tinycasa

Things you’re gonna need:

• dry shampoo: a lifesaver. there will be days you don’t get to shower, and dry shampoo is your new best friend. I used Batiste Dry Shampoo, which I found in NZ for about four bucks. Despite being the most questionable looking product, I got it in Yellow (Tropical?) and it smelled like coconuts. It was travel sized and was awesome, but ran out pretty quickly. Now that I’m home I keep Suave Professionals Keratin Infusion Dry Shampoo, which is full sized and about the same price here in the US at Walmart. You can also get them in powdered form (I’ve heard people sing the praises of Klorane) which doesn’t interfere with liquid restrictions on flights. Find one you like and it will be your best friend.

• a washcloth and hand towel- get the cheap ones for a dollar, because they’ll dry out faster. You can always step into a public bathroom, crank up the hot water, and wash down your face and armpits. After a day on a bus, you will feel so much better. 
• deodorant- reapply frequently. do not skip it.
• toothpaste- giving your teeth a quick brush in a public bathroom, or even swirling a pea-sized amount of toothpaste around your mouth will make you feel and smell considerably less disgusting.
• makeup- makeup is tiny, so if you wear it, get a little makeup bag (or those 97 cent pencil bags that you can get at Walmart in the kid’s section that are neon colors and have clear fronts so you can see everything inside your bag) and take the time to put it on. Even if you’re on the third day of the same outfit, having a little eyeliner and blush on will make you look awake and presentable and less like you’ve been sleeping in your car.
• clothes- like I wrote in my last post, I was so stupid about clothes. Buying clothes in New Zealand was so expensive, and pretty impossible to find things I wanted. I never invested in any of the sporty quick drying clothes, but my husband got a Nike Dri Fit tshirt and a pair of ExOfficio boxers which were actually pretty amazing, and I would totally recommend both. They took a few minutes to dry when we could hang them in the sun, and they were the only things of his that didn’t get stretched out or ripped during our year in NZ. So if you have the cash, invest in a few pieces that are engineered to dry fast/stink less/whatever, cause they (like everything) will be much more expensive out of the US.

Overall, though, you can’t be too precious about your looks while backpacking. You simply won’t have a closet of clothes to pick through or access to a clean, hot shower all the time. I learned to not worry about wearing makeup all the time, and I survived. Flip flops and sneakers, while not the cutest, will cover pretty much any activity unless you are into hardcore hiking/sports, and if you are, there ain’t no advice I can give you.

Wear your flip flops in the shower lest you get warts or athletes foot or ringworm.

If you can’t carry a pillow with you, take a pillowcase so you know your face isn’t all up in someone else’s night sweat/bacteria/acne gunk. Ideally your hostel will have clean sheets, but at a certain point it will really sink in that you are sleeping on a bed that literally thousands of other people have slept on. And the majority of those people are not as clean as you.

Have long hair. I started out with short hair, and it was a bitch to make it look good when it was dirty and gross. Once I could put it up in a ponytail, I felt a million times better, and didn’t need to worry about bedhead.

Take some razors/blades with you. You won’t believe how good it feels to have freshly shaved legs/pits/whatever else you need to shave. I once dry-shaved my legs on the lawn in front of a library in Wellington. You do what you gotta do.

The good thing is that most beauty products are tiny. Adding a pair of tweezers and nail clippers to your bag isn’t going to take up any space at all, and you’ll find that all of those little things matter a lot meaning you’ll feel better about yourself and your looks.

There’s still a link up there where you can see what I packed for my trip to New Zealand. It was a giant failure. For some reason, my brain completely failed at packing things I would actually want to wear and find useful. Here’s what I should have taken:

8-10 pairs of underwear. A few for shark week, and the rest in thongs. My grandma told me to take more underwear, and I did not listen.

A pair or two of comfy, cute jeans (with lots of stretch) and a pair of nice trouser jeans.
I took one pair which wore out quickly and shopping was really difficult in NZ. There were really only 2-3 stores that made clothes suited to women in their 20s, and all of their pants were in the current trendy styles: super skinny, high waisted, and $50-60 a pair. There was no finding a $10 Old Navy clearance section, dude.

5-6 tank tops. I took quite a few, but somehow I didn’t choose ones that I actually liked.

4 sports bras, 2 real bras. I had to buy a bra in NZ and it was $70. No joke.

2-3 tshirts and one or two nicer tops

A pair of athletic shorts and 2 pairs of good yoga pants (also difficult to find and way overpriced)

I would have skipped liquid shampoo/body wash altogether and brought 2-3 solid shampoo bars from LUSH. No worries about spilling or liquids requirements, and they lasted forever. I also would have brought more makeup with me, cause I’m a makeup girl and it was seriously $20+ for a drugstore eyeliner. Perhaps the overall theme I’m getting at here is that I should have brought way more money with me. Everything was 2 times as expensive or more, and it kicked my ass.

Dry shampoo would have been a lifesaver for my living-in-the-car days. I loved having a wash cloth and hand towel with me because they fit in my purse and I could pop into any bathroom and wash myself down quickly, and if you get a cheap, thin dollar wash cloth you can dry it off under a hand dryer.

Sunscreen is the one thing I totally forgot, and needed the most. The sun is way too intense in New Zealand and Australia, and you will get sunburned very, very quickly. And you will find that you’ll shell out fifteen bucks if you need to pick it up on the fly.

Finally, I would have brought a much bigger supply of Benadryl pills. Mosquitoes were absolute hell and I could not find anything similar to Benadryl (at least over the counter!) anywhere in NZ.

I was completely unprepared for things to be so expensive in New Zealand, and for that I crashed and burned really quickly. Once I had a job, things were fine, but I seriously underestimated how long it would take to find steady work. Prepare to do everything you need to do before 5:30PM: everything will be closed, except maybe a gas station, McDonalds, and the Warehouse which will probably close at 8. There are no 24 hour CVS, there’s no Walmart. Fill up on gas every time you see a station; there won’t be any along the way. If you will be buying a car, look into getting AA (their version of AAA) because after dark you’ll be hard pressed to find people driving in rural areas, and if you break down you might find yourself having to walk 50 miles to get to the nearest town.

If you want to go to New Zealand for a while here’s what you should do, step by step:

- Get a Working Holiday Visa. Google it.
- Look for jobs now. If you get a job in vegetables/fruit, expect to get screwed over and have the Department of Labour on speed dial. Look up the current minimum wage, don’t sign a contract without reading it, and don’t let anyone walk all over you for being a foreigner.
- Cars are easy to come by, and you don’t have to have insurance. The right of way laws are a little bizarre, so spend some time paying attention before you hit the road (as of March 2012, they just changed in some very weird ways.) Buying a car is easy- go into any Post Shop (aka Post Office) and fill out a paper, give them your passport to verify, and the fee is something like $9 to transfer the name over. Every car has two certifications: the Warrant of Fitness is like a yearly inspection and should have a sticker on the windshield. The Road Licence (or Registration/Rego) is in the bottom left corner of the windshield and displays the date it runs out. You can pay to renew this at the Post Shop, too. The Warrant of Fitness gets certified by most auto places. And oh yeah, they drive on the left side and your car will be backwards if you are coming from America.
- Get health insurance if you want. You (as an American) are not covered under the universal healthcare, but you are covered 100% if you have an accident in the country- work, sports, driving, or walking down the street and falling on your ass. Nearly every injury is covered, which is most likely what you’ll face, so don’t be shy about going to the emergency room (called A&E for Accidents and Emergency there)- they will give you the really simple paperwork and chances are you will be seen without paying a cent. 111 is the emergency number.
- Take a cheap Nokia prepaid phone and pick up a $5 sim card at any store. Add cash online.
- And the last silly thing that totally screwed with my head: there are no pennies or 5 cent pieces. Coins go as follows: 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, 1 dollar and 2 dollars. Bills start at $5 and go up like you’d expect. The price you see in the store is generally including tax, and your bill will be rounded up or down to the nearest ten cents if you pay in cash. I think the cents are kept if you use a visa (referred to as EFTPOS, phonetically). So if you stop in somewhere and see that your bill is $10.57 and are told to pay $10.60, you are not being ripped off. Trust me.

Otherwise: Try the lamb, take public transport, try hitchhiking, go to small towns and walk around little stores and talk to strangers. Don’t run out of money and get homeless. Leave a comment if you have any questions about it! I lived in New Zealand for exactly a year and felt like a local by the time I left.

edited to add: Oh I thought of one more thing! Free Wifi! You’re not going to find much. You WILL find it at McDonalds, however, and most towns have a McDonalds. Take advantage.