I went for holiday working in New Zealand way back in 2006 together with 2 other friends. I am going to share here some experience I have brought back from the land of the long white clouds, Aoteroa!
A month before embarking on this once-in-a-lifetime adventure, we had made quite a lot of research on where to go, where to work, mode of transport, accommodation, which airline to fly us there., etc. After getting our plane tickets, there was not much $$ left, so we have to travel on a really tight budget. We applied for our holiday working visa online, without much hassle we got the visa within few days. Our plan was to travel around north island for two weeks before settling in Blenheim for pruning jobs we had found online.
We arrived in Auckland, visited One Tree Hill, walk around the city for a bit, before making our way to Paihia. From Paihia, we travel down south to Rotorua, Taupo, Turangi, Whanganui National Park, Waitomo and Wellington where we took the ferry across the straits to Picton. Black water rafting and cave tubing at Waitomo and Tongariro Crossing at Whanganui National Park were the highlights of our two-week stay in North Island.
We took a ferry from Wellington across the straits to Picton. From Picton we made our way to Blenheim. We were told by the vineyard contractor that we could not start work immediately. We stayed at Spring Creek for about 2 weeks, while waiting for the contractor to call us to start the pruning job he had offered us. It was quite a long wait, as we don’t have much $$ left to spend. Finally, the time has come for us to start work. We were paid about $0.60 to $0.90 per tree. We worked from 7:30am till 5:00pm, Mondays to Fridays, rain or shine. After deducting tax and transport cost, we manage to take back about $350 per week. With the money that we had earned in about 6 weeks, we rent a car and travel down south to Timaru to meet our friend who was staying and working there at that time. Below were some places that we had been to in South Island:-
Aoraki / Mount Cook
Christchurch
Dunedin – visited Baldwin Street which is reputed as being the world’s steepest street, Cadbury chocolate factory and Speight’s brewery
Fox & Franz Josef Glacier
Geraldine
Greymouth
Hampden – the award winning fish and chips shop is a must-go
Hanmer Springs – felt like Christmas because it was snowing when we were there; it was like walking in the winter wonderland
Kaikoura
Milford Sound / Te Anau
Moeraki Boulders
Oamaru – home of the blue penguin colony
Queenstown
Wanaka – had an amazing time at Stuart Landsborough’s Puzzling World
Thank you, Alice and Sheila, for showing us around when we were there. It has been 5 years, I may have forgotten the names of some places I had been to, but looking back at the pictures that I had taken, they never fail remind me of those great times.