Lonely Planet New Zealand

by Peter Turner and Jeff Williams

This edition features a colour flora and fauna section. In addition it provides extensive cultural information, and it includes a guide to outdoor activities including national parks and ski areas. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0864425651
• ISBN13: 9780864425652
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Lonely Planet
• Length: 689 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.1" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

New Zealand--or bust!

I looked at and compared this to all the other guides from Frommer's, Eyewitness, Footprint, Rough, Insight, Moon, and Fodor's, and I thought this one was the best.I used this guide on an intensive, 3-week trip to New Zealand several years ago in which I drove over 6000 kilometers and got to just about every part of the country except Ninety-Mile Beach on the tip of the north island. I visited spots ranging from Stewart Island, Doubtful and Milford Sound, and Queenstown in the south, to the Coromandel Peninsula in the east, to the Franz-Josef glacier and the small western town of Greymouth in the west, to Lake Taupo and the capital city Auckland in the north. I crossed the southern Alps several times, and got to just about every major city and town, and I found the book very useful and accurate and a very valuable resource on my trip.New Zealand is one of the most beautiful and delightful places you can visit, and there is something here for everybody. There is still quite a lot of wildlife, and in the south I saw lots of Tui birds, who are like myna birds in that they can immitate just about any noise, and shellducks, which are larger than any American ducks I've seen. One of them even raced me in my car on a road crossing the Alps for a while, until he surprised me by flying under my car and losing all his feathers. Oh well, I hope he grew back those feathers.If you're into wildlife, another fun activity is to see the little blue penguins and the yellow-eyed penguins in the southeast coastal town of Oamaru. But watch out for those big shellducks. The big Kea parrots in the southern mountains are surprisingly bold. They come right up to you and you can get great pictures. A famous kea was the one that lived in a park in Sydney, Australia. This might be the only world-famous bird I've ever heard of. He would let the air out of automobile tires while people watched and laughed, which he seemed to do for the fun of it. As the New Zealanders say, they're cheeky little buggers.Another thing not to miss is the New Zealand Wildlife Refuge on the main road north of Wellington on the way to Auckland. Several of the other things that I enjoyed that I learned about first from the book were (on the south island) the Te Anau glow- worm caves, the big boat tour of Doubtful Sound, the boat tour of Milford Sound (the wettest place on earth at sea level, with 25 feet of rain per year), and (on the north island) the Maori cultural town of Rotorua, which smells like rotten eggs everywhere because of all the volcanic steam vents containing sulfur dioxide. In fact, the steam comes out of the ground just about all over the city.If you're the adventurous type, don't miss Queenstown in the south, the self-styled (and rightly so) adventure capital of the world. There you can do things like bungee-jump from a helicopter, and fly this interesting plane around which is tethered to a central pole. I don't know how many people do those things, but a popular attraction here i

Dense, Informative, Indispensable, and a dash of humor

I used the Lonely Planet travel guides in my other adventures again and again, and love the pithy, been-there-done-that tone. This guide did not disappoint me. When I booked my flight to New Zealand, I did as I always did - a round trip ticket, a reservation for one night at a hotel (to get over the jet lag), and a desire to see the country. For the first two weeks I relied on the LP guide exclusively, and referred to it periodically whether I was on the North Island or the South Island.I had the added benefit of a local friend to make suggestions, as well as the guidebook. Some destinations (which are well worth a visit) are not included in the book, but it didn't stop me from shark diving, whale watching, hiking (tramping as the locals call it), and otherwise running around the country.This guide gives a fundamental, non-commercial impression on what, where, and how to get there. It also offers some historical/cultural information, and a lot of information about towns, attractions, restaurants, hotels (of various price ranges), and a few rough maps.As an added bonus, when I got back, the book became a memento of the trip. My bookcase contains LP travel guides from the countries I have visited, and when nostalgia strikes, I have been known to pull it down. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is about to travel to New Zealand for the first time, or anyone planning a trip.

Dense with information

When we were considering what to do during our month in New Zealand, travel agents were pleading with us to have everything lined up before "the Y2k rush." So, being the literal engineering types, we bought a couple of books -- the Lonely Planet NZ and the Frommers for Under $50/day -- and started poring through them.Quite frankly, our initial impression of the Lonely Planet book was too dense to be useful to us. The Frommer's guide was more helpful and the author, Elizabeth Hansen, was available to "consult" on the trip on an hourly basis. Because we'd be toting our 18-month old, we used her services and pre-booked the entire trip.Once there, we found the Lonely Planet book much more useful. The Lonely Planet guide excels at providing abundant information about towns, including attractions, restaurants and maps giving a rough layout.For example, one of the folks at a Visitor center clued us into Farewell Spit, an area we were going to forego because it was well off our chosen route. As it turned out, Tahuna Park, our campground in Nelson was pretty bad (right under an airport takeoff path; lots of people permanently living there; undermaintained kitchens), and we didn't relish the idea of spending three days there as originally planned.The side trip to Farewell Spit was long and we'd have to find some place relatively nearby to the Spit to make it a reasonable trip.This is where the Frommer's guide was very weak. It caters more to the B & B crowd, and there isn't that much north (or west) of Nelson. The Lonely Planet book, however, paid for itself by suggesting a lot of options, providing maps of the little towns, and listing restaurants where we might stop at for "snack time."If you do intend a trip to New Zealand, you'll definitely appreciate the Lonely Planet guide.

Indispensible for a trip to New Zealand

There are probably countries you can visit without a Lonely Planet Guide. New Zealand is not one of these countries.The way to enjoy New Zealand is to travel from place to place and not to pre-book everything ( you are too dependent on the weather to do that and also it takes away the feeling of freedom this country has to offer). The more flexible you want to be on a trip the more important it is to have a good guide. We arrived in Auckland with only a general idea what we wanted to do in our three weeks and we found that we left all other guidebooks in the suitcase and relied exclusively on the Lonely Planet to plan our trip. The guide contains all necessary information and is surprisingly up to date. The most important is that it is not a commercial tourism promoter but that it gives you an honest impression on what there is that you can do.E.G. it was pretty clear after reading the relevant chapters that for our family it was more appropiate to go to Wanaka instead of Queenstown because the children were not yet at an age that they could enjoy all the thrills of the latter and that Wanaka, whilst offering jetboating and biking was more appropiate.We had the book continuously with us during the driving and it made the journey so much more interesting through knowing always a couple of KM ahead what the interesting sites and spots were.The book could have been priced at a much higher level; we still would have bought it.Highly recommended for every would be traveller to New Zealand

Lonely Planet New Zealand (9th edition)

We just returned from a one month excursion through Nea Zealand with this guide book constantly at our side. We found it invaluable in our daily selection of things to do and places to stay and eat. During our travels we also noted this guide being used by many other travellers and particularly in the hands of the hikers and backpackers. It was the most prominent of guide books available in the book shops and information centers throughout the country. Should be required reading by anyone preparing an unescorted visit to New Zealand and even for anyone on an organized tour it would be most helpful.