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We recently went on a 3 and 1/2 week road trip around both islands of New Zealand. It was my fourth time in the country, but it was my wife Jamie's first time there. So, I prioritized the itinerary on someone's first time visiting New Zealand. And so, what I'm going to do in this video is take you through our 3 and 1/2 week itinerary, going through all the accommodation, all the activities we did. And then after that, I'm going to give you some options of how you can extend the trip on the North and the South Island. And then finally, I'm going to give you some options for a two week itinerary in New Zealand. Now, I know just spending two weeks in New Zealand can sound a bit like sacrilege, but the truth of the
matter is a lot of people can only take 2 weeks off at a time from their work or only even get 2 weeks per year, if that. So, whilst the purist of me would be like, "No, you can't spend two weeks there. You got to spend longer." I'm going to give you a couple of suggestions of how you could spend two weeks trying to see some of the best highlights in New Zealand. So, first of all, this is our 3 and 1/2 week or 23-day itinerary that we did on our trip. Now, I explained in the intro to the main documentary that we were going to be there over Christmas, which meant that on the North Island, the route we did was a little bit inefficient, kind of going back on ourselves a few times, and that was just because of where we're going to spend
Christmas Day and the availability of the Hobbiton tour at that very busy time of year. So, what I'm going to do is change that itinerary around slightly to a more efficient way of exploring the North Island. Plus, I'm going to include the dolphin swimming in Kora that we wanted to do but was sold out. And we did like a semi backpacking trip. So, like sometimes we were staying in host, other times we were staying in some lovely Airbnbs as well as a couple of hotels. So, a nice little variety of accommodation to give you some ideas for your trip. So, to start off the trip, we had one night in Oakland and we had flown in overnight from Vancouver. And so we basically spent the morning just
catching up on some sleep and then in the afternoon went for some drinks with our friends Dane and Stacy in town. We stayed at Nami Hotel which is actually by the airport just because we're going to be picking up our car rental and then heading straight out the next day and we didn't want to be staying right in downtown cuz it would just add a lot of extra time to our driving journey. By the way, if you want to book any of these hotels or activities, you can scan the QR code right here. Plus, there's links in the description and doesn't cost you a penny extra, but means I get a little bit of commission. And since I'm trying to do this full-time now, please book the hotel. Anyway, in Oakuckland, if you
have a bit more time there, I suggest checking out Wahiki Island. That's something that Matt and I did back in 2017. You can get a ferry to the island and then explore around, going to lots of different wineries. For day two, you want to head to the White Tommo Caves and do the Blackwater rafting we did there with all the glowworms around. That's such an incredible and unique experience that you can't miss it from your itinerary. So you'll do that in the morning into early afternoon and then this is where I'm switching out the order from what we did. You're now going to drive to near Mata which is where the Hobbiton tour is. And the day before we went to Hobbiton, we stayed in this beautiful
Airbnb that was called Teal Corner Cabin. It was an absolutely gorgeous cottage on a farm just 20 minutes drive from the Hobbiton set. We basically have our own private Airbnb in the Shire. Then in the morning, so for day three, we went and did the Hobbiton movie set tour. You can just book the regular tour there, but we decided to go for the second breakfast tour, which also includes a lovely banquet breakfast in the mill room. After the Hobbiton tour, you can head to Tanga, where we actually spent Christmas and stayed at our friend Matt's mom's house, and we spent most of our time just hanging out at Mount Malanui. And I just had a quick look, and there's a hostel there called Pacific Coast Backpackers Lodge that
does do private rooms and door rooms. So, that could be worth checking out if you're going to go stay there. From here, you're next going to be heading up to the Coramandal to go kayaking at Cathedral Cove. The company we did the kayaking with was just called Cathedral Cove Kayak Tours. And they did a fantastic job. Like the guide we had was like one of the best on the trip. A nice balance of like information and banter. And the kayaking was done at a good pace. It was a really brilliant way to experience that fantastic location. And after the kayaking, you could spend the night up near Cathedral Cove, but where we stayed for hours on the night before was a bit further south in Wahhee Beach. And we had a lovely Airbnb there
called the boat house. It's beautiful. Oh, hi. But before we go any further, I want to talk to you about this week's sponsor because obviously we're doing a road trip and for that you're going to need a car. So, we booked our car rental using discovercars.com. And with Discover Cars, you can compare car rental deals from a wide range of suppliers when booking with them. So, if I just search here for a car from Oakland to Wellington, you can see all the different offers from the different suppliers. If I click through on one, you can see everything that's included in the price. They do offer full coverage insurance as well, which if you don't want, you can opt out of with a click of a button. And then you've got
your total cost down at the bottom of the page here. I had someone ask if you can take a car rental from the North Island to the South Island. And the answer is yes. That's exactly what we did. But the only thing to note is you'll incur a very high return fee, which Discover Cars highlights here. But I'll talk about some alternate money-saving options you can do for this in next week's budget video. Couple of last things to know is Discover Cars has a 4.6 rating on Trust Pilot with over 200,000 reviews. And if you use this link right here, which is also in the description, you'll get a discount off your first booking. So yeah, I've been using this website for quite a few of my recent trips and it's always been
fantastic. So make sure you check them out. Discover Cars. Discover your car. Anyway, back to the itinerary. So on our trip, we only spent like a half day in Roouura before moving on just because it was coming up to Christmas. But for this version of the itinerary, I've actually given you a night to stay there because there's so many different activities on offer. We did the Kituna white water rafting where you go down the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world. And then after that, on your way to Toppo, the beautiful serene waterfall we went to was called Kerosene Creek. And this river comes from like a thermal springs. So like the water is the temperature of a hot tub. And it was just paradise.
It's beautiful. And then from here, you're going to be spending three nights in Toppo. We stayed at the Hacker House hostel there. And on our first full day, we went and did the Tongerro Crossing. Now, for the Tongerro Crossing, there are shuttles that will take you to the start from Toppo if you like, cuz it's about an hour's drive from Toppo itself. Or you can drive to one end of the track and then get a shuttle to the beginning or vice versa. There's also shuttles that take you from the beginning car park to the end car park or vice versa depending on where you park your car. But my advice for the Tongura crossing actually is cuz like the first half of
the trek is amazing. You going through all the volcanic like mor like landscape. You go past Mount Araoi. You're seeing the red crater and you go down to the emerald pools. And so you've seen all the main sites, but you're only halfway through the track. And then the rest of the track is this very long slog just weaving down forever to get to the end car park. So, if I was ever to do the Tonguru crossing again, I would just park at the start, do the first half of the hike, seeing all like the cool main stuff you come to see from the red crater, go down to the first Emerald Pools, and then just turn around and go back from there and go back to your car. That saves you have to pay for a shuttle
to get from one car park to the other. Plus, you're spending all of your time in the best bit of the landscape rather than this sort of endless monotonous trek that is the second half of the Tonguru crossing. Then on the final day in Toppo, we do the kayaking to the Mori carvings. This is like a half day activity cuz it takes about an hour to kayak there and then you kind of hang around the carvings for a bit and then you kayak all the way back. Just beautiful, beautiful. And then to finish off the time in the North Island, we went down to Wellington for two nights. Once again, staying at Hacker House, we had a double room in the hostel which was in a prime location downtown near all the bars and cafes and
restaurants. And then during our time there, we did some Lord of the Rings stuff. We went to the wetter cave and did the behind thescenes tour there which is really good fun. We went up to Mount Victoria where you get amazing views all around of the city. Plus there's a couple of Lord of the Rings locations there as well. And a really great place we went for lunch which I didn't include in the main documentary was a cafe called Marinui Cafe which is in Lyall Bay near the airport. Food there was fantastic. Beautiful views of the bay and it was rammed as well but hopefully you'll get a spot when you go there. Right then onto the South Island. For our trip, we had a night in Pikton. And the reason being was that we'd
already booked two nights in Blenhan for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. And so we originally planned for that day to go down to Kaikora and do the dolphin swimming, but the dolphin swimming had sold out months in advance. So we kind of had this free day left over. So we thought, you know what, the North Island's been very full-on, very fast-paced. Let's just get to Pikton and just chill out for a half day. But for this itinerary, hopefully you'll heed my advice and book your dolphin swimming way in advance so you can get the ferry across, do your two nights in Blenhan, go and enjoy all the wineries, and then go down to Kicora and swim with the dolphins. But just for reference, in
Pikton, we were staying at a hotel called the Beach Coma Inn, which was right in the center of town and a really lovely place. But in Benham, we're staying at another gorgeous Airbnb called the Packing Shed. And this place was about 15 minutes drive out of Glenham, but was right amongst all the wineries. Like one of the ones we visited, the Hans Herszog estate was literally on the opposite side of the road of our Airbnb. So wasn't much of a hike to get there. And for getting around the wineries, we just hide out some bikes. And you'll easily find some bicycle rental places all around, but we just went with one called Booker Bike simply cuz it was 5 minutes walk from our Airbnb. And it was just this lovely little family-owned place. And we're
like, "Oh yeah, there's two bikes. Here you go. 45 bucks. See you later. Now, moving down the coast is a couple hours drive to Kora. The dolphin swimming company we would have used if it hadn't sold out was Encounter Kikora. From there, it's another 2-hour drive down to Christ Church. You can have a half day there just exploring that lovely city. And in Christ Church, we stayed at a hotel called the Fable. There was actually a really nice, really lovely hotel bang in the center, and it was just a little bit cheaper than some of the big brand name hotels nearby, but had the exact same quality and service. And then the next day is a big drive to
France Joseph across the Arthur's Pass. And when we drove the Arthur's Pass, the weather was really bad. So we didn't really get to get out and do any trails and stuff like that, but you can really make that a full kind of adventure day out. Do lots of little stops of viewpoints, waterfalls, and things. So if you are driving that and the weather looks good, do a little research the night before on things to do on Arthur's Past and you should find some really cool things to check out. In France Joseph once again we stayed at Hacker House Hostel and we' booked our helih hike with France Joseph Glacia guys but unfortunately for us it was cancelled which was really gutting for Jamie because she didn't get to
experience it but I've done it a couple of times in the past and it's an absolute highlight of New Zealand. So make sure you include it in your South Island itinerary. Then from here we had three nights in Monica staying at the Hacker House hostel yet again. We just did a shorter hike to the Rocky Mountain Summit. But if you want to do the famous Royy's Peak hike, uh first of all, note that it's going to get very busy. You want to get there early cuz that little car park will fill up. Secondly, where everyone queues up for the Instagram photo isn't actually the top. That's not even Royy's Peak. So, if you don't want to queue for half an hour to get the exact same photo that everyone else has,
just walk up to the top of the peak and there's hardly anyone there and you'll get an even better picture. The happy hour boat cruise we had out on Lake Wanuka is simply called Lake Wanuka Happy Hour Boat Cruise. And then for our final day in Monica, we did the scenic flight and cruise to Milford Sound. You can do a scenic flight from Queenstown to Milford Sound, but it's a lot shorter. The flight's only 25 minutes, whilst from Monica, it's like a 45minute flight. And it's just like unbelievable. Like you're literally flying through Middle Earth. Like I can't recommend it enough. That was unbelievable. I was just biggest grin on my face the whole time. If you want to experience Milford
Sound, but do it a cheaper way, you can do it as a day trip from Queenstown. It's a 4-hour drive each way, so it's going to be eight hours of driving. So, it's a very long day to go do a 90-minute cruise in Milford Sound. But one, the drive is one of the most spectacular roads in the world. And two, Milford Sound itself is just unbelievably stunning. So, it's definitely worth doing. If you can't be bothered to drive all that in one day, you can easily book a day trip from Queenstown and a coach will take you there and back. It's stunning. It's so beautiful. And we saw dolphins, which is really special. After this, we went and did the Doubtful Sound overnight cruise. Now, I did a Doubtful Sound day trip on my previous time in New Zealand in 2017. And whilst
that was good, the overnight one was just so much better because the two best things we did on the overnight trip was the kayaking and also on the morning we went to a different part of the sound called the Hall Arm. Whilst if you only do the day trip, you don't get to do either of those. And it takes about two hours to get to the actual sound itself from where you park up in Manipuri because you have to take a 1-hour boat, then a 1-hour bus, do a few hours around the sound, and then get the bus and the boat back. So, the effort versus reward ratio is a bit off if you just do the day trip. Whilst the overnight thing was just unbelievable. It is expensive. It was the most expensive activity we did
on the trip. It was like over $1,000 New Zealand dollars. But if you can afford it and you have the time, definitely go for the overnight one rather than a day trip. And then finally, we finished up the trip with four nights in Queenstown. And Queenstown is just like it's one of my favorite places in the world because there's just so much variety on offer in such a spectacular setting. So if you want to go full-on adrenaline junky, there's all the bungee jumps, the skydives, and all these other activities you never even heard of. If you want to relax, there's some amazing fine dining there. and tons of lovely wineries around. If you're a younger backpacker and you want to party hard, this is the
town to do it. And if you want to escape the crowds, it's very easy to go on some amazing hikes in the area. It's just an incredible town. We were staying at the Hacker House hostel once more. And the activities we did with the shot over river whitewater rafting and the great thing about that is where you park to do the rafting. Once you finish, you're only 3 minutes drive from the onen hot pools. And we just booked the hourlong experience in the classic onen. And then in that afternoon, we also booked a ticket to go on the Ernstaw steamboat, which I'd never done before in Queenstown. And I wouldn't say it's a must do, but it was a nice way. We're having quite a busy time. It's a nice way just to slow down for a couple hours
and have a little glass of wine and watch the scenery go by. The place we went to all the Lord of the Rings locations was Deer Park Heights. Now, you need to book this in advance cuz they only sell certain amount of spaces per day. So, there's not too many cars up there. So, you register your vehicle online and pay the $75 the day before. And when you get to the gate, it recognizes your number plate and you get let in. And uh that was actually a really fun morning. Like even for Matt and Jamie who weren't so geeking out about the Lord of the Rings stuff as I was, they still enjoyed it cuz there like so many spectacular views of the whole area and uh plenty of animals around as well.
There you go. The wine tour we did was with Alpine Wine Tours. We went to three different wineries in a space of a few hours and it was such a brilliant trip. Had an amazing time. We booked the tour that came with the dog and then the dog wasn't actually on the tour cuz if you read the small print, the dog's there sometimes. So, just that's something to be aware of if uh if the dog's a big draw for you. But despite that, it was still a fantastic tour. The guide running it was such a lovely bloke and we had a really fantastic time. And then finally, the helicopter trip we did up to the Remarkables was with Glacia Southern Lakes helicopters and we
did the Remarkable Special, which was just like a 25-minute trip. It was like 5 minutes up in the helicopter, 10 minutes up there enjoying a view and having a glass of procco, and then it was like another 10-minute journey back down in the helicopter cuz it went like a longer route on the way down. But it was a lovely way to finish off the trip and if you can include it in your budget, I'd highly recommend it. So that was our 3 and 1/2 week itinerary driving around both islands of New Zealand. Now, if we were to extend our time there, one of the main things we missed out on the North Island was heading up to the Northland into the Bay of Islands. Every time I film a trip in
New Zealand, and I don't go there, I always get comments like, "How could you possibly miss this out?" But the truth of the matter is, I actually went there in 2006. It was amazing. I loved it. Just haven't been back since. But if you want to add it in, you could probably whiz around the Bay of Islands in a couple of days, but I'd recommend somewhere between 3 and 5 to properly check it out. Then for the South Islands, I talked in the outro of that episode about how we originally planned to do the great walks of the Rootburn track and the Milford track. Those two together would have taken us a week, and it's something I've been wanting to do
for years, we just decided for this trip to save it for our next visit to New Zealand. But if you're not interested in doing those tres, but want to expand your time on the South Island slightly more, the route that I did in 2017 included a few more of the highlights around the island. So, some of the other main places worth checking out are going to the town of Nelson and seeing the Able Tasman National Park. You want to give yourself a couple of days to check that out. And if you want to sort of complete your loop around the South Island, then after your time in Queenstown, you can go and check out Mount Cook. Spend a night or two there. And then one of my favorite spots on the way back to Christ Church is a little
place called Mount Sunday, which is where they shot Ederas in Lord of the Rings. Now, obviously, there's loads, loads, loads more to see in New Zealand than what I've mentioned in this video so far. Again, I've prioritized these itineraries and these tips on it being your first time visiting New Zealand. So, whilst there is tons more to see than what I've mentioned, what if you want to get this itinerary and just try and squeeze it into 2 weeks? So, I'm going to give you three different options about how you can try and see as many of New Zealand's highlights within the space of 2 weeks. Okay. So the first one, you're going to fly to Oakland. You're going to have a night there. Then the next day, you're
going to drive to Cathedral Cove and do the kayaking in the afternoon and stay somewhere up there. Day three, drive down to Rourura and do the white water rafting in the afternoon or another activity that takes your fancy. Day four, drive to Hobbiton, do the movie set tour, and then drive to Toppo. Day five, go do the tombro crossing. Day six, drive to White Tmo, do the black water rafting in the glowworm caves, and then drive back to Oakland. And yes, this is very full on, but if you only got two weeks, this is the way you got to do it. Day seven, you're going to fly down to Christ Church and then have the afternoon just exploring that city. Day eight, drive across Arthur's Pass and
get yourself to France Joseph. Day nine, do the glacia heli hike at France Joseph and then drive to Wanuka. Day 10 in Wanuka, go to Royce Peak or another hike or whatever takes your fancy. Day 11, do the scenic flight and cruise to Milford Sound. If you don't want to pay for the scenic flight, then switch that night to a night in Queenstown and do a day trip to Milford Sound or possibly even go and stay in Tano, which is halfway between Queenstown and Milford Sound to kind of break up the drive. And then the last three days will be in Queenstown just doing whatever activities take your fancy. I've just based it on the ones that we did, and then fly home from Queenstown. So that's option number one.
Option number two is similar to that, but at a slightly more leisurely pace and taking up some of the traveling. So as before, we're going to start in Oakuckland. Day two, go to Cathedral Cove and do the kayaking. Day three, head to Rotor. And then on day four, go to Kerosene Creek near Rotor. And then go check yourself into the Airbnb that we did, the beautiful cottage on the farm that's just south of Madam Mata and near the Hobbiton set. Day five, do Hobbiton and then drive to Toppo. Day six, Tongario Crossing. Day seven, White Town Caves and get yourself back to Oakland. And then for day eight, rather than going to Christ Church, you're just going to fly straight down to Queenstown
and base yourself out from there. So maybe a couple of nights at Queenstown to get yourself settled in. then driving to Wanuka for a couple of nights doing some activities there including the scenic flight to Milford Sound. For day 12 will be your overnight on the Doubtful Sound cruise and then day 13 will be finishing up the cruise heading to Queenstown and then having your last day in Queenstown. So slightly different, still pretty full-on but not quite as much driving as in the previous version. And then the final version is skipping out the North Island altogether and just having two weeks on the South Island. And don't get me wrong, the North Island is amazing. It's just that
the south is just freaking incredible. So for this trip, you're going to be flying in and out of Christ Church and driving around a loop of the South Island. So after your first night in Christ Church, we're going to head to Kikora and do the dolphin swimming. Next, you're going to head to Benham and go check out the wineries. Day four, you're going to drive past Nelson and go and see the Able Tasman National Park. There's a little town called Kite Terry. And from there, you can book like a half-day tour of Able Tasman and then drive back to Nelson to spend the night there. Day five is a long ass drive down to France Joseph. And then day six we're
doing the glacia heli hike there and then driving to Wanuka. And then from there on out it's pretty similar like three nights in Wanuka including a scenic flight to Milford Sound then doing a doubtful Sound overnight cruise then having some time at Queenstown and then to get back to Christ Church have your night at Mount Cook and then on the final day on the drive back go and see Mount Sunday which is Eterus. So there you go. As with any country there's a million other things to do than what I've suggested. These are just some of the main highlights for your first trip. about it. If you think there's any blatant obvious ones that I've missed out and you're screaming at the TV going, "How the hell can you not
mention this car?" Then, hey, leave that in the comments. Let other people know what they could go and see on their first trip in New Zealand. So, that's it for now. Thanks for watching, guys. Uh, next week I'm going to be doing a budget breakdown of our trip, and I'll also tweak that budget for the twoe versions that I've suggested here. So, make sure you've subscribed and hit on the notifications so you don't miss that. If you haven't checked out the full New Zealand documentary series yet of our three and a half weeks driving rounds, then please go check those out. I'm super proud of how those films came together. It's a lot of fun. So, please go and enjoy them and let me know what
you think about it in the comments. If you're wondering what the next big documentary series is going to be on my channel, it's going to be the Sri Lanka trip that I did in February. Whether I'll get that edited in time before I go off my next trip, I'm not sure yet. But in the meantime, I've got lots of other short videos planned to fill the gap. So, stay tuned, guys, and I'll see you very soon. Heat.
