The bogus sign that has all the colour and logo of a real DOC sign, asks track uses to

“Please do not defecate in our National Parks. Heavy duty tramping nappies are available from all DOC visitor centres free of charge, and DOC hut wardens carry an emergency supply. Toilets in conservation areas are strictly for urination only.”

Understandingly no one has claimed responsibility for the fake signs but the message appears to be clearly from someone who believe that commercialisation of New Zealand’s walks have led to an increase in human waste pollution.

The Interlaken area is very similar to the south of The South Island of New Zealand with the exception that our small towns lack these types of retail stores. My advice to any would be traveller looking for that romantic get-away to New Zealand is to bring your own adult novelties.

1 – Please drive on the left hand side of the road…..at all times.
2 – Please note that New Zealand dives on the left hand side of the road in both the North and South Islands.
3 – Please drive on the left hand side while in car parking lots.
4 – Parking your over length beast is your problem so please don’t park with the camper tail end blocking parking lot access ways.
5 – Councils will ticket campervans that take more than one street park.
6 – If your camper van does not have toilet facilities, please don’t use our parks and reserves as one.
7 – NZ law makes rear view mirrors a requirement on all vehicles. Please use them to see the pain and misery that you are inflicting on vehicles following.
8 – Once you have discovered these mirrors, they may provide hours of entertainment watching cars jostle for pole position in the que behind you. When you are bored of this dance of frustration, please pull over to let them overtake.
9 – Please don’t get frustrated that you may need to pull to the side of the road more than occasionally to allow vehicles to pass.
10 – Convoying with friends in other campervans can be fun but not for drivers following who find passing two, three or sometimes four vans almost impossible.
11 – Passing lanes require you to drive in the left hand lane when not overtaking.
12 – Please do not attempt to use a passing lane to overtake a slower vehicle when other cars are behind you.
13 – New Zealand has plenty of open space for everyone to enjoy. Please respect other holiday makers privacy when parking you vehicle in a scenic locations.
14 – Campervans are not 4 wheel drive vehicles so please don’t get offended if other vehicles do not stop to offer you assistance in off road situations.
15 – Please ask your rental car company and not petrol station customers if your van requires diesel or unleaded fuel.
16 – New Zealanders are happy to offer directions but please supplement their advice with your own New Zealand road map.
17 – Please don’t decide that intersections are the ideal ‘time out’ to read your road map.

New Zealand experienced a 37 per cent increase in Australians who holidayed here compared with the same period last year. Many commentated have proffered very plausible reasons for the sharp increase in Australian arrivals.

Common analysis has the combination of high capacity on the trans Tasman air route resulting in lower airfares, combined with the favourable exchange rate as the likely stimulus for the sharp increase in arrivals.

Many Australian visitors that I have talked to have confirmed that these factors were a major influence in their destination choice but it was the Australian Government’s stimulus package earlier this year that was the real prompt for their holiday. Most state that without the AUD $950 per tax payer payout, they would not have travelled overseas this year.

Prime Minister Rudd’s fiscal stimulant payment designed to buoy the Australian economy has resulted in a large stimulus for the New Zealand economy.

The flip side to this Aussie invasion is the dramatic decrease in higher spending Asian, Japanese and North American visitors.

By contrast, Australian visitors are lower per day spenders. When you further consider that the stimulus package cash payment was means tested and capped at $100,000 taxable income. The sharp increase in arrivals has only cushioned the industries downturn.

Driving up to the ski field during the morning rush was the usual signs of cars, buses and vans snaking up the mountain. However today there was an equal amount of cars returning down the mountain. A continue stream of cars leaving the mountain at 9.45am raised my suspicions.

The lower mountain was clear and calm with a little light patchy cloud lingering. As we progressed further the cloud got thicker to a point that visibility was a total white out. When we finally arrived at the ski field car park the maximum visibility was about fifteen metres at best. Definitely not a cracker of a day.

All the major New Zealand ski fields issue an early morning snow report. This is usually faxed or emailed to all the major hotels, local cafes and even the petrol stations receive and post in their widows the current and predicted mountain conditions.

To be fair these reports are done very early in the morning and like a weather forecast, they are to some degree a prediction. However when I compared the government mountain forecast with that of the ski field the two beared little resemblance. The ski reports are nothing more than advertising brochures for the ski fields. They put a positive spin on even the worst of weather days. But there’s more, the telephone radio reports are even more farcical and can not be relied on.

The best tip to getting a real idea as to the conditions is to go to the web cam page of the ski field and see for yourself. The only problem is if you want an early start, the web cams on most fields only start to update from 9 or 9.30 am.

With the rivers low before the spring snow thaw, I took the opportunity to brave the cold and scout a few new areas.

In what I would call a very remote Otago river valley I stumbled upon two Australian visitors who were prospecting with the latest Minelab metal detector. A long conversation revealed that it is becoming common among the Australian gold detecting community to holiday in New Zealand with their metal detectors. The theory is that most New Zealand amateur gold prospectors do not use metal detectors giving Australians an advantage.

As this video shows, some New Zealand gold fossickers do use detectors but generally speaking the Australians are correct. New Zealand gold fossickers use sluices and gold pans in or very close to rivers. The advantage of metal detectors are that you can prospect up the river valley walls and not be restricted by the need to have running water.

On a recent arrival at Queenstown airport from Brisbane, I was awaiting my turn in a long queue for the usual biosecurity questions about the possibility that my bag contained fruit, nuts or raw meat and fish. To the credit of the inspector, he changed his monotonous question to that of “did I have any boomerangs or didgeridoos” Luckily I had left my two metre long didgeridoo at home, so I was then shown an equally long queue for the final x-ray machine check of my luggage.

While waiting for the x-ray, I noticed that the people behind me had declared to the officer that they had hiking boots. It is a NZ requirement that all hiking or sporting footwear be properly cleaned prior to arrival and declared to the biosecurity inspector.

The hiking boot visitors were quickly whisked away to have their boots removed from their luggage. The MAF officer then commenced a thorough spray, scrub, rub and finally polish of the offending boots. The boots were then handed back to the travellers who were shown the door to enter New Zealand. Meanwhile I spent another fifteen minutes before the x-ray machine proved my innocence and I was finally free to enter NZ.

The 35 year old Israeli veered of the South Islands Routeburn Track onto an unformed Department of Conservation emergency avalanche route. She subsequently fell on slippery boulders, breaking her neck.

The coroner has raised with the department whether the expression “Great Walk” adequately describe the tramping trip through difficult and potentially dangerous, rugged back-country terrain, with often unpredictable weather conditions. Coroner David Crerar was concerned that “inexperienced tourists – especially who spoke English as a second language – saw “walk” and discounted the seriousness of the situation”

The ingredients are all there, the legislation is in place, US President Obama is making the environment the cornerstones of his economic recovery plan. The New Zealand government is very sensitive to the greenalisation of the voting public. Suddenly green is the new black. The growing green trend has the populus ignoring economics in the name of social responsibility.

Now what has all this got to do with a NZ tour blog? I have increasingly noticed that the greening of the travelling public is being targeted by many in the tourist industry.

Accommodation providers have for years added their little card in the bathrooms asking guests to think of the environmental impact of having your towels washed. Are they really interested in the environment or is the motivation to save laundry costs.

Last year New Zealand’s official quality rating agency, Qualmark, added environmental performance into their assessment criteria for accommodation providers and visitor activities. This environmental assessment model will be reviewed this year. Chances are the weighting of the environmental component of the assessment will be increased.

This government agency has also released a “Qualmark Green” assessment. You can now search visitor activities or accommodation by their environmental rating.

It clearly is a clever marketing ploy to appeal to the increasing green sensitivity of the travelling public. And its paying off. In November, New Zealand won the ‘Overall Winner’ and ‘Best Destination’ categories in the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards…. the what’s it called awards.

Recently when searching for 5 star accommodation on the West Coast of New Zealand which is a oxymoron, I did stumble on a new Franz Josef hotel called the Te Waonui Forest Retreat.

Their website was littered with eco babble bubble like “Throughout the hotel you will find eco-friendly features” and my favourite “Great care has been taken to not only respect and preserve the environment around the hotel, but to celebrate and embrace the rainforest within the hotel’s design” The reality of this last statement should read “we had to convince the local government planners to give permission for a commercial development to proceed in a rain forest”.

The accommodation does however look promising and I will report back after our stay later this year.

With all this green pressure mounting and feeling a little guilty emptying the petrol pumps of small country stations as I tour New Zealand in my six litre gas guzzling Hummer, I thought I too should do my bit for this inevitable green bubble.

The positive 1% increase in May 2009 visitor arrival figure gave many in the tourism industry hope that the down turn may be coming to a end. Today’s Statistic New Zealand’s figures dashed many hopes of a short term down turn. Anecdotal evidence suggests that those servicing the Ski traveller are reporting positive numbers for July but the industry is clearly fragmented.

The large gateway cities of Auckland and Christchurch appear to be bearing the brunt of the current down turn while the Ski resort towns who’s primary market is the Australian visitor are riding the sharp upturn in arrivals from that country.