New Zealand Trips

Icons & beyond

4 to 6 weeks

From the
New Zealand travel guide

Check some big-ticket attractions off your list, with kayaking, tramping and wildlife-watching breaking up the road trip. Take your time on this well-travelled 3300km route – switch into holiday mode, embrace nature and savour the flavours of dual-island travel.

Virgin visitors to the country will want to check out NZ’s tourist icons, and maybe throw in some active wilderness experiences for good measure.

Cruise the sail-filled harbours of hip, inner-city Auckland, then take SH1 north to the glorious, winterless Bay of Islands: surfboards, kayaks, scuba gear – take your pick. South of Auckland, hold your nose through the sulphurous sweats of Rotorua, then hook further south for idyllic Taupo and go tramping around the triple-peaked wilderness of Tongariro National Park. Take SH43 west to New Plymouth and an eyeful of photogenic Mt Taranaki then shuffle southeast to Wanganui, detouring along gorgeous Whanganui River Road. Stay up late in caffeinated Wellington and watch the nocturnal freakshow pass onwards to oblivion.

Across Cook Strait, head west for some kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park, or disappear into the Marlborough Sounds for a day.

Heading west, track down the rain-swept West Coast with its iconic glaciers, all the way to long-lost Jackson Bay, then head over Haast Pass to adrenaline-addicted Queenstown. Mix and match highways to Te Anau for the beguiling side-road to Milford Sound, then backtrack to SH6 and head north, swapping over to SH8 for an eyeful of cloud-piercing Aoraki/Mt Cook, before veering east back to cathedral-centred Christchurch. Take an afternoon to explore the amazing Banks Peninsula south of town.

by Charles Rawlings-Way, Lonely Planet author