New Zealand

     - A year in the planning


Visiting New Zealand is on many bucket lists, including mine.  Why?  For me, it is raw beauty that I have seen in photographs and on videos that is so enticing.  I have wanted to visit New Zealand for most of my adult life, but we have just not had enough vacation days at one time to really do it justice.  With our recent retirement, the opportunity can now be realized.  There are so many things one needs to consider when planning a trip like this, here are the major decisions we grappled with while organizing this visit. 

1.  How to we want to visit New Zealand?

Do we want to take a cruise, join a guided land based tour group, work with a travel agent to organize travel by ourselves or do we want plan our own travel itinerary?  Finally, we decided to plan our own itinerary.  


Auckland City Center from Mount Eden

2.  How long do we want to be there?  

New Zealand is an island nation with two main islands, the North and the South Islands.  As I began my research, I found out that US citizens can only go to New Zealand for 90 days without applying for a visitor visa.  Immigration is very restricted in New Zealand, so we decided to stay just shy of 90 days, to allow for any possible travel delays at the end of our trip so that we would not violate that 90 day window.   Then the decision was how much time to spend on each island, for that dilemma I needed to do more research.   


Whangarei Falls, North Island

3.  Which airlines should we take and which class of seat should we purchase?

From the US, the following airlines currently have non-stop flights from US cities to New Zealand:  Air New Zealand, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, American Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Fuji Airlines, Air Tahiti Nui, Qantas Airlines, Virgin Australia.  There may be others if you have connections after leaving the US.

Most airlines fly into Auckland and flights from Los Angeles (LAX) to Auckland (AKL) take approximately 12 1/2 hours.  There are many factors to consider when choosing an airline for this very long flight including cost, airline hubs and seat options.  Of course, I would love to fly business class with lie-flat seat option, but the cost was too high for us to justify and we did not have enough airline points to purchase with miles alone.  In the end, we chose to fly Air New Zealand as they have a reasonable priced coach seat and they also have a seat option called a sky couch, in which you reserve an entire row of coach seats (total of 3 seats in a row) for a slightly higher rate than one coach seat (but not as high a cost as purchasing 3 individual seats), then after takeoff, the footrest from all three seats can fold up so you have a flat couch to stretch out on and enjoy for the duration of the flight.  For us, this seemed a more economical option to business class.

One thing to consider when booking your tickets is flight delays and cancelations.  We always plan for our flights to be on time, but weather and maintenance issues can arise at any time as we found out.  We chose to fly to Los Angeles a day before our overseas flight to New Zealand too give some flexibility in case of delayed or canceled flights.  We arrived in LA without any issues only to have our Air New Zealand flight for the next day to be canceled approximately 24 hours before our flight (6 hours after we arrived in LA).  We had to scramble as Air New Zealand only has one flight a day out of LAX and would not be able to guarantee us a seat on the next days flight.  So we spent half of the night on hold with customer service while I searched for other flights out of LAX the next day.  I was able to find 2 seats on an alternative flight with another airline (Delta) arriving only 3 hours after the time our original flight was supposed to arrive.  We were lucky in that Air New Zealand was willing to refund that leg of our trip allowing us to purchase the alternate flight (albeit at a slightly higher cost).  Travel is fun and exciting, however, not without some stress and anxiety.  Make sure you are able to be flexible and pivot if the need arises.

Haruru Falls, North Island

4.  What do we want to see and do? Where are we going to stay?

The next major decision to be made was where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see.  There are two major options as we saw it:  Camper Van as our transportation and lodging or rental car with hotel/Airbnbs.  What to see and where to go took me many months of research to settle on list of must see places.  Our original plan was to pick 3 centrally located cities as home bases for 1 month each, then drive to the must see sights.   But as I started to put together where we wanted to go, I quickly realized this was not the best option.  So we revised our plan of 3 cities and decided to plan lodging staged around places we wanted to see and things we wanted to do.  

New Zealand doesn't have a lot of freeways and most of their roads outside of major cities like Auckland are two lane roads and those two lane roads are hilly with many twists and turns.  These types of roads take a lot longer to get from one place to another.  This is why Camper vans are so popular here in New Zealand.  There are many holiday parks where you can overnight.  However, because camper vans are so popular and we are traveling in their summer, hiring a camper van is very expensive.   In the end, we decided to select primarily Airbnbs with a few overnight stays in apartment hotels spending 3 weeks on the North Island and the remaining time on the South Island.  Below, I listed the itinerary we created and our must see sights in each location.

Glowworms in Waipu Caves Scenic Reserve, North Island 

Our lodging itinerary and sights we wanted to see in each location:
Auckland - Arrival city
Paihia - Bay of Islands and Cape Reinga
Hamilton - Waitomo Caves, Glowworms and Coromandel Peninsula 
Rotorua - Geothermal sites
Taupo - Tongariro Alpine Crossing in Tongariro National Park
New Plymouth - Mt. Taranaki, Egmont National Park
Wellington - City of Wellington, Ferry to South Island
Nelson - Abel Tasman National Park, Nelson Lakes area, Marlborough Region
Hokitika - West Coast of South Island, Hokitika Gorge
Franz Josef - Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers
Makarora - Haast and west part of the south island below Fox Glacier
Wanaka - Queenstown, Mt. Aspiring National Park
Te Anau - Milford Sound and Fiordland National Park
Invercargill - Stewart Island
Catlins - Catlin Region, Penguins
Dunedin - City of Dunedin
Lake Tekapo - Lake Tekapo, Mt Cook and Mt Cook National Park, Dark skies
Christchurch - City of Christchurch, Arthur's Pass and Tranz-Alpine Scenic Train
Kaikoura - Sealife

Close up of Glowworms and their silky hammocks

Most people live on the North Island of New Zealand and the South Island is much more rugged and natural.  I used several sources as I gathered information on the many beautiful sights to visit so I thought I would provide these so you may be able to use them as well.  The website newzealand.com was a tremendous help at the very beginning, as well as, the following two books:  Best Road Trips New Zealand (Aotearoa) Escapes on the open road by Lonely Planet (3rd ed. published Oct 2023) and New Zealand by Jamie Christian Desplaces and Moon publishing (2nd ed Aug 2021).  One last website mustdonewzealand.co.nz, recommended to us after we arrived, is also a good website for activities to explore in the different cities and areas in New Zealand.  The books and websites above are just resources I used and have not sponsored this blog in any way.

I hope this gives you an idea of what options are out there and what to consider if you plan to visit Aotearoa/New Zealand.  In the coming posts, I will take you along with us as we explore this beautiful island nation one region at a time.


Coming soon...

North Island Waterfalls, Caves, Glowworms and Cape Reinga

Cape Reinga Lighthouse



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