New Zealand by bus

***Storyline:* *Home to home westward***

We usually write about the trains we take, but our experience with buses in NZ is exceptional and worth a post even before we finish our trains post. We also have a post about the bus drivers to follow this one.

New Zealand is a country of extremes in geography, weather and emergency responses. Extreme weather can throw a road or a train track up in the air or under tons of rock and gravel in no time. Steep mountains, earthquakes and torrential rains cause many landslips. Strong winds and heavy rain have been part of our experience here, with bridges washed away, resulting in road and rail closures causing us to change or adjust our schedule/itinerary.

There are trains (mainly touristy) and buses that can take you everywhere in this country. We had booked all of them well in advance, from home. It was much cheaper than renting a car, even after we added a return cross-country journey on the TranzAlpine (between Christchurch on South Island’s east coast and Greymouth on the west). This because the Waiho River bridge on the state highway south of Franz Josef had been washed away, and we were unable to continue our southbound journey from Greymouth. And having experienced the roads, I am so happy we didn’t think of renting a car. My motion sickness would not have allowed us to enjoy the drive.

The roads are narrow, winding and yes, I read it somewhere, “pukey” (as graphically demonstrated by an unfortunate fellow passenger on our journey from Dunedin to Queenstown). There is often not even a place to pull over and stop if one needs to. It is incredible that they can even maintain their road system.

Besides, on a bus someone else does the work and you just sit and enjoy the views! The downside of course, for all who don’t suffer motion sickness, is that you can’t just decide to explore roads off the beaten track and experience new vistas – if you had the time and budget.

All public transportation is booked online (or by phone). Buses don’t do tickets. The bus driver has either a printed list with passengers’ names or uses a phone to look them up. The stop (a street, corner, etc.) is mentioned on the voucher they e-mail or SMS you when booking. No bus station, staff, etc. We did see one office of the InterCity service in Christchurch – housed within the city’s bus interchange station, but that is all. The office handles the phone calls and sells tickets, but does not act as a bus station. Buses pick up and drop off on the road outside. Very efficient.

We booked most of our buses, including the tour from Queenstown to Milford Sound, through the InterCity web site. It operates NZ’s largest passenger network that combines the services of InterCity, GreatSights and Gray Line and connect to over 600 destinations.

GreatSights and Gray Line run the tour buses, have more luxurious coaches with glass roofs, include helpful commentary (see our Drivers post) and stop at many sightseeing points for photo/selfie opportunities.

There was no InterCity bus running from Queenstown to Mt. Cook. They all will drop you of in Twizel, some 50km south or Tekapo 100km southeast around Lake Pukaki. And there is a Mt. Cook shuttle from those stops. After some research I found a tour from Queenstown to Christchurch via Mt. Cook, run by AwesomeNZ. I e-mailed them and after some back and forth they agreed to drop us off at Mt. Cook on the way to Christchurch and then pick us up a few days later for the remainder of the journey.

If you go… (Travel tips and suggestions)

You can use the InterCity site (https://www.intercity.co.nz/) to book buses across the country. Their standard fare is the cheapest one. It is not cancelable unless the bus does not run for some reasons as it was with our buses via Franz Josef. Since the road was closed, we got a refund for the two of the booked in advance buses. However, you can change your booking up to 2 hours before departure without penalty.

For those with more fluid plans, a more expensive, flexible fare is offered.

Unfortunately, there is no discount for youth or retired foreign tourists here.

We traveled on three different carriers, but all were booked through Intercity:

InterCity, often a commuter bus, but could be carrying tons of tourists, especially on South Island.
GreatSights runs many of the tours, but it is also used as a commuter bus by some.
AwesomeNZ is another tour company, which we used for some of our travels.

Once in NZ, we also found that the three companies are somewhat integrated, so it doesn’t matter who you e-mail or call they’ll handle your request for all services.

The tour buses have many stops at designated sightseeing points.

There are smaller inter-city buses too. There are quite a few of those, and we had experience with one. Our InterCity-booked bus from Te Anau to Queenstown was rather late in the day. The owner of our accommodation told us about local company Tracknet, and suggested we call Intercity and they would happily re-book us. Tracknet runs small buses that tow a trailer to handle passengers’ luggage.

From buses