The Ultimate New Zealand Road Trip Itinerary

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so you're planning a trip to New Zealand but you're not sure what to do where to go and how you want to spend your time well good news for you is I have done that and I have spoken with many friends I've looked a blog post and I've spoken to people at hostels to ultimately come up with the ultimate 14 day itinerary now 14 days you can plus or minus this if you want to do things a little faster or slower so this could work for Ana 10 day or 11 day road trip if you wanted to cut a few things out or it could also work for a 1718 day road trip if you wanted to spend additional time in some of these locations these are just the highlights that I think you'll enjoy the most after doing this alpha island for about 17 days during my road trip so anyways guys the video is only going to be based on the South Island I personally have not explored the North Island but from what I've heard from most people not everyone but most people say if you're limited on time then plan to only visit the South Island they're both beautiful and they both have so much to do but from what I've been told the South Island should be your number one preference in the North Island if you had the time definitely do it I plan to go back at some point and explore the North Island - and hopefully I can make another video like this for you guys alright and so before we get started on what the day to day looks like I just want to mention that we started this road trip out in Christchurch New Zealand but you can do a similar road trip if you start in Queenstown we started in Christchurch because that's where we could find a camper van rental at the best price at the time we booked it right before high season so let's go ahead and jump right in then alright so day one you're gonna arrive in Christchurch you got to pick up your camper van you got to grab your groceries you got to get yourself kind of all prepped maybe check out Christchurch and then get yourself on the road once you're on the road you'll take about a three hour drive down to lake tekapo this one is my second favourite lake which I'll tell you my first later on in the video but this one you'll come across and you'll be like this is the bluest water I have ever seen in my life and so it's a great spot to spend your first night in New Zealand and one thing I should mention is in that first night you might want to check out the stargazing because it's some of the best in the world so on day 2 in the morning you're gonna want to go ahead and do the mountain John hike it's a quick easy hike that you can go ahead and get some amazing views of Lake Tekapo of the beautiful mountains in the background and you can get a nice workout in so of course if you're going to New Zealand you got to get the hiking in so you'll hear this as a common theme throughout the video on some great hikes to do alright so after you do the hike maybe around noon head on over to the next lake and this next Lake is lake pukaki it's about a 30-minute drive and this lake is the most beautiful lake I have ever seen and still to this day it is unbelievable that I was even there I was looking back to had some videos that I had made and I'll link it in the description below I could not believe how ultra icy blue it looked it's cuz of the glacier flower which was just unreal to see a lake in this color blue so after you get done just jaw-dropping saying wow I can't believe this lake is real then you're gonna want to go ahead maybe make some launch especially if you have a camper van where you can stay at the pines freedom camping site which is a free campsite so the nice part about that is if you have a self-contained vehicle you can park right up there and that's the best spot to fall asleep and wake up in the morning I'll tell you that those are my favourite campsites and it was free so while you're there in the afternoon you can go ahead and do the kettle whole hike it's a super easy one it's probably two and a half miles or so and you go through just some really easy terrain it's just a couple hills it's probably the easiest hike you'll do in New Zealand but it's still really beautiful and I would do it again like many times over and to finish off day two you'll want to go ahead and set up that lawn chair and enjoy the sunset and lake pukaki because it is one of the best sunsets I've seen in New Zealand alright so coming up on day three and so you're gonna go ahead and drive from lake pukaki over to mount cook and this is really going to show you Wow some of the best parts of New Zealand are just simply driving from destination to destination and seeing what the different viewpoints are once you get to Mount Cook National Park you can go ahead and either depending on how many days you want to stay in this itinerary I have you staying basically one day you can go ahead and get there and do the sealy tarns walk or the sealy tarns hike I should say because there are a lot of steps but it is a great workout to do I had a lot of fun doing this hike and it you know really kind of pushed me to the limit now a disclaimer I'm not much of a hiker and I was still very new into the hiking thing and so my body wasn't fully conditioned so it had me sweating just bring enough water and you're gonna have a blast go at a slow pace there's a lot of steps but you'll get through and you'll be very proud of yourself once you've made it to the top some people do do mueller's hut and that usually requires an overnight stay or if you're really ambitious so you can walk there and back but I want to say maybe it's like eight hours we didn't do that one we didn't want to go that crazy with hiking but sealy tarns gave us some amazing views and we were quite happy with that so in the afternoon around golden hour you're gonna want to do hooker valley trek and mount cook this one is much much easier so if you're feeling pretty tired after sealy tarns don't worry this one is like maybe three miles or so you go ahead and you walk through landscapes that are constantly changing I'm still mind-blowing because you would walk around a corner to be this massive bridge then you'd walk around this other area you'd be in this beautiful valley and it was just constantly these changing environments which I was just obsessed with alright so coming into day four you're gonna go ahead and drive down to Queenstown which will take you somewhere around three hours once you get there there's a few different things you can do Queenstown is probably the most touristy place but it's one of my favourite cities in New Zealand it just had such a great feeling to it but there are so many different excursions you can do we didn't do too many because we were on a bit of a budget but things that I've heard that are amazing or like doing the jet boat the remarkable ski lift up to the top of the mountain right there or you can hike up it for free but otherwise if you just want to relax like what we did we walked around town we checked out some local restaurants some local bars had an absolute great time and I wanted to spend like two weeks there just to kind of chill it just felt so great being there and then in the evenings especially if you have a sunny evening you're gonna want to go down by the beach where everyone goes down and watches the sunset on the lake it's just one of those picture-perfect New Zealand moments and after the sunset if you're feeling up to it grab some drinks Queenstown has a fun night life we experience it a couple nights and thoroughly had a blast there it's not too too expensive for us at least coming from the United the prices are relatively similar on a lot of things alright so going into day five hopefully you're not too hungover from the night before because now you're gonna go ahead and do a bit of driving you're gonna drive down to Glen Turkey today where glenorchy you have a lot of beautiful lookout points on the way down and of course when you come back because it's only one way to get there one way to get back you can go ahead and kind of mix it up so on our way there we pretty much just drove straight to Glen our key got there kind of checked out the city it's a cute quaint little town and then after that we drove back up and stopped it a few different places along the roads there's a lot of just random spots you can pull over and just be in awe and then there's a few different spots to highlight like Bob's Cove they had some nice walks you could do so we did one of the 20-minute walks there and had some just really beautiful views and you'll probably hear me say really beautiful view is really beautiful landscape really beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful everything because honestly New Zealand is just like that and everything is beautiful and everything is mind-blowing expect to continue to hear that drive a little bit further past Queenstown and you can make it up to arrow town now this one is like just a quaint little city no not even City a quaint little town that you're gonna want to go ahead spend maybe an hour grab a meal or something there it's kind of cool to just walk around and see what the New Zealanders lives are like I kind of enjoyed that as cool to see and then after that if you want you to go ahead and stay where we stayed which was the Kingston New Zealand free camping site and this was about a 50 minute drive from arrowtown and it's just this more secluded area I felt like there wasn't too much around this area there wasn't too many people at this campsite and this is during high season in January so waking up with another set of beautiful Lakes with mountains surrounding it was just another one of those days where I was like wow it's great to be in New Zealand right now this is surreal alright so you're coming up on day six which is driving to Milford Sound so I would say drive as early as possible if you can get up at the crack of dawn have a nice coffee at the Kingston campsite and then hop on the road so you can get to milford sound in the morning the drive from Kingston to milford sound is about three and a half hours so keep in mind you'll see a bunch of spots to stop but at least how we did it is we went to Milford Sound first and then on the way back we went ahead and stopped at some of these beautiful spots we went on a cruise with go orange in milford sound and keep in mind it does rain like every other day year-round so you're gonna want to plan ahead that you could run into rain we got lucky and it was pretty much a clear day with some cool clouds that just covered the mountains and that was one of the highlights of the trip just because you felt like you were in some sort of crazy movie when you were going between this like water in between these massive massive mountains absolutely breathtaking bring your camera and bring extra batteries because you'll be non-stop taking photos I can promise you that and so after you finish the boat cruise around milford sound you could also do a kayak cruise i should mention as well we did the boat cruise it was amazing and it didn't require as much work but we also heard from people that kayaking is just unreal i think anything you do in milford sound you're gonna be mind blown it's just a matter of preference there's helicopter tours and seaplane tours too for those of you that can spend a few more bucks on it so once you leave milford sound there's quite a few different stops on the milford highway where you can go ahead and stop and enjoy the rest of the afternoon you can stop at the chasm that's really close to milford sound you can stop at lake marion falls key summit hike it's an easier hike and you can see lake marion from here there's lake mistletoe a walking track just some more easy walkable areas that really don't require too much energy to be honest and you can see mirror lakes which was pretty cool to see so there's a whole bunch of things there's a bunch of just miscellaneous random lookout points you'll want to stop and just grab a couple photos and just take in the natural beauty so after you make it further down the milford highway you're gonna want to go ahead and stay in two now which is a cool pretty large city for kind of how remote the rest of the area is and you'll have plenty of places for accommodation we stayed at a paid campsite so we could get some extra amenities out of it but there's different options depending on how far you want to stay outside of the city so spend the evening into now maybe go out for a bite to eat check the place out or do some cooking at your camper van once again lots of great places to walk around so day seven you're gonna drive to wanaka wanaka was one of my favorites as well it's a three hour drive from Tinnell so you'll get some nice views on the road trip there when you get to wanaka you're gonna want to go ahead and check out the infamous wanaka tree i personally don't know why it's so famous well i do it's because some photographer made it famous it's probably not the highlight of wanaka in my opinion but you know you're in wanaka you got to go see the one country right so then after that maybe hop in the water grab your swimsuit or grab a kayak whatever it is and spend some time maybe at the beach in wanaka it's really nice and it's really relaxing there and there's a bunch of excursions you can do there too if you want like jet skiing or you can do different watersports out there as well after you spent a great day checking out wanaka the next morning here on day 8 you're gonna want to go ahead and hike around wanaka so there's two options some people do both if you have the time and the energy to do both definitely do it there's Roy's peak and if miss peak which are similar in terms of the amount of time it takes and the difficulty level to go up but what we were told by some New Zealand natives or locals is that if most peak was gonna be better one because there's less crowds and then two because you can actually see both Lakes from the top of it so we only did the thermos so I can't compare it but I was so happy that we did if miss it was a really tough hike for someone that's not much of a hiker me but it was so worth it and I was so happy that we did this one because it was just the whole way of just constantly beautiful views going up the mountain so definitely what I would recommend is if miss but do both if you have the time and so yeah I don't think you want to drive too much after you do those hikes because you'll probably want to get some rest so spend that night in wanaka day9 you're gonna be doing a little bit of driving but lucky for you is this is the driving you're gonna want to do because you're gonna have a lot of great things to see plus a lot of awesome stops to stop on the way so to name a couple for you guys here you'll be driving the hostel pass to franz josef glacier it's about a four-hour drive from wanaka so as you're going down just to name a couple for you guys there's the blue pools walk which is about an hour walk around trip you can do some swimming there you can just hang out I will say they'll be careful the sand flies on the west coast are so hope ahead they do buy it so you're gonna want to wear extra layers when you're doing these hikes because the sandflies will give you bites that are a little bit more itchy than mosquitoes which are very annoying coming from someone who didn't wear layers and got a lot of those bites then there's fantail falls which is a short drive from the blue pools there's the thunder creek falls and it's just a two minute walk from where you stop there's the roaring billy falls there's a small parking lot so just keep in mind it might be filled up so you might have to wait around if you have some time and some energy there's matheson lake which is about a 1.5 hour lake we didn't do that one but I figured I'd share with you because it's a place we were recommended to go now I will say I have recommendations for franz josef glacier but i'm not gonna have any video clips to overlay here because ultimately we decided to skip it which i'm kicking myself for it but it was pouring rain and we were going to go ahead and do the hike but we didn't have any rain clothes we're like do we really want to get all wet when it's pouring rain it's we ultimately decided not to there are hot pools at the Franz Josef glacier so book those in advance because they do fill up pretty quickly later in the evening if you still have some energy there's the terrace walk it's about a 30 minute round-trip night walk once again we didn't do anything in Franz Josef glacier because it was just constantly raining so I hope you guys do end comment below if you liked it there are holiday parks at the Franz Josef glacier and other accommodation options so you're definitely good to go to stay tonight they're going into day ten there's a two-hour drive to Ho katika there's a Hoka tiga gorge which is about a 15 minute hike round-trip a little bit further down you can drive about one and a half hours and you'll get to pancake rocks this is one of my favorite things on the west coast because these rocks were just like it's mind-blowing I did I'm thinking back to them right now and I'm just like these were the most unique rocks I have ever seen so it's about a 20 minute walk to go ahead and check out all the pancake rocks you can spend a little bit more time a little bit less I'd say we spent about that with taking photos there's a few different things you can do while you're in the area there's the Truman track which brings you to a white sand beach there's some underworld rafting tours you can do which I've heard are great there's a seal colony at Taronga Bay which is near Carter's Beach and that would be where we would recommend to stay the night so then bringing you in a day 11 there's a lot of two-hour drive for you to do in the morning to Lake Rotorua towards Nelson there are hikes in this area I will say we only stopped for a little bit because we just didn't want to deal with the sandflies that's something that made us go a little bit quicker on a lot of the west coast areas so it's just annoying so I'm always kind of ready to move along a little bit quicker if the bugs are attacking me anyways the Lake Rotorua is pretty cool there were people swimming hanging out it's really peaceful there so after Lake Rotorua you're gonna want to go ahead and drive to Abel Tasman which is about a two and a half hour drive and once you get into the town where we stayed in you will be able to have a few different options for accommodation there is one Holiday Park you can stay at and once you get to Abel Tasman you get settled in you can go ahead and sign up for these pretty cool boat tours which are very unique in my opinion because the tractor has the boat on a trailer and so they actually pick you up side of the water and then the tractor drives you into the water and you go explore on the abel tasmin area so that's a pretty cool option you can go ahead and do that different types of experiences you can go and explore all in that area there are caves tours and hikes on the abel tasmin area so once again this is just one of those places where depending on your preference on what you want to do you could spend a lot of time here easily and do hikes and things like that for us we made a pretty quick abel tasmin trip we kind of just hung out there for that evening and then the next morning we drove on to our next place because we wanted to have more time for a wine tour which I'll tell you here shortly so like I said this is preference based and so that ultimately brings into my day 12 and 13 recommendations so if you're not really into wineries I would say probably hang out in abel tasmin do more of the activities like drive to tata beach go to the window he Falls hike go to the hardwoods whole track or any of those different types of things there's a bunch of different options on different things you can do in the area but if you're like me and you want to go ahead and enjoy a winery tour then what I would recommend is day 12 you'll drive to blend Haim which is this cute new zealandtown that is basically surrounded by so many wineries and we did this really cool winery bike tour where you basically rent the bikes they give you a helmet safety vest the map with a bunch of different recommendations on which wineries to go to where you want to do the tastings and then they set you free so it's kind of a self-guided bike tour and that was one of the highlights of the New Zealand trip that wasn't related to nature the people at all of the different wineries we visited we're so passionate about wine they really took the time even with every single day kind of going through the same stuff they really took that time to go ahead and explain us all about the wines and we had a nice little buzz by the end too so you know I can't complain reason when I say two days for that is the bike tour was from either 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. until about 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. in the evening and so we got there day 12 after driving and hung out that night and then all of day 13 we spent doing the winery tour that brings us into day 14 where hopefully you didn't get too drunk we didn't we were able to get up early and then drive on day 14 - kaikoura this being your last day depending on if you're flying up on the 15th day of the 14th day you might want to stop in kaikoura just for the day see some well watching and then head back to christchurch ii to drop your rental off or head to your flights but if you had the time to like we did since we were on a 17 day trip we stayed the night in kaikoura and just kind of hung out and walked around the town they have like this really rocky beach which was cool to see and you know it's just one of those cute little new zealandtown and so yeah guys that is the 14 day road trip once again as i said a few times over you can add or subtract some of these places personally my favorites that I did was Mount Cook Milford Sound Queenstown and wanaka the rest was also so beautiful to see I would recommend doing all of it and more if you have the time so I really hope you have an amazing time on your New Zealand trip this has been one of my favourite countries I have visited for the reasons being of the landscapes the people there the Kiwis as they identify as those are the New Zealand natives I will say you need to be careful though driving on the roads though the roads are very windy and the speed limits are a little bit higher than they should be I have another video actually that I'll put a link in the description below where you can go ahead and check out which are safety tips for driving in New Zealand which might be helpful for you so guys thanks so much for watching this video it was a little bit longer than my normal videos because I really wanted to kind of go in-depth on what some of the things were to do and what some of the highlights were and share those with you guys so thanks so much for watching if you like this video hit that like button if you want to see more videos like this and other types of content hit that subscribe button right there and we'll see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: World Nomac

Views: 56,735

Rating: 4.8642788 out of 5

Keywords: new zealand road trip, new zealand campervan, new zealand travel tips, new zealand, new zealand vlog, new zealand travel, south island, how to travel new zealand, new zealand travel video, new zealand south island, new zealand campervan trip, south island new zealand, lake tekapo, backpacking new zealand, new zealand camping, wanaka, mt cook, te anau, where to go in new zealand, cinematic vlog, motorhome new zealand, milford sound new zealand, world nomac

Id: NNoWaKdv40A

Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 15 2020