A trip to the land of KIWI's

[+coinpopper]

My wife and I are making plans to visit New Zealand, both Islands, sometime in 2012. At the moment our trip could be either April or September.

We have several questions and would appreciate your thoughts. Which would be a better time to visit? Before I retired I was in Auckland twice, both times in late August/eary September.

Is there a particular or specific forum for North and South Islands, and where would I find it? If not, is there an individual or two or more that will correspond fairly regularlly with me as our plans become final? At this time we know that we will be spending most of outr time in Auckland and Christchurch. While our time will be somewhat limited we would love to visit with fellow cachers and It is a given that I must find a few caches on my quest. I have a few good years left and I hope to reach 10,00 caches before I finally lay down to rest.

I guess my last question for now is about maps. Is there a source for local maps for my Garmins? I use the GPC 60Csx and The Oregan 300.

When visiting the UK last year, there was a chap in London that had a very good set of maps on SIM cards that were much more than adequate, and much more current that those offered by Garmin.

 

In hopes that I have done this correctly and the post will go through, I will sign off now.

 

Cache on

 

Jack Lowry

 

///aka/// Coinpopper

 

Dallas, Texas area

USA

[+GSVNoFixedAbode]

Hi Jack,

 

Most of the Kiwis tend to hang out in the NZ GPS forum (also see other links pinned at the top of this forum). For the maps, there are excellent FREE auto-routing maps to be had at the NZ Open GPS Maps site. Their forums also have links to topo and Dept. of Conservation trail maps as well.

 

If you plan to travel around the country, I always use a rule of thumb of 2:1 for South island:North Island. So if you've got (for example) 3 weeks, then plan for 2 of those in the South Island.

 

Cheers,

G.

[+Greenblat]

Hi Jack,

Definitely April - the weather is usually quite settled and calm although some frosty mornings can be expected. September (spring) is usually windy, wet, and can be cold.

 

The link for forums & maps are above and I have to agree more time spent in the South Isl is better even though I live in Auckland!

 

Please feel free to get in touch if you need more detailed info or would like to meet up with some local cachers when you get here.

 

Alan/GreenBLAT

[+kjwx]

Of course, if you delayed - or extended - your trip until October 2012 you could attend New Zealand's first MEGA event to be held in the South Island city of Dunedin over the Labour Weekend public holiday.

For more information, see http://www.gps.org.nz/geocaching/mega2012