Should Il P go travelling?

_Brun_

Simple enough question.

I've been told to add that the travelling involves going to New Zealand. Apparently that's somewhere near Australia.

Clever Pun

Ii p? New Zealand is amazing, I spent a month there and could have tripled that easily. Drope a pm if you need more details

cjcp

Definitely. NZ is brilliant. You can borrow my "Lonely Planet". Even if you go for eight weeks, the Big Smoke (and Embankment) will still be here on your return.

_Brun_

Clever Pun wrote:

Ii p? New Zealand is amazing, I spent a month there and could have tripled that easily. Drope a pm if you need more details

Whoever conspired to make a capital 'i' and lower case 'l' look exactly the same were cretins of the highest order. Stupid sans serif typeface.

CJ, this NZ place sounds interesting, do you have any pictures we could see?

cjcp

_Brun_ wrote:

CJ, this NZ place sounds interesting, do you have any pictures we could see?

None, i'm afraid. Oh, hang on, I found this one...



Am sure there's one of Mt Cook at dawn. And some shots of othert brilliant things in NZ.

PBo

yep, NZ stunningly beautiful.....perhaps not as spectacular as I imagine Oz to be (not been there) but some amazingly diverse landscapes in a relatively compact country.

always_tyred

Why has the question arisen?

mattybain

Yes NZ is amazing (been 3 times). In fact so good I am part way through trying to get a PR Visa to live there permanently

Mind you the £:Nz rate at the moment doesn’t make it a very cheap place for holidays at the moment

Oh and the Kiwi drivers are supposed to be cr*p, didn't see much evidence of it myself.

mattybain

Try these for size
Milford Sound


Mt Ruapehu Shadows


Marlborough Sounds

mattybain

Gisbourne


Auckland


Mt Cook


That's enough now!

Clever Pun

not many 'good' photos available to me now

On a glacier on MT Cook


we flew up there in a tiny plane



lunch at a vineyard



Also managed to get a few miles in



some massive tree

wgwarburton

Hi,
Well, yes... (who voted no?).
I'm not quite sure how you distinguish between going travelling & taking a long holiday, though. It might be interesting to go somewhere more exotic than NZ. If you have a bit of money it'll go a lot further in somewhere less western, so if you have the time (quit your job?) then you might get more out of Latin America or SE Asia... or India, Nepal...
I'd particularly recommend Chile and Bolivia, though it's been a long time since I went & things have probably changed quite a bit since...

Depends, obviously, on what you want to do...

Cheers,
W.

Cafewanda

Is this with or without the Missus?

Hell yes, in either case.

bigmat

WGWarburton wrote:

Hi,
Well, yes... (who voted no?).
I'm not quite sure how you distinguish between going travelling & taking a long holiday, though. It might be interesting to go somewhere more exotic than NZ. If you have a bit of money it'll go a lot further in somewhere less western, so if you have the time (quit your job?) then you might get more out of Latin America or SE Asia... or India, Nepal...
I'd particularly recommend Chile and Bolivia, though it's been a long time since I went & things have probably changed quite a bit since...

Depends, obviously, on what you want to do...

Cheers,
W.

Big +1 to all of that.

mattybain

PBo wrote:

yep, NZ stunningly beautiful.....perhaps not as spectacular as I imagine Oz to be (not been there) but some amazingly diverse landscapes in a relatively compact country.

Just to add you are way way way off on that. Oz is far from spectacular, on a scale of 1 -10 I would put NZ at a 9 and Oz on about 3-4, too much boring outback for me and a real lack of anything interesting. I spent 6 months touring Oz and honestly apart from the Whitsundays, Fraser Islands and the Ningaloo reef I wasn't impressed. Should have spent 6 months in NZ!!

You can spend a full day driving 1,000kms and see nothing more interesting than road kill.

lost_in_thought

To be fair to my other home country, the driving 1000km and seeing nothing thing is because it's very, very big!

Having said that, I've driven from Goulburn to Alice Springs, and I wouldn't recommend it.

Driving in Oz, unfortunately, is often very dull - when I lived there for a while I drove out to Wagga wagga to visit my cousin, directions from Canberra were 'get on to the highway, stay on it for 2 hours, turn right, then you'll be in Wagga in a bit over an hour'. That was a lovely drive though, skirting around kosciuszko.

There is a lot of incredibly wonderful stuff in Oz, but a lot of it is very, very spaced out. I can understand why people like NZ better, it's a lot more compact, but if you've got the time to see all of it (and I never have) Oz is just amazing.

always_tyred

lost_in_thought wrote:

To be fair to my other home country, the driving 1000km and seeing nothing thing is because it's very, very big!

Having said that, I've driven from Goulburn to Alice Springs, and I wouldn't recommend it.

Driving in Oz, unfortunately, is often very dull - when I lived there for a while I drove out to Wagga wagga to visit my cousin, directions from Canberra were 'get on to the highway, stay on it for 2 hours, turn right, then you'll be in Wagga in a bit over an hour'. That was a lovely drive though, skirting around kosciuszko.

There is a lot of incredibly wonderful stuff in Oz, but a lot of it is very, very spaced out. I can understand why people like NZ better, it's a lot more compact, but if you've got the time to see all of it (and I never have) Oz is just amazing.

NZ doesn't have anything poisonous, isn't dangerously hot or dangerously dry.

NZ is not populated by Australian men with trucks.

Not that I've ever been - these are just the bits of feedback I've had from the missus.

bigmat

New Zealand is Scotland with bells on (OK you need to go as far as Norway to cover the fjords / sounds). Its an amazing place though.

iPete

Should you go and see New Zealand? Has Katie Price ever had plastic surgery?

Both equally stupid questions with obvious answers

Make sure you do at least one of the bungees, Kawarau bridge is great fun :twisted:

wgwarburton

mattybain wrote:

....You can spend a full day driving 1,000kms and see nothing more interesting than road kill.

In a way, though, that's the point... In order to "get" Oz, you need to get a grip on the scale of the place.

Oz is a very old landscape. NZ is a very new one. If you're interested in landscape then the contrast between them is about as dramatic as it gets.
When we visited Oz we spent a few days going from Alice to Perth on the Gunbarrel highway, then came back on the train to Melbourne. If you do that, then look at a globe, you get a real sense of the size of Oz and the world beyond.

But, like I said before, it's all down to what your interests are- If you watch most TV travel programmes they focus on the people.. to me, that misses the point 'cos people are actually pretty much the same everywhere, they just live their lives differently... To others, that's exactly what makes these programmes fascinating!

So- you can travel to meet people and understand other cultures, you can travel to see the world in all it's amazing glory and variety, you can travel to see ancient cultural treasures, or you can travel to experience stuff that you wouldn't do at home.
Any trip is going to combine these things, a really good trip will strike a balance that suits you.

I often think that the thing I got most out of my big travelling experience was to realise and truly understand what real freedom actually means.
FWIW I don't think I'd have got that if I'd been travelling in the West and constantly been aware that I couldn't afford to do it for long!

Cheers,
W.

cjcp

WGWarburton wrote:

the Gunbarrel highway,

Midnight Oil! Hurrah!

You're right about the size of Oz; it's just massive. And there's a sh!tload of nothing (I mean that in a nice way).

My wife and I preferred NZ by a long stretch. For the reasons AT mentioned in his first line, and others, I favoured NZ over Oz. But NZ felt like the other side of the world - too far from home. That's why we thought Vancouver, with it's direct flight back to the UK, would be a better option.

Got to see NZ though. Four weeks in the South Island wasn't long enough.

Clever Pun

iPete wrote:

Should you go and see New Zealand? Has Katie Price ever had plastic surgery?

Both equally stupid questions with obvious answers

Make sure you do at least one of the bungees, Kawarau bridge is great fun :twisted:

that's queenstown right? pic of me doing that ^ great 'little' bungy that, lots of fun and I went for a wet jump

jamesco

MatHammond wrote:

New Zealand is Scotland with bells on (OK you need to go as far as Norway to cover the fjords / sounds). Its an amazing place though.

That's selling NZ a bit short - how many sub-tropical rain-forests are there around Glasgow? Okay, I'm a kiwi and rather like my country, but I'd still say the only geographical features NZ really lacks are a good hot desert and a properly navigable river. Other than that, we've got it covered

cjcp

Clever Pun wrote:

iPete wrote:

Should you go and see New Zealand? Has Katie Price ever had plastic surgery?

Both equally stupid questions with obvious answers

Make sure you do at least one of the bungees, Kawarau bridge is great fun :twisted:

that's queenstown right? pic of me doing that ^ great 'little' bungy that, lots of fun and I went for a wet jump

You must out of your tree. Why the feck would you jump off a bridge? (I did some sky diving in Motueka. Looking back at the DVD, I quite clearly cr@pped myself when the guy opened door and I was told I would be first out.)

lost_in_thought

WGWarburton wrote:

mattybain wrote:

....You can spend a full day driving 1,000kms and see nothing more interesting than road kill.

In a way, though, that's the point... In order to "get" Oz, you need to get a grip on the scale of the place.

Spot on. There's something incredible about the feeling of it - the emptiness.

And although I take your point about the people of the world being much the same, there are differences. Problem is, you kinda need to get out of the cities. Far too many people visit oz and just stay in sydney or melbourne and don't get out into it.

bigmat

Fair enough, not aware of any glaciers in Scotland either. I have just found much bigger contrasts elsewhere and that's what really interests me, but i did love my time in NZ and it is an amazing place.

sufferingpete

Also try Africa, south America, India, Nepal, Greenland, Canada.

Maybe Australia.

But do not hesitate go NOW!

Later in life you will only regret the things that you never did.

iPete

cjcp wrote:

Clever Pun wrote:

iPete wrote:

Should you go and see New Zealand? Has Katie Price ever had plastic surgery?

Both equally stupid questions with obvious answers

Make sure you do at least one of the bungees, Kawarau bridge is great fun :twisted:

that's queenstown right? pic of me doing that ^ great 'little' bungy that, lots of fun and I went for a wet jump

You must out of your tree. Why the feck would you jump off a bridge? (I did some sky diving in Motueka. Looking back at the DVD, I quite clearly cr@pped myself when the guy opened door and I was told I would be first out.)

Clever Pun, yup thats the Queentown one, I think Queenstown has 3 out of the 4 in the country!

cjcp, you just have to, I'm scared of heights and wasn't very graceful on the platform but when you get dunked in the river below and fly back up realising your alive, its one hell of a buzz, not sure I could do the Nevis jump though, 143metres or something and 8 second freefall. :shock:

gabriel959

jamesco wrote:

MatHammond wrote:

New Zealand is Scotland with bells on (OK you need to go as far as Norway to cover the fjords / sounds). Its an amazing place though.

That's selling NZ a bit short - how many sub-tropical rain-forests are there around Glasgow? Okay, I'm a kiwi and rather like my country, but I'd still say the only geographical features NZ really lacks are a good hot desert and a properly navigable river. Other than that, we've got it covered

Spain them has them all covered and I am not banging on about it.

They speak Spanish though, might be a problem for some. And there is more people living there.

Not bashing NZ or Oz to anyone here but I think a lot of people here find them attractive because the main language is English and its kind of civilized (more than Uganda if you get my drift)

lost_in_thought

gabriel959 wrote:

jamesco wrote:

MatHammond wrote:

New Zealand is Scotland with bells on (OK you need to go as far as Norway to cover the fjords / sounds). Its an amazing place though.

That's selling NZ a bit short - how many sub-tropical rain-forests are there around Glasgow? Okay, I'm a kiwi and rather like my country, but I'd still say the only geographical features NZ really lacks are a good hot desert and a properly navigable river. Other than that, we've got it covered

Spain them has them all covered and I am not banging on about it.

They speak Spanish though, might be a problem for some. And there is more people living there.

Not bashing NZ or Oz to anyone here but I think a lot of people here find them attractive because the main language is English and its kind of civilized (more than Uganda if you get my drift)

Spain has a desert, skiable mountains, and a sub-tropical rainforest? Are you quite sure?

wgwarburton

sufferingpete wrote:

Also try Africa, south America, India, Nepal, Greenland, Canada.
....

I think Africa's much harder to travel around. Less transport infrastructure between places and harder to get to the sights without your own transport/tours. Don't know about Greenland...

Cheers,
W.