Staying Alive in New Zealand - Travel Health Tips

Malaria, yellow fever, corrupt police, civil war, terrorism, armed bandits: New Zealand suffers from none of the above. But just because it appears to be tranquil, don’t ignore all the usual precautions you’d take at home. In recent years there have been several cases of ugly attacks on backpackers who followed the logic of ‘this weird guy offering me a lift to the middle of nowhere can’t be a psycho because this is New Zealand’.

Perhaps because of the slightly stilted dating scene, New Zealanders can get aggressive when they drink. If you’re hanging out in bars, it may pay not to make overly disparaging remarks about someone’s rugby team as the evening wears on. At 3am on a busy Saturday night, parts of the inner cities (especially Auckland and Christchurch) can reach sub-Glaswegian levels of ugliness.

Otherwise, New Zealand’s main health hazards, like its attractions, are natural. A vital thing to be aware of is the variability and fickleness of the weather. If you are going hiking, even for a day trip, you must take warm layers and some kind of rain gear. In New Zealand’s mountains, the weather can change radically within half an hour. On the other hand, sunshine is abundant, and with the clear air and unusually thin layer of ozone, the fair-skinned will get rapidly burnt to a crisp without a hat and plenty of SPF30.

The other notorious outdoor irritation is the sand flies, which pervade the more humid areas, particularly the South Island’s west coast. There appears to be a natural law that, the more spectacular and beautiful the setting, the denser the sand flies. In the depths of Fjordland they swarm around shady picnic areas with extraordinary persistence. The sand flies don’t actually carry flesh-eating diseases, but without lashings of DEET, they will leave you scratching for weeks.

If you go hiking, it’s a judgment call whether you drink from mountain streams. They may appear crystal clear, and are clean most of the time, but cases of giardia have been recorded in some areas.

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