New Zealand Trip Plan

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Ok, so I've spent the day developing a plan for travelling up through New Zealand. It's amazing how much stuff there is to do here when you start looking into it. So I'm going to be a right little tourist for a while!

Plan so far

Please feel free to give me any suggestions for places I have missed or things on my list that you've been to and don't think they're worth the effort.

If I do this as a plain old tourist then it will take me about 25days, however there is the opportunity in a numbe of places to get work on vineyards or horse farms if I want to slow it down a bit

Day 1: Travel from Queenstown to Franz Josef
Day 2: Go on an ice treck up onto the Glacier franzjosefglacier
Day 3: Travel to Nelson, stay forr 3 nights while I soak up the atmosphere (and consume quite a few green lipped mussles)
Day 6: Travel to Picton
Here I can try to get work in the vineyards of Marlbourgh Sounds and spend sometime exploring the apparently fantastic landscape - not to mention sample the wines!
Day 9: Catch the ferry from Picton to Wellington. I'm going to have 5 days exploring Wellington, apparently there are some great museums and art galleries here.
Day 14: Travel to Napier
again there is a lot of work for accomodation and vineyard work available in this area- and at the moment there is a lot of adverts looking for people to work on horse farms, grooming and riding the horses etc, whcih would be a great way to see the countryside (depending on the weather!)
Some point during my time in Napier I will be going on the cycling wine tour, that also iincludes a stop at a chocolate factory and a cider farm. Jealous anyone??? bikedevine
Day 19: Travel to Rotorua - this is where the really tourist bit kicks in, sometimes these things are touristy for a reason though!
Day 20: Visit a Maori Village whakawarewa
Day 21: White Water Rafting - heehee!
Day 22: Relaxing in the thermal mud baths and hot springs hellsgate though if I start acting like the couple in the picture please push me me under the mud untill the bubbles stop coming to the surface...
Day 23: Travel to the Bay of Pleanty and stare at the ocean for a day
Day 24: Travel to Waitomo which has the glow worm caves and go black water rafting waitomocaves . How awesome do these look!
Day 25: Travel to Auckland.

Not a bad plan don't you think?

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Comments

[Jen]

Awesome plan!
Hey, this sounds like a really cool plan. what you'll have to do is tell us which bits are really good and which ones aren't worth it and we can steal all the good ones for our trip! :) xxx

[dad]

bikedivine
Just seen the web site. The Havelock North tour is to die for. Where do I begin. Well Craggy range is impressive and their Bordeux like reds are great, Te Mata (the hill), great lunch and excellent whites. Black Barn; boutique winery with the most elegant reserve Chardonnay in NZ. We wished we had stayed there, as they don't export any wines to Europe. Clear View is a delight and the only place we brough wines back from. You must try the gewurtztraminer, your mum still goes on about it. Then try the fortified pudding wine (like really good ort and sherry in one). I never visited the elephant but the wines are good. To impress you fellow cyclists state your need to visit and taste the reds produced in the Gimblet Gravels, as they are regarded as the best in the land,even the shiraz! You should ride through it on the way to Craggy range. We have picked fruit all week and mummy is makig jams and things, washed down with something someone else bothered to pick for us! xx dad

[Debs (and James)]

looks good to me! Unfortunately we don;t have the diary here at the moment, but thoughts are: Franzjosef - definately the better glacier. the ice trek is amazing! Wellington - you can go into the beehive and watch some of the politics. worth it if you need some to do for a bit and want to laugh at politicians... black water rafting - *think* this is what we did - was called something like tub thumping...good fun, if it is the same as we did it is 'gentle' rafting rather than rapids, and black cos it's dark... Are you going to get the chance to go north of Auckland? as there is some interesting stuff up there. also, are you going to Milford Sounds? xx