Did you enjoy riding along with us on our month long road trip across the north and south islands of New Zealand? We had so much fun exploring and adventuring and sure hope you have the opportunity to explore it in person some day.
If you are interested in getting a copy of our itinerary, please email us at christine@svSugarShack.com. The itinerary is broken down by day, with kilometers to each location, links to all activities, bars, restaurants, and hotels. Here is a recap of our road trip.
Overall journey was well over 5,000km and took us about 28 days.
Here are highlights of each major stop:
North Island
Auckland- The City of Sails: Sky Tower and Viaduct
Loads of fun in Waitomo starting with the beautiful glow worms
And The Lost World Adventure where we abseiled 100m into the earth!
The road trip continues to Wellington, the southern most point in the North island and the capital of NZ.
South Island
We take a ferry across the straight to the South Island. We visit the Nelson Classic Car Museum and take a Sky Wire ride over the valleys and trees.
The Abel Tasman Forest has several really cool hikes and caves to explore.
Next we make our way down the west side of the south island: Westport, Charleston, Greymouth and Inchbonnie.
The absolutely beautiful pancake rocks stun us with their unique beauty.
We took a phenomenal helicopter ride over the Franz Josef glacier and dozens of other glaciers.
We get perplexed at Puzzling World and see a huge waterfall in Wanaka.
Definitely one of the highlights for me was our Shotover Jet Boat ride. A truly thrilling and exhilarating experience!
My favorite day was our trip to Milford Sound where we took a 5.5 hour bus ride, 2 hour boat ride, and 45 minute plane over one of the world’s 8th wonders!
We make it all the way to the southern most point of the south island, Stirling Point at 46 36.53!
Stewart Island
Although we did not technically “drive” to Stewart Island (as you can’t bring your car over), we did take a ferry and enjoyed exploring this “3rd island” of New Zealand.
Our road trip finally turns us around and we have to head back north. We start by going NE toward Dunedin which has the world’s steepest street (San Francisco has the world’s crookedest street).
We find beautiful, little blue penguins and a steampunk museum in Oamaru!
Christchurch is a city of potential being rebuilt after several natural disasters.
North Island
Tongariro National Park is the home of the world’s best one day hike. Even though we could not do it, we did manage to hike over 15miles in 2 days.
Lake Tapu has many hot springs, geysers, and mud pools.
One of my favorite waterfalls is Huka Falls where 200,000 liters of water push through the falls every 9 minutes.
Orakei Koroko Geothermal Pools fascinated me with the vibrant colors, geysers, and hot pools.
The road trip continues on to Rotorua where we take a float plane over the lakes, volcano, and hot springs.
We loved the Redwood Tree Walk where we crossed over 28 swing bridges!
And we conclude our road trip with a relaxing day at Polynesia Spa where we soak in acidic and alkaline hot springs.
A truly once in a lifetime experience to be able to explore this amazing country by land. Even though I felt like we saw a lot, we did not touch on so many other wonderful things. I think a return visit will be in our future.
Events from this blog occurred in mid-February to mid-March 2023. Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.