What are your favorite smallish New Zealand towns?

October 22, 2008 8:37 AM

What are your favorite smallish New Zealand towns?

My S.O. and I will be spending a few months working (as telecommuting tourists) and living in New Zealand (among other places). We'll be flying into Auckland, but I'd rather find a smaller (but not too small) town to find a short-term, furnished, Internet-ready apartment to rent. Where do you recommend?

Bonus points for any tips on finding said apartment aside from the obvious (Craigslist, local newspapers, etc.).

posted by nitsuj to travel & transportation (14 comments total)

I liked the feel of Nelson when I was there a few years ago. To be honest,as Auckland has something like 80% of NZ's population, any other town is 'small' so you might like Christchurch or Wellington too.

I lived in the back of a station wagon so you don't want my apartment-hunting advice!
posted by i_cola at 9:42 AM on October 22, 2008

The Bay of Islands (maybe Russell or Opua rather than actually in Paihia, especially if you'll have a car), Nelson, Wanaka (if you want mountains rather than a beach).... Citiwise I'd go back to Dunedin or Wellington, Christchurch was nice but I wouldn't want to live somewhere so flat.

Been a while since I was there so no specific recommendations.
posted by Lebannen at 11:03 AM on October 22, 2008

Auckland has something like 80% of NZ's population

Try a quarter. Wellington and Christchurch are 400,000 a piece.

Napier is pricey these days, but very nice, ditto Nelson. Both have a good climate; Napier is a bit older as retirees from Wellington have moved there. Nelson is a short hop from Wellington (40 minute plane trip) and close to the Marlborough Sounds.

A lot of it will depend on your threshold for too small, though.
posted by rodgerd at 11:27 AM on October 22, 2008

You could look on Trademe.co.nz for rentals (Trademe is the major web auction site in NZ, (bigger than ebay here) and it also has travel and real estate listings)
posted by slightlybewildered at 11:27 AM on October 22, 2008

I believe you can get ADSL in Raglan, which has some of the best surf anywhere, rugged coast, laidback populace, and is 40 minutes drive from Hamilton or about 2 hours from Auckland. I have a friend who works from home for IBM there.

Try not to confine your search to apartments unless you really hate the idea of a house - in smaller towns people don't generally build apartments, but there will be cheap houses to let.

Can you define "smallish"? By the standards of the rest of the developed world, every town in New Zealand is small.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:38 PM on October 22, 2008

If you're planning on working around Auckland than north of Auckland is nice e.g. around Matakana/Warkworth. There's some lovely towns south as well like Cambridge etc

I'm sure there are some nice towns in the lower North Island but having lived there for the first 25 odd years of my life I can assure you that the Taranaki/Manawatu area is shithole. John Cleese called Palmerston North a nice place to commit suicide... :) My home town!

Wellington is indeed a lovely place and the top of the Sth Island is nice. The Wairarapa some folks love but other folks find it a bit isolated but there's great wine growing and the weathers good. Not too far to Wellington by car as well.
posted by dasfreak at 4:06 PM on October 22, 2008

it's going to sound odd, but i really enjoyed rotorua. the sulfur smell from the hot springs was strangely not a negative.
posted by phritosan at 4:07 PM on October 22, 2008

In New Zealand, craigslist is not really the obvious. Seconding trademe, instead.

Also seconding looking for a house rather than an apartment. Which few months are you planning on doing this? From early Dec to late Feb you can often rent places quite cheaply in Dunedin & Christchurch that are being vacated by students going home for the summer. I'd imagine Palmerston North, too, although my experience is limited to the South Island.

Otherwise, yeah, you'll probably like Nelson if you're after smallish, although there is relatively little to do here, we do have nice weather.
posted by narrativium at 4:56 PM on October 22, 2008

Seconding Wanaka. It is outstandingly beautiful, mountains and lake, and still small-town enough (or was when I was there a few years ago...)

As everyone else says, what's your definition of small? Wellington and Christchurch are both lovely cities with (I thought) good facilities and plenty to do. Many of the smaller towns are beautiful (Tekapo, the Marlborough region) but might not come with Internet-ready furnished apartments. The South Island is more picturesque and less heavily populated.
posted by andraste at 6:32 PM on October 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

http://www.nzholidayhomes.co.nz/ is another place to check if you're planning on moving around and looking for shorter stays as well as http://www.bookabach.co.nz/ The high season is December-February when it's summer and the kids are out from school.

I like Coromandel but I have family there so I'm biased. Seconding a weird fondness for Rotorua. New Plymouth is an interesting mix of old school small town and hipster. The Kapiti Coast is sunny and cruisy, close to Wellington without the Rimutakas to cross. If you don't mind crossing the Rimutakas to get to Wellington then Wairarapa towns like Greytown, Martinbrough or Carterton are okay, but really small.
posted by BAKERSFIELD! at 8:46 PM on October 22, 2008

The smaller the town the less likely you'll find a nice place - and you'll probably be completely shit out of luck when it comes to getting decent broadband.

Wellington is probably the most connected city (because it's tiny), it's also a lovely little place to visit - well, as long as you get a place in town it's nice, or maybe at the top of the cablecar, next to the botanic gardens. The outer burbs are completely arse (you certainly wouldn't want to be up in the Hutt).

Christchurch is nice enough when the weather is great, and again as long as you get a nice central place (the suburbs, IMHO, really really suck). The gardens are lovely in the summer, very large, nice for a stroll. Rowing (or punting) on the Avon is a lovely thing to do with a girl.

Don't necessarily discount Auckland, a nice house in Mt Eden near the village and in the shadow of the volcano would probably be a lovely thing. (Auckland has everything everywhere else has and then some, but it also has vast sprawls of lame burbs that dilute it a bit. The best nightlife, as many cafes & restaurants as the rest of the city combined, and so on. It also has a bunch of little islands in the gulf - you could potentially find a nice place on Waiheke that might suit your bill, and that's just a 30 minute fast ferry ride from the city.)

If you can provide a better idea of what you actually want to do while you're here - and what time of year - people will be able to make more informed suggestions.

We have a lot of small towns, you see.

I doubt you'll get a pre-connected furbished apartment in most of them though. But our main telecomms provider is pretty responsive in my experience, and you can probably get everything started up before you fly in.
posted by The Monkey at 11:32 PM on October 22, 2008

Do not rule out wireless internet

Vodafone New Zealand offers 3G internet over a lot of the country.

they are currently building a 900MHZ network over all the areas they currently cover with 2G coverage.

2G will give you dial up speeds and the 3G seeds will range from 3.6Mbps - 7.6Mbps

The prices are reasonable the only downside is the data caps with the maximum plan giving 6GB's of data before per MB charging kicks in to effect

As the 900MHZ network is not fully deployed the coverage areas are not listed online as of yet, if you drop me a message about where you are thinging of moving then i can check for you.

This also has the benefit of being able to travel and still have internet access at at least dialup speeds virtually everywhere in the country

check out the vodafone website for more information www.vodafone.co.nz
posted by Phcyso at 11:18 PM on October 23, 2008

Mmm.. whether or not 3G broadband prices here are reasonable is debatable (and to most people from outside NZ they're rather on the high side for the data you get) and as the OP won't be signing up for a term plan they're probably going to have to shell out a couple hundred for a VMC card or a Vodem, unless Vodafone has significantly changed things. Not to mention that the data prices are higher if not on a plan.

Also I have to say that I and everyone else I know that uses Vodafone's 3G Broadband has serious issues with its reliability. If they're telecommuting I'd guess that not being able to connect for hours at a time would be frustrating.
posted by narrativium at 2:08 AM on October 24, 2008

Wellington is a small town in comparison to Auckland. It's young and hip, has a lot of culture going on, but it's a city.

Wanaka is one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand, surrounded by national parks, mountains, and amazing colors. You can go rock climbing, sky diving, mountain biking and play golf.
It's just big enough to support a supermarket [which is not a given in many of New Zealand's small towns] and a quirky cinema with the best chocolate chip cookies in the world.
posted by yeara at 8:17 AM on October 24, 2008