Some Basic Costs
If you're prepared to camp you might get by on as little as $40 a day, but you should count on around $60 a day for food, board and transport if you stay in hostels, travel on buses and eat and drink carefully. Stay in motels and B&Bs, and eat out regularly, and you'll need to budget $100 or more: extras such as scuba-diving courses, clubbing, car rental and tours will all add to your costs. Hostel accommodation will set you back $15-25 a person, while a double room in a motel costs between $45 and $100. Food , on the whole, is good value: counter meals in hotels rarely cost more than $12; restaurants cost upwards of $25 for a reasonable three-course feed, and many let you BYO (Bring Your Own) wine or beer. Buying your own ingredients is not always the cheapest way to eat in the bigger cities, where there's sure to be a range of budget diners and food halls, but overall you'll save; meat and fresh seasonal produce are generally inexpensive. For a nation of sociable boozers, drinking out is surprisingly costly, at around $2.75 or more for a beer in a bar - it's cheaper bought in bulk from a bottle shop. Given the size of the country, transport can make a major dent in your budget and is perhaps the area in which you're most likely to overspend. Pre-planning helps - an open-jaw plane ticket, for example, saves you having to get back to where you started; or pay a little extra for an international flight that gives you some discounted internal fares. There are also a huge variety of bus and train passes available overseas. Driving yourself may not always save money, but it does give you a great deal more flexibility. Finding passengers willing to share costs is one way to minimize expenses and is usually not too difficult - try the notice boards at hostels and other meeting places. Buying a used car will, realistically, set you back $4000 or more for a mechanically sound vehicle with a reasonable resale value, but even $1500 should buy something that will get you around - if not in the greatest of style. Renting a car starts at $29 a day for local rental to at least $65 a day for longer distances. Fuel averages 95c a litre, but with substantial local variations.
Try this!Johnnymac says "motorhome rentals. www.mydriveholiday.com. for New Zealand and Australia and even USA"
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