New Zealand – South Island ultimate travel itinerary
Day 1 Christchurch
Day 2 – Timaru
Day 3-8 Queenstown
Day 9-10 Wanaka
Day 11-12 Twizel + Tekapo and Mount Cook
Day 13 – Geraldine
Day 14-16 – Christchurch
Main mode of travel --> Car
Question?
Why did we drive around and finish back at Queenstown?
Two reasons
- Airfares were cheaper to enter and exit from Christchurch
- Car rentals were drastically more expensive if we dropped our car at Queenstown and ended our trip there. By a few hundred $$$!
Day 1
Arrived at Christchurch at midnight, stayed at an airport accommodation priced at $63 AUD for two travelers. Accommodation was not too fancy but was sufficient for sleeping and had great wifi. Free breakfast was provided but we opted to eat breakfast out by preference.
Day 2
We drove to a pak’n’save, Costco equivalent in the US and Australia. Stocked up on some groceries as New Zealand is not a country friendly on the wallet to eat three good meals out per day. Bought out prepaid simcards with a company called skinny sim. Great buy for $50, 10 gig data with weekend bonus data and unlimited calls and messages within both New Zealand and Australia. Following this we jumped in our rental car which we picked up at the beginning of the morning and made our way to the lovely coastal town of Timaru. Which was a 2 hour and 20-minute drive from Christchurch. Our accommodation was excellent for $82 AUD, worth every penny. Once arrived at Timaru we decided to cook up some snags, onions and fried tomatoes a great and easy meal on the road. After dinner we decided to drive and walk around the town of Timaru only to find a very well-organized city centre and strip of some quality restaurants. My favourite photo of Timaru was the one shown below.
Day 3 – Drive to Queenstown with multiple stops
We drove from Timaru to Queenstown which is normally supposed to take about 4 hours but we spent 6 hours as we stopped several times to admire the pristine beauty of what is New Zealand’s landscape.
Day 4-8 Queenstown
Queenstown was simply amazing, great food, great accommodation and great location, what more could you ask from a holiday destination. Must do’s at Queenstown or around Queenstown include:
- Pedro’s House of Lamb – epic lamb, I could eat again and again, although my partner had different views about it as she is not a big lamb eater
- Ferg burger – obvious but still have to list it. Although the burgers were amazing, I feel like my expectations were too high, and maybe that may have had made it less special, Holly Heffa Burger Sydney and Frangoes Chicken Burger in my opinion have superior burgers. Maybe I m just being a biased Sydney sider.
- Eichardt’s – seafood chowder now I normally would not pay for a soup when going out, but this soup was worth every penny.
- Devil burger – overshadowed by it global rival Ferg, still offers great burgers, however there buns are not on par with the Ferg.
- Arrowtown – amazing bike trail at arrowtown, with numerous swimming holes, the water is pretty chill though so you do have to be a little brave
- Nightlife – the bars in Queenstown were phenomenal we crawled across a few cannot recollect the names for obvious reasons but I m pretty sure its not hard to find them.
- Our biggest mistake at Queenstown was driving to Milford Sound, this drive was an epic drive and Milford Sound has unrivalled beauty but try being on the road 5 hours each way in one day. We basically left our lodge at 9am arrived at 2pm, did a 2hour boat cruise, had dinner at Te Amaru which is where we should have stayed the night at then drove back to Queenstown and arrived at roughly 11pm.
- Mountain Karting at cardrona was also a lot of fun, make the excursion to Cadrona if you get the chance
Milford Sound View shown below
Arrowtown bike trail and bae shown above
As far as Queenstown goes that is all I remember from my time there, there are obviously plenty of things that we missed out on but 5 days does not do justice to a place like Queenstown and we will be back!
Day 9-10 Wanaka
We spent two days at Wanaka which is an amazing place roughly 1 hour from Queenstown. A much smaller town but with in my opinion bigger potential in the future. The highlight of Wanaka was trekking to the top of Mount Aspiring in the Roys Peak Trail.
I almost died when taking the above photo, not from falling but a heart attack due to my fear of heights!!
Day 11 +12 Twizel, Mount Cook & Lake Tekapo
We spent two nights at an amazing Airbnb called the Red Tractor. Twizel is strategically located 45 minutes from both Lake Tekapo and Mount Cook, allowing us to spend one day at each location.
Day 13 – Geraldine
Highlight of Geraldine was finding the Moana River Gorge Waterfall, unfortunately no photos were taken of the sight but it was an amazing waterfall very deep, you can swim and jump of the rock. However, I would not advise jumping of the rock and doing so would be at your own risk, if your asking… No I too did not jump, haha!
Day 14-16 Christchurch
Christchurch is an amazing city still recovering from the Eathquake and remnants of its damage are still present and being rebuilt. Christchurch offers a lot of great shopping, restaurants and pubs. Budda Stix was just one of the great restaurants that we ate at. Arthurs Pass is only a couple hours drive from Christchurch and offers more natural eye candy for the tourists/traveller/explorer, whichever you identify yourself as.
Here is our itinerary of South Island, plenty of places we saw and plenty we did not get a chance to see, what’s your itinerary like? What did you enjoy about your trip there and what would you have changed? How did you save on your trip?