New Zealand had held some interest for me for a while, I'm not sure why. When a friend, Cayne, left the UK in October 2000 it seemed like an opportunity not to be missed. We figured we would give him a chance to settle a bit before arriving and so January seemed like a good bet.

Flights: Early November saw us looking for flights. Initially we considered doing stop-overs but it added a lot more money to already expensive tickets, and more time to an already short trip. We settled on direct flights with Air New Zealand obtained using the Expedia service on the web. We spent a lot of time manipulating the start and end dates to keep the cost down.

Research: We bought a copy of the Lonely Planet book and skim read some of the general information. I bought Rich the Insight guide for Christmas — mainly because of the photographs in it. I also did a lot of internet research, storing anything interesting on my handspring visor. I read a couple of travelogues from the rec.travel.library website and also got advice from a Kiwi friend at work. Over Christmas I caught up with some friends who'd been to New Zealand twice and jotted down their suggestions.

Accommodation: Initially we planned to book our first 3 nights in Auckland but Cayne offered us his spare room. Thanks Cayne!

Where to go: Using the various information we'd collected — from books, the internet, friends — we had an idea of some of the places we wanted to go but we had no fixed itinerary. We pre-booked a car for 2 weeks with Omega, a company recommended by friends.

Move on to Getting there or go back to the contents page

Comment on the Preface section