During our month down under, Kait and I got to spend 7 days in New Zealand with my sister and her husband. Cost wise, we were expecting it to be similar to Australia, with the added advantage of splitting certain costs with another couple. Let’s see how we did.
- Accommodations: $140.84
- Food: $357.11
- Transportation: $361.84
- Activities: $253.04
- Souvenirs: $103.56
We spent a total of $1,216.38 (CAD) over 7 days in New Zealand. It was a short excursion so there isn’t too much to discuss, but let’s see how it stacks up to all the other countries we’d been to so far in terms of cost per day.
Accommodations
So, the first thing to note here is that our accommodation costs for New Zealand were very low thanks to two things. First, my sister and brother-in-law had friends in Auckland and Wellington that hosted us while we were in those cities. Second, of the 2 nights that we did stay in hotels on the road, the costs were split between 4 people. Of the 2 nights we stayed in hotels, the total cost was $281.67, or an average of $140.84 per room per night. This was slightly more than it was in Australia, but since Kait and I only had to pay for half of that, our total came out much lower.
Food
Food costs were also pretty much the same as Australia. Nothing too interesting about food costs.
Transportation
As with the other countries, transportation costs were split between intercity and intracity travel. For our New Zealand costs, you can basically look at it as a single item, because all our costs were car rental related. (I roughly divided gasoline costs to being either intercity or intracity).
The Toyota Highlander we rented for 7 days was $464.13, or $66.30/day. We drove 1,222.8 km and spent $158.85 on gas. Gas was around NZ$2/litre.
Souvenirs
This was my (and Kait’s) first time in New Zealand, so for me, I looked for banknotes and coins to collect. This worked out to be $103.56, which averages out to a pretty high per day amount because we only spent 7 days in New Zealand.
Activities
Between Auckland and Wellington, we spent time mostly enjoying the natural wonders of New Zealand. Most of that was free, but we did spend NZ$174 to explore the Waitomo Caves. The only other activities we did that cost money were the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua (NZ$54) and the Auckland War Memorial Museum (NZ$50).
As expected, the travel costs in New Zealand were right around the same ballpark as Australia. After Australia and New Zealand, we’d be spending the rest of our trip in South East Asia, so going forward, I expect our costs to drop significantly.