donnisons

Hi

Can anyone give me some advice. We are Approved in Principle for PR and will shortly be sending our passports off to get our blue stickers - yeah!

We have planned and booked a trip across America on the way and are now looking to plan an itinerary for our arrival in New Zealand. We want to travel both islands before deciding where we will settle. Does anyone have suggestion on route, destinations we should see.

Any help greatly received.

teeym

Depends what luxury of time you have - we did our North Island only tour in 3 weeks, which managed to take in Auckland (twice), Whangarei (pronounced Fun-gar-ray in case you didn't know!), Hamilton, New Plymouth, Wellington, Palmerstone North (v. briefly), Napier and Rotorua.

Timing wise, I reckoned it was still a bit short; it takes at least 3-4 days to get any real feel for a place, so if you can target places a bit more specifically then I would. Certainly for our big "get-a-job-or-die-trying" excursion that is being pencilled in for June-ish, we'll chop that back to Jafaland, Wellywood, Hamilton, NP and maybe Whangarei - with diversions only being made if specific interviews come up elsewhere.

Can't comment on the South Island, but I'm sure there will be plenty along shortly who can!

With regard to the American leg, I really like San Francisco!

Persephone

It does depend on the amount of time you want to spend travelling as opposed to looking for work and also what line of work you're in. Do you want to have a sort of combined recce/ holiday or are you going to stick to purely investigating where you want to live? It will be hard to get a good idea of what a place would be like to live in but you should be able to rule out some places.
If I was you I would concentrate on those towns and cities where I was most likely to get a job, this does depend on what you do for a living. You may decide you love Napier but if the job opportunities are limited then it may not be a realistic option. In the South Island the towns are mainly along the north and down the east side of the island- Nelson, Blenheim, Christchurch, Dunedin and various smaller towns inbetween. I personally would not like to live on the west coast eg Westport and Greymouth, for me they are too isolated and rainy Teeym has mentioned the main north island cities [Palmy isn't that bad, I lived there for a year]
You could always plan an itinerary including all the major towns and send off CVs to any jobs going or any possible employers telling them when you'll be in their neck of the woods and available for interview. I have had two employers in NZ and neither were advertising when they offered me work so the trick is to let them know you exist

donnisons

Hi thanks for the replies so far. Some more information.

We hope to arrive at the beginning of October, husband is a teacher and time isn't too much of a problem. Hoping to visit as much as we can then perhaps revisit places we like best to look at options for places to live.

Any more help greatly received.

Many thanks

Am Loolah

Hi donnisons,

We did a 3 week reccie in a campervan and from what i can remember we managed the following;

Auckland - stay a night to get over jetlag.
Auckland - Paihia
Paihia - Orewa
Orewa - Coromandel
Coromandel - Whitianga
Whitianga - Mount Maunganui
Mount Maunganui - Rotorua
Rotorua - Taupo
Taupo - Wellington - Kaikora
Kaikora - Wellington
Wellington - Auckland

You can tell we ran out of time at the end! Everywhere takes way longer to get to than you think it will and we were in danger of getting somehwre, sleeping and then setting off again. With this in mind and 4 kids in tow, we threw out the planned itinary on about Day 4 and relaxed in the Kiwi way!

Professional_Gypsy

Hi donnisons,

If you have the luxury of being able to wait a month or 2 for a job then I'd definitely recommend you take your time travelling around - and see the whole country. It will be an amazing journey for sure - I've travelled around both islands twice now - and still it blows me away. Ive also met expats couples that had taken work after coming over after a couple of weeks - as they were scared of not finding work later - but regretted not taking the time to travel around when both partners had free time.

I came over to NZ 2.5 years ago now - and bought myself a motorhome to travel around (rental costs for over a month get very pricey in peak time). I spent 4 months travelling North and South Islands - and found Wellington to be the place for me (there were nicer places - but no jobs). I am in fact still living in the motorhome!

If you purely looking for places to work - then the very least you should check Auckland, Tauranga, Napier, Wellington in the North Island, and Nelson, Christchurch and Dunedin in the South Island.