Six things I hate about New Zealand

In all my posts until now I was praising New Zealand in all its aspects, but in this article I would like to talk about some things that I didn’t like there. I will write them from the least disturbing for me to the most.

Here we go:

6. The internet. There are still places in New Zealand where you can’t get an internet connection, and I am not talking about hiking in the nature! In some other places you have only dial-up connection. Even in Thailand I never had problems with broadband internet availability. One more thing – Internet in New Zealand is expensive, even the dial-up connection.

5. The cell phone coverage. The cell phone coverage is very poor in New Zealand comparing to the rest of the world. Once I got stuck with my car in the middle of the road from Lewis Pass to Kaikoura and I couldn’t phone for service. Good thing that I got help from people passing by. Even in some small towns I didn’t get reception.

4. Camping Grounds and Holiday Parks.

Reception closes early. If you get there to late you might not be able to get a tent site.

Prices for a tent site are per person. What does it matter if there is one person in the tent or two or three? Tent still will require one tent site. Ok, so those three people will use more showers and toilets, but why the price doubles for each additional person? They still take the same single tent site.

There are camping grownds where you have to buy tokens for hot water in showers, and in every such place you get different time of hot water for the token. There are also places where the token boxes are OUTSIDE of the shower cabin, so what happens if you ran out of hot water and want to put additional token?

The shower cabins in many holiday parks were built without any thought about the person who actually will use them. They are either tiny, or you just don’t have a bench inside to put your stuff on, or there is no curtain and all your stuff gets wet, and most common problem is that there are simply not enough hanging hooks! I call to all the campground owners who want to rebuild their shower facilities, or those who build a new ones – drop me an email, and I will write in much detail what a good shower cabin should look like.

3. In small towns everything closes very early. Yes, I know that this is how it is in many places around the world, but come on people! New Zealand’s main source of income are tourists, so do something about it. If I arrive late at a small town and just want to buy something to eat in a supermarket, why shouldn’t I be able to do that ?

2. Unsealed roads. There are too much unsealed roads in New Zealand. Taking into account that most New Zealand’s roads are narrow and windy, and it rains most of the time, it becomes very dangerous to drive on unsealed roads. During one of my trips to New Zealand, in order to walk the Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk I had to drive on very difficult unsealed and windy road from Rotorua to Lake Waikaremoana for about 90 kilometers! I really hope that this road is sealed now.

1. And here is the thing that disturbed me the most: the separated cold and hot water taps! One sink, two separate taps for cold and hot water, and no mixer! This is how you either get burned by the hot water, or get freezed by the cold, but you will never be able to get the warm water. So most of the time I had to wash my hands and face with the cold water, having hot water so near but not being able to use it!

Well, this is my list of things I didn’t like in New Zealand. Any comments will be highly appreciated. Everybody is welcome to write about the things they didn’t like or anything else on the subject.