Overview

I spent two weeks with my sister exploring the South Island of NZ in 2023, and another 5 days solo in Auckland, but the vast majority of my recs are for the South Island. I’m about a 5/10 on the luxury needs scale (I like a good meal occasionally but typically won’t seek out something very fancy, I don’t mind being dirty and wet for a few days but I also love some good clean sheets) and I’m probably 8/10 on the adventuresome scale (I know my limits, but I like pushing them).

In general I found the south island to be an amazing trip, complete with plenty of facilities to make van life super easy and we had a great balance of adventure and comfort.

Prose version of this document with some pics available here and a specific reflection on Milford Track here.

Resources:

• Before you go: Download Campermate for a full, easy to use map of essentially all of the public facilities you’ll need
• Campable and RankersCamping are two other apps that people recommended, but we found that Campermate gave us everything we needed
• We booked our van from Matt and Dan’s campervans. Would strongly recommend them - family run, less intense branding than some of the other companies, and van was in very good condition. We got the smallest size which was good for driving and was fine for a 2 week trip, but if you were going to do something longer, I’d recommend trying to find a van that you can stand up in and where you can access the front without going outside. There was a lot of changing outside the van, which didn’t bother us but may bother some.

Route:

• One thing that makes planning easy for a south island trip is that there is generally only one route down the east, west, and center of the island
• We ended up skipping the northern section of the island and driving essentially straight west from Christchurch to the west coast because we wanted to prioritize some of the west coast hikes. We then spent a bunch of time exploring the west coast, Queenstown, and Fiordland, and then drove directly east to Dunedin to try to go surfing (though we didn’t in the end due to it being completely flat)
• Central route (which we mostly didn’t drive) also has a bunch of good hikes and other conservation areas etc

Hikes:

• Able Tasman: Didn’t go but heard it’s a great spot for walks/beaches
• Arthur’s Pass: If you’re driving from Christchurch to the west coast, definitely worth a stop for some hikes, but not worth going out of your way to see it
• Franz Josef Glacier: We did the Robert’s point hike - good 4ish hours with some uphill/downhill to a good viewing spot of the glacier if it’s clear. Worth a stop
• Blue Pools: was closed for us but look beautiful