wandering around town and up and down the river. I didn’t get down to the ocean as every time I would go out to wander, I would end up on side quests and then the sun would start to go down.

One of the downsides of going to New Zealand during winter is that you lose daylight pretty quickly and I didn’t want to get stuck hiking in the dark too often. I only stayed in Whanganui for a couple days though before I headed to Wellington.