NEW ZEALAND IN 11 DAYS...

DAY ONE

Take a flight from the City of Sails south to Queenstown. Ask for a seat on the right side of the plane and hope for a clear day. The views over the Southern Alps are spectacular and the descent through the hills into Queenstown Airport itself is the best I’ve experienced.

After the 15 minute journey to the town itself, take a stroll around the edge of Lake Wakatipu and refuel at one of the café/bars on the water front. I can recommend the fish and chips at 19.

DAY TWO

Walk to the top of town and the Gondola up the mountain. The views of the Lake and the Remarkables are even better from this lofty position. The interesting circle walk round the top of the mountain takes about an hour and is well worth the effort.

Queenstown from up high

On the way back to earth drop in at the Bird and Wildlife Sanctuary, it costs $30 but you get a headset which is very interesting and informative. You may even get to see the elusive Kiwi.

DAY THREE

The remote Milford Sound is a must. You can either take a coach trip which will take you there and back and include a trip on the ferry, or you can splash the boat out and take a small aircraft there and back for roughly twice the price. Faced with around 10 hours on a coach we chose the plane option and were very glad we did. The pilot doubles as a tour guide and points out the main features on the flight, of which there are many.

The ferry trip is amazing – about an hour and a half through the sound and out onto the Tasman Sea before about facing and returning to the terminal and the mercy of the sandflies.

Milford Sound

When back in Queenstown, if you still have the energy, have a walk through the Botanical Gardens.

DAY FOUR

With regret, move on from Queenstown, hiring a car to move north up toward the glaciers. It’s a 370km drive past some scenery (you’ll have run out of original superlatives by now), plenty of places to stop off for a bite to eat including Lake Hawea.

Lake Hawea

The drive takes you up through Mt Aspiring National Park then out toward the coast again at Haast. Apparently, if you have time, the fish and chips at Jackson’s Bay are worth checking out.

After several hours and seeing more roadkill and one lane bridges than you do other cars you’ll arrive in Fox Glacier.
I can highly recommend the 20km drive on the unsealed road out toward Gillespies Beach and feel like you’ve walked onto some unchartered desert island. Lake Mathieson offers good reflective views of the glacier. Although not early evening, so don’t bother at that time.

Mum keeps lookout on Gillespies Beach

DAY FIVE

Get up early and make your way the few kilometres to the base of the glacier. The walk to the face takes about an hour and is a litigious American’s delight, with perilous stepping stones and slippery rock faces and barely a warning sign in sight. Great fun and good on my Mum for making it look easy. A pretty amazing glimpse of nature when you get there too. We were about a week late though, as there had recently been a collapse at the front of the glacier sending “boulders the size of cars” off down the ice blue river.

Us in front of a collapsed ice cave

Hopefully the weather won’t take a turn for the worse for the afternoon and the trip to Franz Josef glacier like it did for us. The storm set in and although we went to the base of this glacier we couldn’t do the walk as the weather was too bad. Felt a bit sorry for the people who had hoped to do the hike on the ice.

There aren’t many places to eat in the two glacier towns but the places we found were fantastic. In Fox we went to the Plateau – where food/wine/beer was all good, and in Franz Josef we ate at the Blue Ice Café which was even nicer.

DAY SIX

Well the weather still hasn’t cleared up so scratch that early morning trip to the glacier and head off on the drive up to Greymouth. Hokitika is a nice place to stop for some morning tea and to break the drive up a little bit. Push on up to Greymouth and the starting place of your TranzAlpine journey. There are a lot of tunnels and a few viaducts (and now I know the difference between a viaduct and a bridge) and some more scenery that will take your breath away. The journey ends a few hours later in the Garden City – Christchurch.

DAY SEVEN

Exploring Christchurch. Well the best way to do this would be on foot. There are botanical gardens, the huge Hagely Park and the quaint riverside area by the Avon. See them all. Plus the gondola taking you up to views of the port of Lyttleton and Christchurch is worth doing. Unless you’ve done it before and have recently been up the gondola in Queenstown.

A mad wizard

DAY EIGHT

Early start – the TransCoastal train leaves Christchurch at 7am so it’s a bit of a hassle having to get up. But the weather on the east coast is usually really good so expect to have much better views on this rail trip. You arrive in Picton, the ferry terminal, around lunch time. So you can either hop straight on a boat, or do as we did, hire a car, and drive over to Nelson for the night. This drive was my favourite. The roads are windier and you even have to drop as low as 15km/hr to tackle some of the hairpin bends that would put Monte Carlo to shame. But they’re nicely cambered if you fancy testing out the rickety old Toyota and scaring your passenger half to death. You’ll be stopping off several times to drink in the views of the Marlborough Sounds.
Nelson is quite nice, a smallish town (actually it’s pretty big by NZ standards) with a nice waterfront and a pleasant enough town centre. We weren’t there all that long really but long enough to have my favourite meal of the whole trip... a stonegrilled mixed grill with beer battered fries in Café Affair. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

DAY NINE

Drive back to Picton and catch the InterIslander ferry. It takes about 3 and a half hours with an interesting journey through the sounds of the South Island before heading out on to the Cook Straight and toward Wellington. We were fortunate to be heading to the capital at the same time as hundreds of rugby fans off to watch the sevens tournament.

DAY TEN

If you’re lucky enough to be in town at the same time as the sevens then enjoy the incredibly detailed and varied costumes on show as just about everyone who goes to this tournament dresses up. Back on the tourist trail, take the cable car up the hill then walk back to the city through the gardens coming out at the government buildings and the beehive.
The waterfront is very pleasant and right on it is the Te Papa museum, one of the very best I’ve been to.

DAY ELEVEN

Fly back to Auckland and think about your favourites:

To stay: The Garden Court Apartments in Queenstown – all mod cons you could wish for in a self contained unit. Close but not too close to the city and with a staff that will organise everything for your stay in the area should you need them to.
To eat: Café Affair in Nelson run close by a great place in Wellington that I can’t remember the name of – it’s on Cuba St though.
To see: Milford Sound – no amount of superlatives can really do it justice.
To go on holiday: Queenstown – winter for skiing or summer for throwing yourself off mountains/out of planes/down rivers.
To live: Wellington – I’ve had a glimpse of most of the major places in NZ and only Auckland and Wellington are big enough for me to live in. Other places are just too quiet.
Activity: The Milford Sound trip.

All 153 photos can be found HERE