Our New Zealand itinerary – what we are going to do with our month here!

We are in New Zealand (sadly our last stop on our around-the-world trip)! Well, to be fair, we’ve been in New Zealand for a few weeks, but I’m just as excited now as I was when we first got here. New Zealand is my favorite place on earth and, if it wasn’t so far from everyone we love, we’d move here in a heartbeat.

Because it’s such an awesome place there are so many things we could have done, and boiling down to a one-month New Zealand itinerary was tough. But we did it and I’m excited to share our plans with you! (Note: I know based on our around-the-world trip I still have one more Madagascar post to do and then a bunch of Cape Town posts to do, but I wanted to share this plan while we at least are still in New Zealand!).

Tell me a little more about New Zealand

So New Zealand is a small country that lives to the southeast of Australia. It’s so far that many “world maps” actually omit it (booo). Because it is so far, it also is one of the last places to have been found by humans – the first to arrive here came in only the 1200s. Isn’t that nuts? The Maori people came to New Zealand in this time from Fiji, Tonga, etc. and then the Dutch arrived in the 1600s. This was followed by the English in the 1800s.

Technically New Zealand gained independence in 1947 but also technically they still “report up” to the Queen of England and people have to take an oath to her when they become citizens. When we ask people about this they say that the relationship between the countries is fine, New Zealanders don’t really want to fight and it doesn’t really affect their daily lives, so meh, whatever. Ha, that is such a kiwi attitude to have!

74% of the population is of European descent and almost 15% is of Maori descent. I have to say, of all the places we have been to, New Zealand seems to be trying the hardest to keep the culture of their First Persons alive and integrated today. Many of the natural wonders here go by the Maori name, and those that are believed to be sacred by the Maori people are often off limits for climbing/visiting. The Maori language is spoken in schools and feels more respected than the cultures of other First Persons in other countries.

Almost 5 million people live in New Zealand (and about 30 million sheep!), over an area of ~100,000 square miles (about the size of Oregon). In some ways it is similar to Australia, but in some very important (at least to me!) ways it is very different. The biggest difference is that there basically isn’t any animal here that can kill a human – no bears, no snakes, no poisonous spiders (well, there are 2 species, but they are very, very, very rare), no mountain lions, no crocodiles, etc. etc. Which is kind of crazy given that in Australia there are so many things that can kill you!

I was in New Zealand ten years ago on a trip with school and, while it was a whirlwind, I loved it and knew I would return someday. I feel so lucky to be able to do that on a honeymoon with Damian, and I have my fingers crossed that he will fall in love with this place as much as I have!

The plan for our time in New Zealand

Oh man, planning this was crazy. You could literally pick one little area of New Zealand and spend one month just exploring there. There is so much natural beauty and so much fun outdoors stuff to do. Everything is so well-maintained and organized by the Department of Conservation as well. And the country is just gorgeous. Everywhere you look there are soaring mountains or blue lakes or green pastures. It’s no wonder that so many movies have been filmed here.

So anyway, in terms of our planning, we knew we were going to be driving and so wanted to start on one end of the country (north/south) and end up on the other end. Other than that we just flipped through guidebooks, went through my old itinerary, and researched on blogs and Instagram to figure out where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. One thing we did have to take into consideration was that it is spring and so the weather can be finicky. That meant if there was a must do hike we needed to allocate more than just one day to do it in case the conditions were bad.

Here’s our plan for our time in New Zealand on a map (what we are doing is in the dark navy blue circles):

What’s on the list for our New Zealand itinerary

• North Island: ~2 weeks
  • Auckland: This is the main entry point to New Zealand. Honestly the city itself is meh, we are basically going to just lock down and adjust to the crazy jetlag from Cape Town (I think NZ is 10 hours ahead of Cape Town)
  • Cambridge/Kawhia/Waitomo: Cambridge is just a beautiful farm town, Kawhia has a hot water beach and Waitomo has glowworm caves
  • Rotorua: Visit a Maori village, see geothermal action
  • Taupo: Hang out near Lake Taupo, do the Alpine Tongariro Crossing (purportedly New Zealand’s best day hike)
  • Wellington: Explore the windy capital city (and one of my favorite cities on earth!)
• South Island: ~2 weeks
  • Abel Tasman Park: We’ll be doing a 3-day kayaking/camping trip down the coast
  • Punakaiki: Pancake rocks and blowholes!
  • Mt Cook/Lake Tekapo/Lake Pukaki: Hiking, beautiful blue lakes and New Zealand’s tallest mountain
  • Wanaka: Another amazing day hike (either Roy’s Peak or Isthmus Peak, or more), #thatwanakatree, more blue lakes and hikes
  • Queenstown: Fun adventure stuff in a beautiful lakeside town

What’s not on our New Zealand itinerary

Honestly, it makes me sad to type out this list because I want to do all of these things. But, there just isn’t time and we had to choose to make sure we were really enjoying the things we are doing. I just have to have faith in the fact that I know I will be back here again and that I will get to do these things. So some of the things we aren’t doing are in the teal triangles below (though this list could have had at least fifty more things on it …)

• Bay of Islands: An area way up north with beautiful beaches and landscapes
• Matamata: I’m not so sad to miss this one, this is Hobbit-town, where a bunch of the movies were filmed. I know others get excited about it, so I wanted to put it on the map, but neither of us has seen any of the movies (blasphemy, I know!)
• Kaikoura: A seaside town with wonderful sea-life watching and interacting (you can swim with dolphins here!)
• Christchurch: I missed this city my first time here and I’m going to be missing it again. I would be interested in seeing how the rebuild is going after the earthquake, but that will have to wait until next time.
• Dunedin: I skipped this last time and unfortunately am skipping it again. I think it’s also that since we are taking only a month to drive the country the things that are the furthest away are easiest to cut off the list
• Stewart Island: I don’t know much about this but it seems like a really neat place to go. Only a couple hundred people live there and so it would be cool to visit
• Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound: I saw Milford Sound the last time I was here and while it was stunning we also just saw some gorgeous fjords in Norway and so thought it was ok to take this off the list
• Fox / Franz Joseph Glaciers: I also saw this the last time I was here and we did an awesome glacier hike in Norway and so decided to skip this one too (sad side note: ten years ago we could hike up to and directly onto the glaciers; now they have receded so much that it is unsafe to do that so the only way to get on top of them is to take a helicopter … #climatechangeisreal)

Up first!

Dang, getting to New Zealand from Cape Town is no joke! It was another 24-hour journey (as was our Newark – Antananarivo trip) to go from Cape Town to Dubai to Auckland. As I said, New Zealand is really really far from everything. We got to Auckland and had budgeted in a few days to rest, which was good. We were also pleasantly surprised that there was a Diwali festival (Diwali is the Hindu New Year) happening in Auckland so we got to enjoy that. After that it was off to start our New Zealand itinerary in the Cambridge / Kawhia / Waitomo region!

More to come on New Zealand and our travels before that (finishing up Madagascar and recapping South Africa) soon!