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Lonely Planet New Zealand (Country Guide)
 
 
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Lonely Planet New Zealand (Country Guide) [Paperback]

Carolyn Bain (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)


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Paperback, September 1, 2006 --  
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New Zealand (Country Guide) New Zealand (Country Guide)
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Book Description

September 1, 2006 Country Guide
The sun shows up here first for a reason. Come for bracing light or caverns underground, glacial valleys or black volcanic sand. Tour every landscape on earth, all rolled into one country. Dig for pipis on the beach, or sample oysters on a platter. Savour solitude with a view, or city culture. Things are never just black and white in New Zealand.

Stick Out Your Tongue – taste the freshest seafood, world-class wines, or the best lamb roast there is.

Roll Your Eyes – yet another magnificent view of mystical mountains, braided river plains or calming coastlines.

Slap Your Thighs – a good time’s easy to find, from happening Auckland to waterfront Wellington.

Stand Up Proud – and experience Maori culture firsthand: take part in a powhiri, or fill your puku at a hangi.

Run At It Shouting – bungy jump, sea kayak, surf, trek and hit the white water with the best of them.


Editorial Reviews

Review

Lonely Planet guides are a must-pack” --Toronto Star, February 2006

From the Publisher

Who We Are
At Lonely Planet, we see our job as inspiring and enabling travellers to connect with the world for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world at large.

What We Do
* We offer travellers the world's richest travel advice, informed by the collective wisdom of over 350 Lonely Planet authors living in 37 countries and fluent in 70 languages.
* We are relentless in finding the special, the unique and the different for travellers wherever they are.
* When we update our guidebooks, we check every listing, in person, every time.
* We always offer the trusted filter for those who are curious, open minded and independent.
* We challenge our growing community of travellers; leading debate and discussion about travel and the world.
* We tell it like it is without fear or favor in service of the travellers; not clouded by any other motive.


What We Believe
We believe that travel leads to a deeper cultural understanding and compassion and therefore a better world.


Product Details

  • Paperback: 772 pages
  • Publisher: Lonely Planet; 13 edition (September 1, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1741045355
  • ISBN-13: 978-1741045352
  • Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.8 x 1.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #887,765 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
128 of 136 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you're going to New Zealand - and want to enjoy the country to the fullest - DO NOT LEAVE WITHOUT THE LONELY PLANET GUIDE! I embarked on a 6-week long trip with 'Lonely Planet New Zealand' and fate as my only guides. I was impressed to the max! The only other guide I needed was a road atlas I picked up at the airport in Auckland (and since I was touring some of the Lord of the Rings film locations, Ian Brodie's lovely 'Lord of the Rings: Location Guidebook'). I do recommend renting a vehicle - as someone under 25 years old, Budget was a good bet for rental. Just remember, "Left, left left." It's a cinch! With the US dollar exchange rate favorable, we cheaply rented a top notch 4WD SUV for the entire time based on the recommendation of this book. I love the Lonely Planet series for the sheer fact that it gives you pointers on fantastic locations that may be slightly off the beaten path while at the same time informing you of the best of the best in those tourist meccas. It's a lovely balance. My only regret is that 6-weeks is far too short a time to see everything there is to see in New Zealand!

The top 5 places you shouldn't miss on the North and South Islands:

North Island

1) Take the short ferry ride from Auckland to Rangitoto Island and hike to the summit - otherwordly!

2) Do a touristy bus tour to Cape Reinga out of Paihia - on the bus to Cape Reinga you'll get to: learn a lot about the Maori culture, hug a Kauri tree, stop and surf down sand dunes, wonder in awe at the northern most point of the North Island where untouched white beaches are visible as the Tasman and Pacific Ocean meet and clash (an amazing scene), and to top it all off you'll cruise down 90-mile beach as waves lap the wheels of the bus (yeah, the beach is actually a registered roadway).

3) Drive around the gorgeous Coromandel Peninsula - leave the Thames area just before sunrise and the landscape will just take your breath away! You will come to understand the meaning of Aotearoa/New Zealand: land of the long white cloud.

4) Wander the volcantic parks of Rotorua - Wai-ti-pau was a highlight! Don't forget to sign-up for a traditional Maori concert and haka at the Tamaki Maori Village for a cool cultural experience!

5) Cruise Cuba Street in Wellington for food and shops, and don't forget to visit Te Papa - the national museum of Wellington.

South Island

1) Plan a kayaking trip out of Motueka: the Tonga Island wildlife option is cool - we saw wild Orca and New Zealand Fur Seals up close and personal and then lunched on a secluded beach reached only by kayak!

2) Take a helicopter ride up to Fox Glacier and do an afternoon hike - see where semi-tropical rainforest meets glacier meets the Tasman Sea.

3) Go white water rafting on the Shotover River in Queenstown (be sure you get an option with the Oxenbridge Tunnel)! Then go jet boating, then bungy jumping, you name, it they do it there! Don't miss Deer Park Heights either - say hello to the free roaming buffalo for me!

4) Head to the beautiful city of Kaikoura for whale watching and a dolphin swim.

5) If you love wildlife - head to Dunedin and take a tour out to the Otago Peninsula (you'll see albatross, fur seals, sea lions, yellow-eyed penguins and a variety of bird life up close and personal - by up close I mean walking on the beach less than 10 feet away from a Hooker Seal Lion twice your size). While in Dunedin, visit Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world, and don't miss the Cadbury Factory! It's well worth the admission price!

There is so much more to see and do that I haven't listed - and this guide helped me find it all and point me in the right direction every step of the way. The only thing the guide failed to mention was the abundance of rainbows in this enchanted country - I don't know about you, but where I come from rainbows are a special once in a great while occurance. In New Zealand you see them on a daily basis. I guarantee that with the help of this guide you will leave New Zealand with enough fantastic memories to last a lifetime. Kia ora.
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71 of 78 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have used over 50 Lonely Planet guidebooks since 1988, and I still usually take one with me wherever I travel. However, I found the New Zealand book (Sept, 2004 edition) to be a large step below Rough Guide New Zealand. LP has improved its graphics through the years, and the Highlights map and photo section are excellent. The city maps are also the best of any guidebook, and the layout is well-organized and easy to follow.

The major shortcoming is the brevity of descriptions in comparison to Rough Guide. During a 1500-mile road trip I was constantly referring to RG & LP as my wife drove, so in effect I was constantly comparing the two books' descriptions for the southern half of South Island. There was absolutely no question which guidebook did a better job....Rough Guide. We would have missed several places if we had relied on Lonely Planet alone, and I felt like we gained much more insight about places from RG.

Lonely Planet NZ is about 300 pages shorter than Rough Guide NZ, so it is a little easier to carry if you have only one guidebook. Personally, I think Rough Guide New Zealand and DK New Zealand are the best pair of guidebooks to travel with in NZ. Add Lonely Planet Tramping in New Zealand (a very impressive LP work) if you're keen on hiking.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
We just got back from weeks in New Zealand! God it was great when the sun was shining, but the South was a bit wet. Anyhow, we bought a Lonely Planet, were given a Rough Guide, and when we got to Auckland we bought an Nz Frenzy. We liked Lonely planet more than Rough Guide, but they both cover almost exactly the same stuff, and neither gives enough details about trails and directions to beaches and waterfalls. The Nz Frenzy book was definitely our favorite to get us to cool spots on the North Island, but it only covers the North and there is no South one, so that was disappointing. Overall we agree that you should get a Lonely Planet for all the traveler essentials, but definitely get an Nz Frenzy if you have your own car/van on the North. Also you'll need a good map because it's just too hard to use all the little maps in Lonely Planet. Hope you find Kerosene creek and Tongaporutu on the North and Kaikoura's cute seals on the South. Cheers!!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hard to Follow
biggest complaint is no table of contents. How do you make a guide book that mentions so many different places and not have a table of contents for quick, specific reading? Read more
Published 1 month ago by drewdog235
Don't bother with the Kindle version - go for the paperback
On a recent trip to New Zealand our group had four guidebooks: the Kindle and paperback versions of Lonely Planet, and two others. Read more
Published 3 months ago by NStort
Buy a book not an e-book for travel
I bought this e-book because I thought an e-book would be easy to pack and carry. It was. But it was impossible to use maps and hard to skim quickly through things I was not... Read more
Published 3 months ago by clspedonc
An excellent resource for planning your trip to New Zealand
This is an excellent, well organized resource that helped us plan our 5 week trip to New Zealand. The color photographs in the book just wet your appetite.
Published 6 months ago by Jim5546
It's just have it all..
I've been using tourbooks of all kinds: those who only have planned paths (itineraries) for you to follow, and those who have a detailed description of every place or attraction... Read more
Published 8 months ago by yd
Excellent planning tool
This was our third trip to NZ, and we have always liked Lonely Planet's guidebooks. This edition did not disappoint. Read more
Published 14 months ago by trlamb
the Bible for new Zealand
Really great! Beyond falling a bit short on Franz Josef, I have no complaints. Maps and suggested walks were a plus.
Published 15 months ago by Tara Tai
So So
The maps are very hard to read and the descriptions are very disorganized. One good point is that the places mentioned are numbered and noted on the maps
Published 15 months ago by taxesed
Excited to use it on our trip to New Zealand
I've read my fair share of travel guides, and although I haven't been able to give this one the in-depth look it deserves-- I can already tell it's going to be one of my favorites. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Senushi Jayaratne
Industry Standard for a reason.
This book, as expected from lonely planet, is superb. My girlfriend and I travelled around NZ for five weeks with no other guide book in our bag, nor did we need any other. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Spider Monkey
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
itor information centre, accommodation online, hut tickets, major iwi, lakeland adventures, wanaka connexions, tramping gear, unpowered sites, estimated walking times, kiwi house, tranz scenic, holiday park, kauri park, tourist flats, jetboat trips, central backpackers, jetboat tours, scenic reserve, motor camp, havelock north, one hour return, kiwi experience, coastal walkway, jetboat rides, horse treks
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Bay of Islands, Hawkes Bay, Abel Tasman, Palmerston North, Air New Zealand, Whanganui River, South Island, Bay of Plenty, Lake Taupo, North Island, Art Deco, East Cape, Golden Bay, Marine Pde, Milford Sound, Automobile Association, Fox Glacier, Arthur's Pass, Cape Reinga, Hanmer Springs, Lake Tekapo, Tongariro Crossing, Atomic Shuttles, Coromandel Town, Huka Falls
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