I am going to visit to New Zealand this summer ( winter in NZ). I ordered this book " New Zealand (eyewitness travel guide )" from amazon.com. I like this guide, it has very explainable.You can find where to stay, where to eat and transportation data in NZ.
Thank you. New Zealand (Eyewitness Travel Guides)
Liked it for what I needed it. It only gives a VERY BRIEF overview of what there is to see and to do. You basically just get a general idea and then you have to do some more research yourself. I was lucky I was visiting a friend who lived there. Not a good guide book if you're going on your own and need to rely on it.
Liked the abundance of photos.
It seemed like they included mostly all very touristy attractions. There's other things to do in NZ that are very cool and sometimes even free and should be mentioned.
Also, I wish they had talked a little bit more about camp grounds and hostels. I found that to be a great alternative to pricey hotels while traveling around.
Additionally, you also have to get a more detailed map of the major cities (usually I found them for free at the I-Sites) and the roads if you're traveling by car.
No mention in the book about the tour buses like Kiwi Adventures. Would have been useful to know about but I'm glad I didn't use those buses after all.
Also, they don't really mention any of the Lord of the Rings sights. You can buy the (very pricey) LotR tour book in NZ.
Tongariro Alpine Crossing deserved a double page on its own in my opinion but they just gave it a brief mentioning when they talked about the general area.
This guide book received useful product reviews and I bought it but I really ended up not being fond of it as I used it both to plan travel and while in New Zealand. I was looking for a guide that would allow all members of our party to be able to participate in the events planned (so something focused on walking/hiking tours or camping wouldn't work as we had elderly people with mobility issues) and for that part of it, the guide book was good. It would tell you if certain places, or even certain more popular trails were handicap or wheelchair accessible. The pictures were also excellent. However, I found the actual guidebook frustrating. I was looking for a way to make "base stations" where we could stay for multiple days and then venture out to different places from these central (fairly popular or well known)locations. However, the locations and distances are given so they are related to each other and not necessarily to a central point. The book is laid out in color coded regions and includes driving tours of places to visit in certain orders. Perhaps if we were actually following a suggested driving tour it would have been useful but for how I wanted to use the book, I found it frustrating.
One example is if you look pps 236 to 237 at the South Island West Coast town of Greymouth, the largest town on the west coast. It is one end of the Trans Alpine Railroad, which leaves daily from Christ Church and a good base point for visiting a variety of parks in the area including the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. However, in the book you don't actually read about the Glaciers except as a tiny blurb on the following page as part of a 2 page spread on Westland/Tai Poutini National Park. But nowhere does it list this is a 2 hour drive from Greymouth. However on the same page as Greymouth you read about Paparoa National Park. There is nothing which explicitly says these Greymouth and Paparoa are about 40 minutes drive apart. Then in the environs section of Greymouth, you can find mention of Shanty town (7 miles away) and Lake Brunner (roughly 37km away, or about 35 min drive). The next town listed on the same page is Hokitika (again, 38km, about 35 minutes drive) You might well think since Paparoa and Lake Brunner are both about 35 to 40 minutes drive you might see them in the same day or perhaps plan an overnight there to spend more time in the park areas. Or perhaps you wish to explore the town of Hokitika after spending the morning at Lake Brunner or Paparoa. However no where in the book does it say that Paparoa is North of Greymouth, Lake Brunner is East of Greymouth and Hokitika is South of Greymouth. In fact, it does not really even explicitly list these places as being in a ring around Greymouth so you could use it as a base,(something I realized as I looked to create our itinerary) the entries are just listed sequentially, Paparoa, Greymouth, Hokitika and on the next page a 2 page spead on Tai Poutini. The book does contain an area map, in this case 16 pages prior which would show you the general layout of the area, but it meant I had to constantly keep it marked to flip back to when I encountered something interesting. I don't always like using scale to plot out distances, and in truth it became easier to keep a computer window open to google maps and just plan from there. What made it additionally frustrating was if you found you had time on your hands while away and you flipped to the page in the book to look at what was in the area, there might be entries listed that peaked your interest but depending on where you where, determining the actual distance you were from the entry was not always easy, even using the area map. We ended up using our GPS similarly to how I had been using google maps at home, putting in a place from the guide book and then seeing if it was a do-able distance from where we actually were located.
Even a city like Christ Church received an 8 page spread but 2 of those 8 pages (1/4 of the info on the city) were taken up with information on the Botanical gardens, most of which consisted of a map of the gardens.
All in all, it had great pictures but, I felt, limited information and was more difficult to use for planning your own tours as opposed to following their suggested tours. I have had more luck with Insiders guides, Insight guides and Rough guides, even Fodors guides, than this Eyewitness travel guide. I would suggest it as a nice complement to another guide which gives more information but I would not use it as my only guide to planning a trip. - New Zealand Travel Guide - New Zealand Travel'
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