Amazon.com Review
From Antarctica to Zimbabwe, if you’re going there chances are Lonely Planet has been there first. With a pithy and matter-of-fact writing style, these guides are guaranteed to calm the nerves of first-time world travelers, while still listing off-the-beaten-path finds sure to thrill even the most jaded globetrotters. Lonely Planet has been perfecting its guidebooks for nearly 30 years, and as a result has experience and know-how similar to an older sibling’s “been there” advice. The original backpacker’s bible, the LP series has recently widened its reach. While still giving insights for the low-budget traveler, the books now list a wide range of accommodations and itineraries for those with less time than money.
Discover how to make the most of a visit to this outdoor adventure mecca (whether you’re hiking, kayaking, rock climbing, skiing, snowboarding, sailing, caving, biking, or simply strolling). This guide provides a 20-page, full-color flora and fauna section, as well as listings on where to stay (from farms to resorts), background on the Maori people’s history and culture, and 113 maps including national parks and ski areas. –Kathryn True
–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
As usual the guide-book standard is set by Lonely Planet
– Outside
–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
When we were considering what to do during our month in New Zealand, travel agents were pleading with us to have everything lined up before “the Y2k rush.” So, being the literal engineering types, we bought a couple of books — the Lonely Planet NZ and the Frommers for Under $50/day — and started poring through them.
Quite frankly, our initial impression of the Lonely Planet book was too dense to be useful to us. The Frommer’s guide was more helpful and the author, Elizabeth Hansen, was available to “consult” on the trip on an hourly basis. Because we’d be toting our 18-month old, we used her services and pre-booked the entire trip.
Once there, we found the Lonely Planet book much more useful. The Lonely Planet guide excels at providing abundant information about towns, including attractions, restaurants and maps giving a rough layout.
For example, one of the folks at a Visitor center clued us into Farewell Spit, an area we were going to forego because it was well off our chosen route. As it turned out, Tahuna Park, our campground in Nelson was pretty bad (right under an airport takeoff path; lots of people permanently living there; undermaintained kitchens), and we didn’t relish the idea of spending three days there as originally planned.
The side trip to Farewell Spit was long and we’d have to find some place relatively nearby to the Spit to make it a reasonable trip.
This is where the Frommer’s guide was very weak. It caters more to the B&B crowd, and there isn’t that much north (or west) of Nelson. The Lonely Planet book, however, paid for itself by suggesting a lot of options, providing maps of the little towns, and listing restaurants where we might stop at for “snack time.”
If you do intend a trip to New Zealand, you’ll definitely appreciate the Lonely Planet guide.
There are probably countries you can visit without a Lonely Planet Guide. New Zealand is not one of these countries.The way to enjoy New Zealand is to travel from place to place and not to pre-book everything ( you are too dependent on the weather to do that and also it takes away the feeling of freedom this country has to offer). The more flexible you want to be on a trip the more important it is to have a good guide. We arrived in Auckland with only a general idea what we wanted to do in our three weeks and we found that we left all other guidebooks in the suitcase and relied exclusively on the Lonely Planet to plan our trip. The guide contains all necessary information and is surprisingly up to date. The most important is that it is not a commercial tourism promoter but that it gives you an honest impression on what there is that you can do.
E.G. it was pretty clear after reading the relevant chapters that for our family it was more appropiate to go to Wanaka instead of Queenstown because the children were not yet at an age that they could enjoy all the thrills of the latter and that Wanaka, whilst offering jetboating and biking was more appropiate.
We had the book continuously with us during the driving and it made the journey so much more interesting through knowing always a couple of KM ahead what the interesting sites and spots were.
The book could have been priced at a much higher level; we still would have bought it.
Highly recommended for every would be traveller to New Zealand
We just returned from a one month excursion through Nea Zealand with this guide book constantly at our side. We found it invaluable in our daily selection of things to do and places to stay and eat. During our travels we also noted this guide being used by many other travellers and particularly in the hands of the hikers and backpackers. It was the most prominent of guide books available in the book shops and information centers throughout the country. Should be required reading by anyone preparing an unescorted visit to New Zealand and even for anyone on an organized tour it would be most helpful.