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This is the country. A road, a mountain, and nobody else on it. New Zealand is a driving trip whether you planned one or not
New Zealand — Everything We Know
“Most families who try to do both islands in two weeks come home saying the same thing. It was beautiful and we spent the whole time in the car. Pick one island. I mean it.”
We have not been to New Zealand.This page is advisor knowledge, not memory, and I would rather tell you that plainly than dress up research as experience.
New Zealand is the country I recommend most confidently to families who have never done a long haul trip and want scenery rather than cities. It is easy in all the ways that matter. English speaking, safe, extremely well set up for road trips, and the whole country is roughly the size of Colorado with a population smaller than Kentucky.
It is also the country where I have to do the most talking down. Everyone arrives with a list that includes Auckland, Rotorua, Queenstown, Milford Sound and Franz Josef, and that list is two islands, three internal flights and about forty hours of driving. In fourteen days. It does not work, and the families who try it come home tired rather than changed.
So the whole of my advice for New Zealand fits in one line. Pick one island, drive slowly, and leave the other island for the trip you will absolutely want to take afterwards.
New Zealand Place by Place
Eight places worth naming, four on each island. Read the list, then read the next section and cross out half of it.
Queenstown
Auckland
Rotorua
Milford Sound
Wellington
Christchurch
Bay of Islands
Franz Josef
North Island or South Island. Not Both.
This is the decision the whole trip hangs on, and most families get it wrong by refusing to make it.
The North Island is the warm one, the cultural one and the easier one with young children.Auckland, Rotorua and its geothermal parks, the Bay of Islands, Hobbiton, Wellington, and the beaches of the Coromandel. Shorter drives, milder weather, and the strongest Maori cultural experiences in the country. If your kids are under about eight, this is your island.
The South Island is the one on the postcards, and it is harder work.Queenstown, Fiordland, the glaciers, Aoraki Mount Cook, Lake Tekapo, the Catlins. The scenery is genuinely on another level and the drives are longer, the weather is colder and wetter, and the highlights are further apart. Nine and up, in my view.
Doing both means a ferry or a flight, and a lot of repacking.The Interislander crossing between Wellington and Picton takes about three and a half hours and is beautiful. It is also a whole travel day, plus the drives on either side. In a two week trip that is your buffer gone.
The maths, plainly.Two weeks is one island done well. Three weeks is one island done thoroughly, or both done at a rush. Four weeks is both done properly. If you have ten days, do the South Island loop from Queenstown and go nowhere near the ferry.
Lake Tekapo in the Mackenzie country. That colour is real and it is glacial rock flour, not a filter. It is also a dark sky reserve, so stay the night rather than driving through
Driving Times Are Much Longer Than the Map Suggests
This is the single most common planning mistake in New Zealand and it catches experienced travellers.
Look at a map of the South Island and Queenstown to Franz Josef looks like nothing. It is about six hours. Queenstown to Milford Sound and back is a twelve hour day. Christchurch to Queenstown is six. Auckland to Wellington is about eight. These are not American interstate hours. They are two lane road hours, through mountain passes, behind campervans, with one lane bridges and roadworks and no way around.
Add to that the fact that you will stop constantly, because the whole point of the country is what is out the window. A six hour drive with children and three viewpoints is a nine hour day.
The rule I give families is simple. Take whatever the mapping app says and add half again, then never plan more than four hours of driving in a day, and give yourselves at least two nights in most places. A trip with six bases in fourteen days is a good trip. A trip with eleven bases is a coach tour you are driving yourself.
One safety note that matters. New Zealand drives on the left, the roads are narrow and often unfenced, and overseas drivers are involved in a disproportionate share of serious crashes there. Do not drive the day you land. Pull over to look at things rather than looking while driving. And on the West Coast and through the passes, assume the weather can close a road entirely.
The Campervan Question
In most countries I would talk a family out of this. In New Zealand I usually do not.
Campervan travel is genuinely mainstream in New Zealand in a way it is not in Europe or America. The infrastructure exists everywhere. Holiday parks are plentiful, clean and cheap, with kitchens, laundry, playgrounds and often a pool. Dump stations and drinking water are signposted. Freedom camping is legal in designated places if your vehicle is certified self contained, and the certification is a sticker you can check before you book.
For a family of five it can also be the cheapest way to do the country, because accommodation and transport become one line item and you cook most meals. That matters in a country where a family dinner out adds up fast.
The honest downsides. A six berth van is a big vehicle on narrow roads and it is slow up hills, which means you will be the vehicle everyone else is stuck behind. Living space is tight and there is no getting away from each other after a wet day. And in peak season, January and February, the good holiday parks book out, so it is not the spontaneous trip people imagine.
My rule of thumb. If your children are six and up and your family already enjoys camping, the campervan is the better trip and the kids will remember it. If you have a toddler, or if anyone in the family needs their own space to stay sane, rent a car and book cabins and motels instead. Holiday parks rent cabins too, so you get the same atmosphere with walls.
Adventure Sports and the Age Minimums That Catch Families Out
Queenstown sells itself as the adventure capital of the world. Then you arrive with a nine year old and find out half of it is not for them. Sort this before you book the trip, not after.
Bungy and skydiving have hard floors.Bungy is generally ten and up with a weight minimum, and tandem skydiving is usually a teenager or older depending on the operator. If your twelve year old has been promised a bungy, confirm the exact operator’s rules in writing first.
Jet boating is the one that works for almost everyone.Most jet boat operators take children from about three or four with a height minimum, and it is the single best value thrill in the country for a mixed age family. This is usually my answer for families with a big age spread.
Luge, gondolas and the Rotorua and Queenstown hill parks are all ages.Small children ride with an adult. These fill a half day beautifully and cost a fraction of the headline activities.
Glacier helicopter landings and guided ice walks are the ones to check hardest.Heli landings often take young children but guided glacier walks commonly start at nine or ten, and the weather cancels these constantly. Build a spare day at Franz Josef or accept you may not get on the ice.
Ask the operator, not the tourism website.Minimums vary between companies doing the identical activity in the same town. And ask what happens to a booking if the weather cancels, because in Fiordland and on the West Coast it will.
Food
New Zealand food is fresh, straightforward and built around extremely good raw ingredients. Two things I could not photograph honestly and will name here instead. A hangi is the traditional Maori method of cooking in a pit of heated stones under the earth, and eating one at a cultural evening in Rotorua is worth doing once. And whitebait fritters, which are tiny translucent fish held together with egg, are a South Island obsession and are not remotely cheap.
Aoraki Mount Cook. The Hooker Valley track that runs out towards it is flat, well made, about three hours return, and is the best family walk in the country
What It Costs
Cheaper than Australia on the ground, similar in the air, and the activities are where it gets away from you.
Getting there is the big line. There are direct flights from several US west coast cities to Auckland and Christchurch, and from the middle of the country you are connecting. It is a similar order of magnitude to Australia and the same three week rule applies for the same reasons.
Accommodation is reasonable by long haul standards. Holiday park cabins and motels are plentiful, motels in New Zealand nearly always have kitchens, and family units sleeping five are normal rather than rare. That is a real advantage over Australia for a family our size.
The activities are the budget. A Milford Sound cruise, a glacier heli landing, a jet boat, a Rotorua cultural evening. Each of those is a serious number for five people and it is very easy to book four of them and double the cost of the trip. Choose two per island and spend the rest of the time on the walks and lookouts, which are free and are honestly the best of it.
When to Go
The seasons are flipped. There is one clear sweet spot and one window I would avoid.
February and March
The sweet spot and my standard recommendation. Warm settled weather, long days, the water is at its best, and crucially New Zealand children have gone back to school so the holiday parks and the roads have emptied out. Prices drop from the January peak too.
November and early December
Spring into early summer. Green, lupins flowering in the Mackenzie country, fewer people, and cheaper. The weather is less reliable and the water is cold, but for a driving and walking trip it is excellent.
Late December and January
Peak summer and peak everything. This is when the whole country is on holiday, holiday parks book out months ahead, prices spike and the popular roads are busy. Beautiful, but it is the most expensive and most crowded version of the trip.
May to August
Winter. Skiing around Queenstown and Wanaka is genuinely good, but Fiordland is wet, the days are short, some alpine roads and passes close, and a lot of small town businesses shut. Only go in winter if skiing is the point of the trip.
Doing It With Children
New Zealand is one of the easiest countries in the world to travel with a family. The friction is logistical, never cultural.
English speaking, very safe, tap water everywhere, excellent medical care, and an outdoor culture that assumes children are coming along. Playgrounds are everywhere and they are the good kind with real equipment. Every small town has a public toilet and a park and usually a swimming pool. Walking tracks are graded and signposted honestly by the Department of Conservation, so you can pick one that matches your slowest child rather than guessing.
There are no vaccinations to worry about, no dangerous animals at all, and nothing that bites except sandflies, which are genuinely maddening on the West Coast and in Fiordland. Take repellent, and take more than you think.
The thing to manage is the driving. Long days in the car are the one reliable way to ruin this trip for children. Break the drives, build in a swim or a playground stop most days, and pick fewer places.
Who New Zealand Suits, and Who Should Skip It
Straight answer, the way I would give it on the phone.
Go if your family likes being outside more than it likes cities, if your children are old enough to sit in a car for two or three hours without it becoming a crisis, and if you can put the trip in February or March. Go if you want a long haul trip that is culturally gentle. And go if you want the best walking country on earth with a family, because that is what this is.
Skip it for now if your idea of a holiday is a resort and a pool. New Zealand will make you drive for it. Skip it if you only have ten days and cannot bear to see just one island. Skip it if your children are very small, because the drives are the whole trip and toddlers do not do drives. And skip it if you need guaranteed weather, because Fiordland and the West Coast do what they like.
Compared to the neighbours. Australia is the bigger, warmer, more varied trip and the better one if you want beaches, reefs and cities as well as landscape. New Zealand is smaller, more concentrated and much easier to do well in two weeks, which is exactly why I send more first timers here than to Australia. Fiji is neither of those things, it is a resort week, and it sits directly on the flight path home. If you are flying this far, a few nights in Fiji on the way back is the best value four days in the whole itinerary.
Things That Surprise First Timers
Sandflies.Nobody warns you and everybody remembers them. On the West Coast, at Milford and in Fiordland they are relentless. Cover up at dawn and dusk and take repellent with you rather than buying it there.
The sun is savage.The ozone thinning over this part of the world is real and you will burn faster than the temperature suggests. Hats and sunscreen even on a cool cloudy day.
Small towns close early and Sunday is quiet.Outside the cities, the shops shut at five and the one supermarket in town may be the only thing open. Buy the food before you get to the beautiful remote place, not after.
Biosecurity is strict and they mean it.Hiking boots, tents, anything with soil on it gets inspected. Declare food. Clean your boots before you pack them and you will walk through in two minutes.
Pairs Well With
Three hours from Auckland to Sydney. The natural pairing, and only worth doing if you have four weeks rather than three.
Three hours from Auckland and directly on the way home. The best possible decompression after two weeks of driving.
The continent overview, including which of these three countries to do first and why.
More Oceania Guides
The rest of the region, written the same way.
