Since appearing as Middle-earth in 'The Lord of the Rings,' New Zealand has been packing them in. Well fie on Frodo! With knockout vistas and life-of-the-party locals, this is simply . . .
A lot to do in New Zealand! New Zealand tours and travel deals, vacation packages, New Zealand Hotels, local attractions and activities, make up a unique variety of travel experiences.
New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations features a selection of top quality New Zealand vacation packages and New Zealand holidays and services for independent and group travel to New Zealand. Check a New Zealand vocations book.
If you're looking for New Zealand tours, New Zealand travel packages and assistance with your itinerary planning, the New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations will take you direct to some of New Zealand key tourism operators. Easy links to each of the operators means you get up to date information directly from the operators themselves.
I don't know how else to say it. Just go for your New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations. Is there any other country that lingers -- year after year -- at the top of so many travelers' wish lists? Just mention the name and you get a lot of you-lucky-dog looks and I've-always-wanted-to-go-there sighs. But the flight is endless and expensive, they complain, especially from the East Coast. The seasons are flip-flopped and it takes an act of algebra to figure out the time difference.
All true. After all, New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations, it is just one stop short of the South Pole.
But having just gone through all that for a mere nine-day visit (my first since a three-month walkabout I made there 20 years ago), I say this: Go New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations! Find the money. Damn the distance. Make the time. If you do, here's a near warranty: New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations will go from being the place you most wanted to visit to the best place you've ever been.
If you spent the last five minutes doing anything but planning a trip to New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations, you just wasted five minutes.
Planning a trip to New Zealand? On New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations are some leading providers of New Zealand package holidays. You can choose from New Zealand self drive packages, New Zealand accommodation and lodgings, New Zealand luxury lodges, New Zealand maps, New Zealand rental cars, New Zealand motorhomes, New Zealand sightseeing, New Zealand touring holidays, New Zealand backpacker packages, New Zealand bus tours, New Zealand scenic flights, New Zealand walks and ec-activities and New Zealand coach travel.
These days, the travel buzz around New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations is reaching a hornet pitch, thanks to the country's boffo performance as Middle-earth in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. After three blockbusters and a clean sweep at the Oscars in February, the passport control lines at the Auckland airport are jammed with tourists eager to follow in Elijah Wood's wide Hobbit footprints.
"Good old New Zealand, she's getting a lot of attention these days," says the passport officer, reflecting on the hubbub as she stamps my visa in early March. She's a sunburned blonde who looks like she'll be out bungee jumping after her shift. "She's a bit hot to trot these days, eh," she says, sliding my passport back. In New Zealand, this is what passes for surly officiousness. Check a New Zealand vocations book.
After the 13-hour flight from Los Angeles, Auckland's Victoria Park is good place to stroll out the coach-class kinks and begin yanking your brain into a new time zone. More importantly, it's a place to begin decoding New Zealand's core paradox: Everything here is familiar, but nothing is quite the same. Auckland, where about a third of the country's 4 million people live, is like a small-scale Seattle, with a modest clot of waterfront high rises surrounded by undulating neighborhoods of frame houses and high-street shopping. In Victoria Park, overlooking downtown and the sailboat-crowded harbor, the concentric paths and formal gardens could be anywhere in the British Commonwealth; that clock tower would look at home in Oxford.
But wait, the swirly carving on the tower is not so much Anglican as, what, Polynesian? And these massive waxy trees waving in the Pacific breeze and those towering ferns around the statue of Queen Victoria, they don't grow anywhere in London or Toronto or Boston. And that otherwise ordinary steakhouse by the ferry dock specializes in thick cuts of . . . ostrich. ("You want it medium well," the waitress advised. "Cooked any more and it's tough. Any less and it's like eating raw ostrich.")
It's this patina of the bizarro on the commonplace that makes New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations so endlessly interesting. A rolling, velvety baize of pastureland here could be a patch of Ireland's County Cork, except for the swath of Hawaiian forest that borders it. And what looms above both? A snowcapped mountain peak clipped from a postcard of Switzerland.
"This is nothing like Bavaria," marvels Benedikt Schendel, a young German brewer on a six-week hitchhiking tour of New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations. I'm giving him a ride from Auckland to Rotorua, a tourist town about halfway down the North Island. He mulls the shifting agricultural scenery out the rental car window as I concentrate on staying on the right -- which is to say the left -- side of the road. "I think I may move here," he says finally. "I think I could find work in a brewery." He's been in New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations three days. Check a New Zealand vocations book.
Halfway to Rotorua, Schendel indulges me for a stop in the small village of Matamata, one of hundreds of low-rise, nondescript farm towns scattered around the countryside. For decades, this sleepy hamlet was known, if at all, as a dairy center and the hub of New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations' small horse training industry. Now, it's a tour bus magnet.
"Welcome to Hobbiton," brays the sign at the edge of town on New Vacation Zealand - New Zealand Vacations. Along the once-quiet street, fish-and-chips stands and snack bars are crowded with foreign tourists. "We need lemons," pleads a hand-drawn sign on one cafe window. Across the road from the feed and seed store, a new plywood entryway in the shape of a round Hobbit door is being built onto the small visitors center. I buy a $50 ticket (about U.S. $30) and board a bus for a two-hour pilgrimage out to the only existing film set from "The Lord of the Rings."
"We heard they were making a movie at the Alexander farm and figured it was just some made-for-TV thing," says Jan the tour guide, after we disembark in the middle of a comely 1,250-acre sheep farm 20 minutes from town. "It turned out to be a bit more than that."
Once director Peter Jackson picked the Alexander farm for the location of Bilbo Baggins's home town, the government slapped a no-fly zone over the property, the army built a road through the rolling hills and a few thousand carpenters, engineers, caterers, gardeners and veterinarians began building Hobbiton.
But Lea is no "Ring" neophyte himself. He's a well-read J.R.R. Tolkien fan and his four-hour tour is a proper lecture on the great man's biography, mythos and how these craggy mountains -- aptly named the Remarkables -- stood in for his fabled lands: This leafy creek bed is where the black riders chased Liv Tyler on horseback; this spectral valley was the dreaded road to Mordor; that line of peaks was a stand-in for the Misty Mountains. Check a New Zealand vocations book.
It's funny -- New Zealanders look like nice, quiet British folk.
Then why not sit backand relax, and leave all the planning and arranging to the best New Vacations Zealand?
Top
