By Ethan Maurice | May 12, 2017

I just returned from 4.5 months in New Zealand. I added up all my expenses to find that I only spent $21 per day backpacking around both islands!

Among travelers, New Zealand is known as an expensive country, but approach it right, and it can be surprisingly affordable. Over 136 days, I spent $2,875 including flights and a week-long stopover in the Cook Islands.

In this post I'm going to lay it all out for you—what I did, why it was so cheap, and some tips for getting the best out of your own venture into "the land of the long white cloud."

What I did:

I spent most of my time in New Zealand living in hostels, exchanging 15-20 hours of my time per week for accommodation and a variety of other perks (meals, kayak rentals, mountain bike rentals, hot tub use, pool table use, laundry etc.). Just two or three hours most mornings of light housekeeping or groundskeeping work and the rest of the day was mine. I spent between ten days and five weeks at each work trade gig before moving on to experience somewhere else.

The free accommodation was the obvious major benefit of work trade, but what proved even better was the connection a bit of work forged between fellow travelers. I made friends from around the globe. Friends from France, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, England, Spain, Finland, Netherlands, Argentina, Croatia, New Zealand, and the United States, just to name a few.

I hung out with these people every day. We worked together. We ate together. We discussed culture and politics. We climbed mountains. We played football (soccer) on the beach. We lit late night bonfires. We piled ten of us into a single car. We jumped off cliffs into lakes. We danced in bars. I could go on, but you get the point: work trade was a wonderful way to meet people from all over to share these unbelievable travel experiences with.

I also enjoy venturing out on my own and often did so. I climbed volcanoes, mountain biked, and ran across towns, along rivers, and through forests. In one particularly incredible moment, I found myself squawking back at Kea (super intelligent alpine parrots) along the rim of the valley carved out by Fox Glacier as little specks of helicopters passed below us.

The highlight of my trip: a three-week long road trip around the southern half of the South Island with a wondrous, way too much fun bunch of French people. We lived this bohemian, nomadic existence for a couple weeks, always on the move, seeing things, playing cards, and drinking wine. The experience that stood out from the rest, though, was waking up at 3:45am to climb to the top of a mountain in Mt. Cook National Park to catch the sunrise, a picture of which sits atop this article.

My intention in going to New Zealand was to read lots of books and write for at least an hour every day, punctuating my literary pursuits with a couple hours of work trade, hanging out with people from all over, and when the opportunities arose, adventure. And for the most part, that's what I did—with the exception that the call away from work was a bit stronger than expected. I read 21 of the 38 books I intended to in those 4.5 months and wrote for at least an hour most days, but not every day.

Overall, it was a productive, beautiful, social existence spread across both islands of New Zealand. Periods of time spent deep in books and thought punctuated daily with a bit of work and serious fun.

Here's a map of everywhere I went in New Zealand: