Chatham Islands Experience

by Dale Young
(Auckland)

Watch out! My friend Jim and I booked an 8 day fishing holiday at the Chatham Islands booked through Pukekohe Travel. The itinerary sounded great, 5 times ½ day fishing trips, guided tours to see the sights on the island and help to get paua shellfish and beach & rock fishing. All this from comfortable accommodation and promised use of a van while we were there. All up cost was $2508 including insurance which was paid 4 months in advance.

Our problems started when the plane didn’t come to Auckland on the 24th Feb as booked. We got various stories to explain this, including that the plane was held up in Christchurch on Tues 22nd, fog on the island preventing takeoff and one report that the engines needed to be serviced. So, our holiday was cut to 7 days and we were told that we had no recourse or possibility of partial refund.

On arrival we were told by our hosts that it would be uneconomic for them to take us fishing as we were just a party of 2, we would have to tack in on fishing trips for other visitors to the island. This meant that we got one fishing trip while the deckie was filleting fish from a previous trip and 3 times 2½-3 hour trips shared with up to 9 trampers from various other groups. Because we had to share trips with these non fishers, it also meant that we would only be taken out if the weather was very good. While the wind was up on some days, Jim and I would have still been keen to go fishing but the skipper wouldn’t take the boat out citing bad weather.

There was one day we couldn’t go fishing because the boat was being used for a shark dive for other customers, we were offered the chance to tag along, but were told that it wasn’t really a fishing trip…. For serious fishermen, it’s not at all ideal to have to share trips with non fisherman, who tend to get seasick and through inexperience cause a lot of line tangles.....

We were also told that the promised "Use of a van (8 or 12 seater)" didn’t actually mean that we could use a van at all; all it meant was that they would pick us up and take us to the airport for our flights. We found this out after paying $50 each for a seafood banquet at Kaiangaroa (about 50km away) at which time our host, Val Kroon Junior asked how we intended to get there.


As a large party of 38 had arrived from the Bay of Plenty, the Kroon family was very busy looking after them and we were told that there was no room for us on any of the buses going to the banquet. After some haggling, the best result that we could obtain was for us to rent a small van for $50 per day, ½ price. We were left to find our own way there. We were told that there is no money in it for the Kroons for our trip and this is all we could expect.

When we went to settle up on our last day, we were surprised to find out that we were charged full price for the vehicle rental for 2 days, the reasoning for this was that because of bad weather and the fact that we weren’t out fishing in the boat, we must have used the rental van for the whole day.

We didn’t actually get our 5 times ½ day fishing trips, as the wind got up to 40 knots on our last day. Once again, no compensation for this was allowed; we were told that this was our bad luck and that the Kroons couldn’t be held responsible for bad weather.

So, although we did get out on some fishing trips and we did catch a lot of fish; the holiday didn’t live up to our expectations. Having to pay $300 extra to rent a vehicle, losing 1 day and also losing one of our fishing trips contributed to our disappointment. It’s a shame, Jim & I had been really looking forward to a fantastic experience which was spoiled because we couldn’t get our hosts to deliver on their promise.


NOTE EDITOR

It sound's like your holiday was something of a mixed bag. Very unfortunate as I would have expected a Chatham Islands Experience to be a very special holiday. It would appear you are better to go on a large tour rather than with a small group, or just one or two. Also I suggest getting everything in writing with some guarantees that you will get what you have paid for!