As I continue writing about New Zealand, you might notice that this itinerary is pretty crammed, even for me. Since Julia was meeting me in New Zealand over her spring break, and already took two extra days off of school because of the long travel time, we had to squeeze everything else into 9 days. No one in their right mind would do the North and South Island if they only had 9 days, and I’m being honest that I absolutely do not recommend it; it’s the most breakneck pace I’ve ever set, which is really saying something. But I knew that if anyone could figure this out logistically, it was me—and Julia, to her credit, is game for anything, so we managed to hit all of the highlights we wanted to see, but we were ready to fall into bed every night before 10pm.
We got up and left our hostel in Auckland very early on April 4 to catch our flight to Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island. Our flight left on time at 6:30am and we were in Christchurch less than 90 minutes later.
We went to our hostel straight from the airport and dropped our stuff, then grabbed a very quick breakfast and hustled over to the Antigua Boat Sheds. I had read that, of all the cities in New Zealand, Christchurch retained the most British influence, and one of those influences is boat punting rides on the Avon River. I’d made us a reservation for a 30-minute ride starting at 10am.
Punting on the Avon (and being photobombed by our guide)
Views from the Avon River in Christchurch
Empty punts waiting for passengers
After our boat ride, we walked back through downtown Christchurch a little, discovering the delightful Riverside Market, a fancy food court where we planned to return for dinner, as well as some lovely shops and cafes. Christchurch is one of the few places I’ve ever been that I could immediately imagine myself living there happily. We then headed over to the Hokitika Sandwich Company to get sandwiches to-go for our train trip the following day. Finally, we headed back to our hostel in time to be picked up for our tour of the Waipara Wine Trail.
Our first stop was at Waipara Springs. Julia was kind enough to join me on the tour even though she doesn’t imbibe because she enjoys the beauty of wineries, and our tour also included lunch. Once we got to each winery, they all ended up having a selection of non-alcoholic juices, and she enjoyed trying different flavors.
At Waipara Springs
The second winery, Georges Road Wines, had maybe the most spectacular views I’ve ever seen at a vineyard. We basically ended up having a photoshoot!
We went to a third winery as well (where I didn’t think to take pictures), then headed back to Christchurch. We got back around 6pm and strolled through the downtown on our way back to the Riverside Market, but discovered that unfortunately, it was only open during the day. We headed back in the direction of our hostel to explore New Regent Street and have dinner at Francesca’s Italian Kitchen.
The Canterbury Museum in Christchurch
Christchurch Botanic Gardens
New Regent Street
In the morning, due to our jam-packed schedule, it was time to leave Christchurch. I wish we could’ve had even another half day because of how much I loved it there, but beggars can’t be choosers. We headed for the train station because our Tranzalpine Train across the Southern Alps was leaving at 8:15am. We were taking the train over the mountains, across the South Island to Greymouth, a town on the northwest coast.
I had read that the Tranzalpine train is one of the most beautiful train trips in the world, but it still surprised me how breathtaking it was. As hard as it is to choose, the train trip was my favorite thing we did in New Zealand, and if you find yourself there, I highly recommend it.
I don't really have captions for the train photos so I'm just going to drop them here for your viewing pleasure:
We munched on our sandwiches that we picked up the day before and enjoyed the views before pulling into Greymouth at 1:10pm. After some confusion because we couldn’t find the right car rental desk (I had rented from Dollar but it turns out we had to pick it up from the Thrifty desk), we found out we got a free upgrade to a hybrid SUV and got the keys to our very own rental car. Julia, heroically, was driving on the right side of the car and the left side of the road over the next two days, and she adjusted to it amazingly quickly.
Julia posing with the rental car
We were ultimately working our way down the west coast of the South Island to Queenstown, but our first stop was actually 40 minutes north to the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks in Paparoa National Park.
Limestone stack and a black sand beach in Paparoa National Park
First glimpse of the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks
According to New Zealand’s West Coast tourism website, “The foundations of the Pancake Rocks were formed 30 million years ago when minute fragments of dead marine creatures and plants landed on the seabed about 2km below the surface. Immense water pressure caused them to solidify into layers of more resistant limestone. Gradually, seismic action lifted the limestone above the seabed.”
The walking track to see the Pancake Rocks goes through a small area of forest and then along the breathtaking coast. It was technically out of our way but I’m so glad we went.
Selfie with the wild West Coast
We then doubled back past Greymouth to our final destination for the evening, Hokitika. Hokitika is a beautiful beach town that is really quaint and underdeveloped, in a nice way. No big chains or huge waterfront hotels; it’s all mom-and-pop businesses, and we were there in the off-season so it was pretty quiet.
We went to Hokitika Beach, another black sand beach for sunset.
After we had dinner at a place called Stumpers Bar and Café (which made me laugh every time I said it) and then checked out the nearby Glow Worm Dell.
As anyone who has read my blog before knows, I love to say money on accommodation. That night, we stayed at Hokitika’s Kiwi Holiday Park, which was basically a campground that also had cabins with beds. We stayed in a cabin and had to walk outside to get to the bathhouse but let me also say that it was truly one of the nicest campgrounds we’ve ever stayed in, and I personally have camped all over the world. Our total for the night was $54 USD, which I think is an absolute steal. So if you’re looking for somewhere super cheap to stay in Hokitika, I highly recommend the Kiwi Holiday Park.
When I was originally making the New Zealand itinerary, I planned on taking two days to get from Hokitika to Queenstown. But when I realized that wouldn’t leave us with any time to explore Queenstown itself, I decided to crunch it into one. The following day was the only full day that we had the car, and my plan was to make the absolute most of it. We hit the road at 6am to make the most of 12 hours of daylight, and our first stop was in Franz Josef, which was an hour and 40 minutes away. We had a reservation to take a helicopter ride to the Franz Josef glacier, and we were very excited. But when we got there, we discovered that the cloud cover was hanging too low and they weren’t flying anytime soon. We continued on for another 30 minutes down to Fox Glacier to see if the weather was better down there. They told us they were hoping the weather would clear within a few hours, so we decided to do the hike around nearby Lake Matheson, in Westland Tai Poutini National Park, while we waited and hoped that the helicopters would start flying.
The path around Lake Matheson goes through an ancient rainforest, so we really enjoyed the stroll.
View of the Southern Alps
First peek at Lake Matheson
Lake Matheson is famous for having great views of Mount Cook (aka Aoraki in Maori), the tallest mountain in New Zealand, and Mount Tasman (aka Horokoau), the second-tallest. On the clearest days, you’ll even get to see the mountains reflected in the lake, if you’re lucky.
The mountain you can see peeking out on the left is Mount Cook. Mount Tasman is on Mount Cook’s right, obscured by clouds.
Scary eel in the water
I hoofed it up a bunch of stairs to the View of Views overlook and I think the pictures from below are better, so the joke was on me.
Strolling through the ancient forest
We finished our walk and headed hopefully back to the helicopter place, but the clouds were basically sticking right to the glacier and they still weren’t flying. We grabbed a quick lunch and checked one more time before giving up our helicopter dreams and continuing south. We were already behind schedule, so we couldn’t afford to wait any longer.
Our next stop was Fantail Falls, a waterfall that was a little over 2 hours away, but we were driving through Mount Aspiring National Park to get there. We passed breathtaking sights like Bruce Bay and the Haast Pass, and every bend in the road was more beautiful than the next.
Fantail Falls
Walking back to the car
We then stopped at the Blue Pools. Julia was pretty tired at this point so she decided to stay back while I walked the 2 miles roundtrip to the Blue Pools. I hustled out there so it only took me about 45 minutes and it was absolutely worth it.
The Makarora River on the way to the Blue Pools
One side of the Blue Pools
The other side of the Blue Pools
Views of Haast Pass
Lake Wanaka overlook
Lake Wanaka is a big, long lake, so we were driving along it for a while and the views were stunning the whole time.
More Lake Wanaka views
We drove briefly through the town of Wanaka and stopped to grab a picture of the famous #ThatWanakaTree.
If we weren’t in such a rush, I think I would’ve had us stay in Wanaka, because it’s a really pretty little town right on the lake, but we were racing daylight to also get the car dropped off on time, so that wasn’t an option.
I had insisted that we hurry all day long, because I knew that the road down into Queenstown, called Crown Range Road, is so steep that it uses switchbacks to climb down into the valley. Julia had done an amazing job over the past two days, but I desperately was trying to avoid her having to drive through the switchbacks, on the opposite side of the road/car, in the dark.
We got to the switchback section of Crown Range Road 13 minutes after sunset, but thankfully it wasn’t full dark yet. And holy cow, what a view we got of the sunset coming into Queenstown!
We grabbed a quick dinner at a barbecue place and then headed for the airport to drop off the car (our deadline was 9pm).
We got a taxi from the airport to our hostel, and basically fell into bed. We had a day trip booked to Milford Sound the following day, and Julia nearly cried when I told her we were getting picked up a 7am. But she rallied, and we had an amazing day at Milford Sound.
Milford Sound is actually very close to Queenstown, but you have to go around the mountains to get there, so the travel time is about 3.5 hours. We had a breakfast stop in the very cute town of Te Anau, which is known as the gateway to Fiordland National Park, which is where Milford Sound is. Side note: Milford Sound’s name is actually a misnomer because it’s not a sound, it’s a fjord.
On the outskirts of Fiordland National Park
Mirror Lake in Fiordland National Park
Mirror Lake
At the Continental Divide in Fiordland National Park
Rudyard Kipling called Milford Sound the eighth wonder of the world and I don’t think he was too far off.
Tutoko Glacier
More views of Milford Sound
Posing with Mitre Peak
Getting sprayed by Stirling Falls
Lady Elizabeth Bowen Falls
It's even more breathtaking in real life.
We saw dolphins and seals from our boat! Apparently it’s common to see penguins as well but we weren’t that lucky.
We got back to Queenstown around 7:30pm, and walked over to the famous Fergbaker to get hand pies and pastries for dinner before falling into bed.
In the morning, we comparatively got to sleep in because we didn’t have anything to do until 10:30 in the morning. We grabbed a coffee and then made our way over to the Shotover Canyon Swing office in downtown Queenstown.
When we were making our plans for New Zealand, I asked Julia what she wanted to do in Queenstown. Queenstown is famous for being adrenaline central (They literally call themselves “the adventure capital of the world”), so I looked into what our options were. They have bungee jumping, skydiving, quad biking, a gorge swing, base jumping, paragliding—and the list goes on. I really wanted to do a gorge swing (which is not the same as bungee jumping because on a swing, you stay upright and you’re attached to a swing instead of a bungee cord) but I didn’t think Julia would be interested in that, so I asked her if maybe she’d want to go quad biking instead? She quickly informed me she didn’t want to do anything of that sort in Queenstown because she’d like to make it home alive, thank you very much. I asked her if she’d mind joining me while I did the gorge swing and she agreed, so I booked it for myself and paid an extra $12 to have her join me as a spectator. She took an amazing video of me from a platform up above.
The gorge swing is in Shotover Canyon (over the Shotover River)
Video of my gorge swing jump. I had to run to get myself over the edge because I knew I wouldn’t be able to just stand on the edge and jump into nothingness. It felt really, really safe though so I was never afraid of anything malfunctioning; just getting over the edge was a mental hurdle, but I made it!
The black speck is me
I survived the jump!
We then headed to Yonder for a well-deserved brunch, since I think Julia was more nervous than I was so we weren’t particularly hungry for breakfast before the jump.
We explored the Queenstown Arts & Crafts market after brunch, which is right on the shores of Lake Wakatipu.
Downtown Queenstown (It really gives Colorado vibes, we thought).
We then walked over and got on the gondola up to Bob’s Peak.
View of Queenstown from above at Bob’s Peak
Bob’s Peak also has a luge track!
I risked my life and pulled over to take this selfie, because Julia was coming down behind me. But as I’m sure you can tell, that isn’t even her!!
Once we got down from Bob’s Peak, we took a water taxi across Lake Wakatipu over to Frankton, a suburb of Queenstown, to go to the Frankton Arms Tavern for dinner.
View from the water taxi
View of the mountains from Frankton
I wish I knew the people who were in this photo because it turned out really nice, if I do say so myself.
We got an Uber back to our hostel after dinner, and spent the rest of the night packing up our things. It was so hard to believe that our time in New Zealand was coming to an end the following day.
Julia left first the next day, because she had to get back up to Auckland for her flight home. So she flew from Queenstown to Auckland, Auckland to Houston, and Houston to Washington, D.C. She has notoriously bad luck with air travel so we were waiting for something to go wrong. Thankfully, the only thing that happened was that she missed the last leg from Houston to D.C. and there was another flight leaving an hour later. So she only got home maybe an hour and a half later than she planned. All things considered, that’s a banner air travel day for her, and I’m really glad she made it home in one piece.
My flight from Queenstown to Australia wasn’t until 2:30 in the afternoon, so I had a lazy morning in the hostel and then I walked down to the famous Fergburger and waited in the omnipresent line to see what all the fuss was about. I enjoyed the burger but frankly it reminded me of one I could get at Red Robin (I much preferred the hand pies and pastries from their other venture, Fergbaker). I took an Uber to the airport around noon and our flight to Australia left on time.
Bye-bye, New Zealand!
Comments