Essential Travel Tips for New Zealand to Avoid Holiday Anxiety

While the memories are still fresh, I’d like to share some practical tips with everyone. Beyond car rental and accommodation, there are a few more minor but valuable experiences to share.

1. **Cash is Not Essential**: Bringing 200 cash is more than enough, and you might not even need it at all. We didn’t come across a single place that only accepted cash, and so far, we haven’t used any of it.

2. **Booking Accommodation Wisely**: When booking hotels or homestays, it feels like you only need to consider a couple of platforms—Qunar and Airbnb—along with the hotel’s official website and direct emails. Avoid Booking, Fliggy, and similar sites, as they tend to be more expensive and unnecessary.

– For Braemar Station (a charming homestay by Julia near Lake Pukaki; book half a year in advance during peak times) and Edgewater in Wanaka, sending an email directly can be beneficial. The price is about the same whether you use Qunar or send an email, but the purpose of emailing is to secure a room with a great view.

Popular rooms like 108 and 111 cannot be guaranteed, but the rooms we stayed in, 506 and 507, were also fantastic.
– For the Hermitage Hotel in Mount Cook, the official website is straightforward and user-friendly.

3. **Cooking Saves and Satisfies**: If you can cook, try to do so as much as possible. Apart from Auckland, the food in small towns outside is just edible, with an average cost of 100-300 per person. It really is just edible, and cooking something simple yourself is often better than eating out. Of course, this advice is only for those who can cook.

4. **Supermarket Prices Are Comparable**: The prices in the supermarkets in small towns are about the same as in Christchurch, so there’s no need to stock up on a lot of things in Christchurch. Some items are even cheaper in the small towns (we didn’t go to Tekapo). The supermarkets in Twizel and Wanaka are both well-stocked and convenient.

5. **Lakeside vs. In-Town Homestays**: Staying in a popular lakeside homestay and staying in a homestay within the town are two completely different experiences, and both are worth it. If you don’t necessarily need to take photos right by the lake, since each town is quite small, the experience in other homestays within the town is also very good.

6. **Packing and Driving Tips**: For details on what to bring to the homestay and the first experience of left-side driving, you can check my other two posts.

Let me think, and I’ll add more…