(08-18-2020, 08:31 AM)Baggers date Wrote:7 hours is full on! I did this drive in early 2015 from Wellington to Auckland on my Pat Malone and it took about 8 1/2 hours (I do Melbourne to Canberra in about 6 1/2 hrs) and I can assure you I was not conservative with the accelerator...Yes, for work I've done that drive many times, I had to travel to a lot of places all over NZ and in-between like Levin, Palmerston, Hamilton, Rotorua, Nelson, Napier, New Plymouth, etc., etc.. using SH1(The Desert Road), SH3(West Coast) or SH2 and SH5(East Coast). It's all well worth a visit I recommend it to anybody and I find everybody very friendly, if not a little odd in places.
Luckily being for work I didn't have to pay, and I stayed at some fairly flash accommodation around Taupo, Turangi, etc., if I was staying across the ditch for two weeks I tried to be in that there at the weekend to find a fishing lodge for the weekend. In the end the owners of the company worked out all my NZ trips were two weeks long with one week of meetings! Actually truth be known they didn't care, they are great people to work for and they know travelling for work can be a bastard so they encourage tourism and a bit a free time while travelling, I'm so lucky I've seen more of the planet than some airline pilots!
I've only been through Picton on the way to Nelson, never stayed there, and further south around the coast Nelson is pretty. But I did see large parts of Fjordland down are Milford Sound.
It use to be cost effective to hire a car, drive and stay, time was never an issue. But over the years as accommodation started getting more and more expensive I found it was cheaper to fly in small aircraft all over the South Island, not the ATRs or Bombardiers, but the small 10 or 20 seat planes like the Pilatus PC12, Jetstream 31 or even a Piper Twin that held 5 or 6 of us. I'm afraid compared to home, and out of necessity, they've got super regional airlines in NZ, make Australia's look rubbish in terms of scheduling and price, but it's a bit hilly over there and when the roads a closed due to snow or volcanoes you still have to get around. Seriously you can hop through three or four of those small towns in a day, a lot of them have decentralised industries. It's just super flying just barely over the snow capped refrigerators out the back of Christchurch, you feel like a fighter pilot, refrigerators is what the locals call the Southern Alps.
If you like Picton and ever find yourself back over that way head down and have a look at Akaroa, although I haven't been to that region since the big shake. Crazy beautiful areas, you can be in a log cabin 30 metres off the ocean wave front and have a trout laden fresh water stream flowing right past your front door with trout in it!
Way up North is nice as well, green grass to the ocean's edge around areas like the Bay of Islands,
I was driving the Desert Road once years ago and had to detour because Ruapehu had got a bit cranky and dropped a rock the size of the school bus across SH1 closing it for three days, the News reports showed dozens or hundreds of rocks the size of VW's falling on or around the the road which as you know is a hell of a strong throwing arm for a Kiwi, most of them are use to playing cricket on postage stamps. I was also very lucky down south once, I was in the Riccarton Mall grabbing a bite of lunch before a meeting near the Christchurch airport and not 3 minutes after I left the carpark there was a huge shake and the roof collapsed killing a bunch of people, in the car driving to the meeting I didn't even notice the quake!
I loved travelling around NZ, but since the big shake work won't let me go there anymore, it's OOB!
"Ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck ....... Ruck, ruck, ruck, ruck"