Most post offices offer a fax sending service, charging a basic transaction fee of $2.50 plus a per page fee of $1.50 within New Zealand, $1.60 to Australia, $3 to North America and $4 to Europe and Asia. Faxes can also be sent from the vast majority of hostels and motels, and most hotels, but are not cheap, usually costing around $5 a page overseas and $1 a page within New Zealand. The average charge for receiving a fax is $1 a page.

Increasingly faxes are being supplanted by email , and almost everywhere you go in New Zealand you'll find someone offering Internet access . We've mentioned places in most town accounts but more are springing up all the time - visitor centres should be able to point you in the right direction. The best bet is usually one of the Internet cafés which continue to spring up all over the place. Rates are usually $2-3 for a fifteen minute session, $6-8 for an hour; the cafés often let you do a free email check, though they'll expect you to pay if you want to read or reply to any. In smaller towns, visitor centres sometimes offer Net access. Many backpacker hostels also offer access via a coin-operated machine, and the better B&Bs and lodges will usually allow guests to use their machine to check email; increasingly places have sockets so you can plug in your own modem-equipped computer. Internet access is less common at the cheaper B&Bs and still fairly rare at motels, though this will undoubtedly change very soon.