Destinations in Australia and New Zealand
Airlie Beach is known as a backpacker beach town. We are not young backpackers and still enjoyed our three nights here.
Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park ended up being the highlight in a trip full of highlights. We were endlessly fascinated by the mountain views, not having any mountains near home. There were enough tracks to keep us occupied for 4 nights.
Auckland is a nice city and a good base for our day trip to Hobbiton. We opted to spend all 4 nights there rather than breaking the stay into Auckland and Rotorua.
We're apparently not meant to see much of Christchurch. On our first visit we only spent one night. This time we spent 3 nights and planned to see more of the city, but rain nixed those plans.
Our three nights at Cradle Mountain were one of the highlights of our trip to Australia. Such a unique and beautiful place, with lots of hiking opportunities. (And beautiful scenery even if you don't hike!)
Dunedin was a pleasant surprise. We spent 2 nights here to see the Otago peninsula and found the city itself enjoyable too.
Our 5 nights on K'gari/Fraser Island were the relaxing resort stay that we wanted. We could easily have spent more than one night in Hervey Bay too.
We spent three nights in Kaikoura to do the Kaikoura Peninsula Walkway and see wildlife. Our whale watch was canceled due to weather but we still got to see seals.
Nelson is pleasant town close to Abel Tasman park and with a (now partially closed) interesting museum. We spent three nights there.
Picton had the walks and boating opportunities we wanted for our four night stay. More walks than we had time or energy for!
To be honest, I didn't love Sydney. But I think a lot of that is due to the weather, which was rainy the 5 days we were there. So we couldn't really do some of the outdoor activities we had planned. What we were able to do, we enjoyed. The opera was everything we hoped for and more.
We found lots to do around Taupo in the three days we were there, but many things require a car to cover those last few kilometers. We didn’t have one and still enjoyed our three nights there.
Tauranga was a pleasant place to spend our first five nights. We didn’t get to do the Mt Manganui walk but we found other walks to do. There was enough to see in the area to keep us entertained, but no real must-see sights (other than the Mt Manganui walk) that we felt compelled to fit in. Perfect for jetlag.
Te Anau and Queenstown are both gateway communities to Fiordland. Te Anau is smaller and quieter, and closer to Doubtful and Milford Sounds; Queenstown is larger, busier, and has other adventure activities. We spent 3 nights in Te Anau and 1 night in Queenstown.
Hot. Dusty. Lots of flies. Also magical, eerie, beautiful, and unique. Our 4 nights here were a centerpiece of our Australian trip.
We spent four nights walking near Wanaka and just one night near Queenstown before flying out. Wanaka was a nice place for a few days.
We loved our 4 nights in Wellington. It's quirky, walkable, has some great sights and restaurants. And it is windy!