North IslandHobbitonfrom $71 New Zealand is two islands and a ferry in the middle. Here is what to book on the way south.
Which Milford day actually puts you on the water and which one is eight hours in a coach seat. What Hobbiton costs and why the summer slots go early. Whether Rotorua or Taupō is the better base for steam. Reviews of every tour you can book in the country.
South IslandMilford Soundfrom $85 Hobbiton, a Milford boat, an evening on a marae, and the whales off Kaikōura.
The four bookings a first New Zealand itinerary tends to hang off, with what each one costs and how much of the day it takes.
01The one everyone booksHobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour TicketTimed entry onto the film set outside Matamata, walked in small groups. Summer slots are spoken for weeks ahead.
02The short Milford day2-Hour Small Boat Scenic CruiseTwo hours on the water under Mitre Peak, without the four-hour coach leg at either end of it.
03The evening on the maraeMitai Maori Village: Cultural Experience and Dinner BuffetA carved waka, a hāngī lifted out of the ground, and a welcome that follows an order nine hundred years old.
04The Kaikōura morningWhale Watching CruiseSperm whales feed in a canyon a few kilometres offshore. The boat goes out most mornings and is back before lunch.
Milford at dawn, a canyon at 85kph, a whale off Kaikōura.
Three completely different ways to spend a day afloat here, what it costs to get on board each one, and which coast it happens on.
Auckland, Queenstown, Rotorua, and the four towns worth the detour.
Six bases that between them reach almost every tour in the country: two harbour cities, an alpine lake town, a geothermal valley, a capital built on a fault line, and a southern coast full of penguins.
The days out more people book in New Zealand than anything else.
Every one we have reviewed →These are the ones that go first in a New Zealand summer, and what each of them actually involves.
1
Hobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour Ticket
Explore Hobbiton’s 12-acre Shire, hear film-set stories, enter a Hobbit Hole, and enjoy a drink at the Green Dragon Inn.
From · $71
Read our review →
2
Rotorua Canopy Tours: 2.5Hour Native Forest Zipline Adventure
from $123
3
Hobbiton™ Movie Set Walking Tour from Shires Rest
from $74
4
Mitai Maori Village: Cultural Experience and Dinner Buffet
from $101
5
Whale Watching Cruise
from $104
6
Premium Milford Sound Small Group Tour & Cruise from Queenstown
from $216
7
Cruise Milford NZ Small Boutique Cruise Experience
from $111
8
Whale Watching in Kaikoura by Boat
from $111
Queenstown: the lake before breakfast, the adrenaline after lunch.
Everything in Queenstown →
The town sits under the Remarkables on a lake shaped like a lightning bolt, and has spent fifty years inventing ways to fall off the scenery. Milford leaves from here before dawn, the Shotover jet runs all day, and a coal-fired steamer from 1912 still crosses to the sheep station on the far shore.
Milford: coach and cruise, or fly one leg
The road in runs four hours each way through Fiordland and most of it is worth looking at. Flying one leg turns a very long day into a merely long one, for roughly triple the fare.
The Shotover jet, and the canyon walls
A flat-bottomed boat at 85kph up a canyon barely wider than the hull, with the spins thrown in. It is over quickly and it is the bit everyone describes at dinner.
The lake, at a coal-fired 13 knots
Short scenic runs up Lake Wakatipu, or the 1912 steamship across to Walter Peak, where lunch comes off a grill and a dog works the sheep afterwards. The most relaxed thing in Queenstown by a distance.
The ground in Rotorua does not hold still.
Silica terraces the colour of a bruise, mud that boils, a geyser that goes up on a schedule, and pools hot enough to sit in until your fingers wrinkle. The Taupō volcanic zone runs up the middle of the North Island and Rotorua sits on the loudest part of it.
Four things here you cannot sort out on the day.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on timed entry, a single departure chain, or a boat that has to meet a coach on the far side of a lake.
- 01Hobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour TicketEntry is by timed tour only and there is no walking in without one. Summer slots go weeks ahead.
- 02Doubtful Sound Wilderness Day TripGetting there takes a boat across Lake Manapouri and a coach over Wilmot Pass. One chain a day, and it leaves without you.
- 03Premium Milford Sound Small Group Tour & Cruise from QueenstownThe cruises are timed to meet the coaches. Miss the departure and there is no second run, and the road in closes for snow and slips.
- 04Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunchSmall groups go through the cave on a fixed cycle so the boats never meet. The quiet morning slots are taken first.
Three New Zealand experiences with no equivalent abroad.
Mountains and beaches are everywhere. A cave lit by insect larvae, a formal welcome onto a marae, and a boat built to run up a river four inches deep are not.
The Waitomo Glowworms
Arachnocampa luminosa lives in New Zealand and nowhere else. The larvae hang sticky threads from a cave ceiling and glow blue to draw insects onto them, and a few thousand of them overhead read as a clear night sky. Boats drift through the Glowworm Cave in silence, because noise makes the lights go out.
- 1Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,677 reviews
- 2Glowworm Caves Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,611 reviews
- 3Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Day Trip with Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 2,505 reviews
A Welcome onto the Marae
A pōwhiri follows an order: a challenge laid down and picked up, speeches from both sides, a waiata sung in reply, then the pressing of noses that ends the formality and makes you a guest rather than a stranger. What follows is usually a hāngī, cooked since morning in a pit on hot stones. It is a protocol, not a floor show.
- 1Mitai Maori Village: Cultural Experience and Dinner Buffet★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 3,575 reviews
- 2Cultural Experience & Seasonal Māori Cuisine at Te Pā Tū★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,546 reviews
- 3Mitai Maori Village Cultural Experience in Rotorua★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,294 reviews
The Jet Boat
Bill Hamilton wanted to get up the shallow braided rivers of Canterbury, so in the 1950s he built a hull that draws water in underneath and fires it out the back. No propeller, no depth needed, which is why these things run gorges at speed and spin on the spot. Every jet boat in the world descends from that one.
- 1Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in Queenstown★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,540 reviews
- 2Shotover River and Kawarau River Jet Boat Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,682 reviews
- 3Waikato River Jet Boat Ride from Taupo★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,441 reviews
Marlborough sauvignon, Central Otago pinot, and a syrah you reach by ferry.
Wine here is regional to the point of being parochial. The Wairau valley does one grape better than anywhere on earth, Central Otago does almost the opposite grape at the other end of the country, and Waiheke is forty minutes from downtown Auckland.
New Zealand is not a cheap country. A good deal of the best of it is.
Three price bands. The gap between the cheapest worthwhile day out and the most expensive one runs to about sixty times.
Cave entries, thermal parks, city walks, the ferry across to Waiheke and most of the shorter lake runs.
The standards: Hobbiton, a Milford cruise, whale watching off Kaikōura, a Marlborough cellar day, the jet boat.
Heli-hikes onto glacier ice, fly-cruise-fly into Milford, skydives over Wanaka, and the private drivers who join them up.
Fiordland takes seven metres of rain a year. Plan around it.
The west of the South Island is one of the wettest places on earth, a front crosses the whole country inside a day, and scenic flights are the first thing cancelled. The answer is to already have something underground, indoors or steaming booked for that morning.
The clearest night sky in the country sits above a lake the colour of paint.
Mackenzie country is a dark sky reserve, which means no streetlights and a horizon full of stars, over glacier-fed lakes running an improbable milky turquoise by day. Aoraki, the highest mountain in New Zealand, closes off the top of the valley.
Every Aoraki and Tekapo day →
The Shire is a working sheep farm ninety minutes from Auckland.
Forty-four hobbit holes on a Waikato hillside, kept and replanted since the cameras left, down to the fruit on the trees and the smoke coming out of the chimneys. It is the single most booked thing in New Zealand and it runs entirely on timed tickets.
- 1Hobbiton Movie Set: Guided Tour Ticketfrom $71
- 2Hobbiton™ Movie Set Walking Tour from Shires Restfrom $74
- 3Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunchfrom $229
Places, top of the North to the foot of the South
Auckland down to Milford Sound, the way most first trips go.
Aoraki & TekapoThe New Zealand reviews we finished most recently.
Keep going →
Half-Day Cruise in Marlborough Sounds from Picton
Read our review →
Mt Cook & Tekapo Day Tour from Christchurch (lunch included)
Read our review →
Franz Josef Town: 3-Glacier Helicopter Ride with Landing
Read our review →
Tauranga Shore Excursion: History & Kiwifruit Tasting – 4 Hours
Read our review →
Auckland Shore Excursion: Half-Day Guided City Tour
Read our review →
