AAT Kings Essence of New Zealand Itinerary

‘Haere Mai and welcome to New Zealand. Now you can relax - you are officially on holiday. 

Arrive early to see just how Christchurch has transformed itself since the 2010/11 earthquakes. Meet your fellow travellers this evening for a Welcome Reception.

Flights to arrive prior to 4.00pm into Christchurch Airport

Accommodation: Christchurch - 1 Night

Step out with your guide for a deeper dive into ‘The City of Gardens’ before traversing the colourful Canterbury Plains: the turquoise waters of Lake Tekapo and snow-capped mountains. Your Indoor Dark Sky Astronomy Experience at Tekapo, hosted by passionate guides, will forever change the way you see the night sky. You'll see for yourself it may be one of the quietest spots on the planet, yet it has one of the busiest skies in the universe.

Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Accommodation: Omarama - 1 Night

Architectural drama awaits in Dunedin. While away the afternoon in atmospheric art-lined alleys or sipping a lager or two in Speight’s Brewery (a national institution).

Included Meals: Breakfast

Accommodation: Dunedin - 1 Night

Invercargill is obsessed with motor vehicles. Tributes to speed legends colour the city. So it's only fitting that you visit Classic Motorcycle Mecca for a self-guided tour followed by a guided tour and Highlight Dinner at Transport World, exploring classic vehicles as you are transported on a nostalgic walk back in time.

Included Meals: Breakfast, Highlight Dinner

Accommodation: Invercargill - 2 Nights

Invercargill is the gateway to Subantarctic Stewart Island, the latest addition to New Zealand's national park portfolio with 85% of the island designated as national park.  Naturally, it’s a magnet for endemic flora and fauna, as you’ll discover on your guided Village and Bays tour. Later you have the option to join a leisurely cruise, including a picnic lunch, around Paterson Inlet that will take you past unique places including Acker’s Cottage before docking at Ulva Island to admire the bird life and native flora.

Included Meals: Breakfast

Today on your New Zealand tour, get a taste of country life combined with good old fashioned southern hospitality as you meet a ‘Southern Girl’ local female farmer at Real Country. Get a feel for life on the farm as you have demonstrations of Horse communication and Working sheep dog mustering. Try your hand at a Stock whip cracking lesson, and feed and interact with the friendly farm animals. For every guest, we donate funds to The Fairlight Foundation, Advancing Women in Agriculture. Continue to Queenstown.

Included Meals: Breakfasts

Accommodation: Queenstown - 2 Nights

You clearly need more than one day to appreciate Queenstown and its surrounds. And when we say surrounds, we mean Milford Sound. Today, sign up for an Optional Experience to dive deep into this yawning gorge within World Heritage-listed Fiordland National Park – it’s within easy reach of your base, and is best explored on an optional South Island tour that sees you jumping aboard boat to cruise the mirror-like waterway. Like things fast and furious? Feel the wind in your hair on the high-octane jet boat ride, perhaps, twisting and revving along Queenstown's Shotover River. There's a reason why Queenstown is known as the adventure capital of the country. Wine aficionado? Sip your way through surrounding vineyards. Tours of the South Island don't get much tastier than this. There's also the option of an afternoon cruise on Lake Wakatipu aboard the historic TSS Earnslaw to Walter Peak High Country Farm for a gourmet barbecue dinner (all own expense).

Included Meals: Breakfast

Visit Arrowtown, which found its riches in gold, its residents building stately homes, now filled with boutiques and restaurants – that still line the street to this day. It’s a bit like stepping onto a movie set. Around the next bend is the Alpine countryside of the Southern Lakes, from Lake Dunstan, where you may like to buy stone fruit picked fresh from the tree, to oh-so-blue Lake Hawea and lovely Lake Wanaka, with its Instagrammable shoreline of poplars and willows. Over the Haast Pass, the town of Franz Josef/Waiau at the edge of the Westland World Heritage Park, awaits. Get some perspective on an optional Franz Josef Glacier/Ka Roimata o Hine Hukatere flight tour – if the weather behaves, you may even get to land on it. New Zealand tours don’t get much cooler than this.

Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner 

Accommodation: Franz Josef - 1 Night

Wandering Hokitika’s windswept shore on the West Coast feels a bit like you’ve discovered the end of the Earth. The town’s other natural beauty is pounamu (native greenstone or jade). Prepare yourself for Punakaiki’s Pancake Rocks and blowholes; they owe their existence to the thundering surf that will lull you to sleep.

Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Accommodation: Punakaiki - 1 Night

Sit back and relax – that’s all you have to do today as you ease along the Heritage Highway toward Nelson. Press your nose against the glass as your coach weaves through Buller Gorge – a deep canyon home to New Zealand’s longest swingbridge – and Kahurangi National Park, a place of wild rivers, high plateaus, alpine herb-fields and coastal forests.

Included Meals: Breakfast 

Accommodation: Nelson - 2 Nights

Sleep in or work up a sweat – today is completely at your leisure. We have a few ideas up our sleeve, of course. Travel to the Abel Tasman National Park for the ultimate cruise and walk combination (own expense). This pocket in the north of the island inspires calm, its golden beaches framed by sculpted granite cliffs that all unite to create one of the country’s most legendary coastal tracks. 

Included Meals: Breakfast

You’ll want a window seat for the cruise from the South Island to the North Island aboard the Interislander. Breathtaking views unfold as you glide through Queen Charlotte Sound, up the Tory Channel and across Cook Strait, navigating a maze of arms and inlets into New Zealand’s cool little capital of Wellington.

Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner

Accommodation: Wellington - 1 Night

Travel to Napier. Beautifully preserved 1930s architecture is Napier's special point of difference. After a massive earthquake in 1931 destroyed the commercial centre of Napier, rebuilding began almost immediately in the architectural styles of the times - Striped Classical, Spanish Mission and Art Deco. 

Included Meals: Breakfast

Accommodation: Napier - 2 Nights

After a devastating earthquake in 1931, Napier completely rebuilt itself in just two years. The end result is architectural Nirvana, a city home to the world’s greatest concentration of Art Deco, Spanish Mission and Striped Classical buildings. This morning get the lowdown from your in-the-know local guide on a Napier tour. Your afternoon is at leisure.

Meals: Breakfast

The road ahead unfolds in a broad panorama of Lake Taupo, the largest (and perhaps bluest) of its kind in the country – it feeds thundering Huka Falls, which you’ll hear well before you see. It’s a landscape almost as otherworldly as Rotorua, where mud pops and jettisons from bubbling geysers, and steam rushes skywards from cracks in the Earth. This afternoon, explore Te Puia's geothermal valley and learn about Maori history & culture. Take a guided tour of the Maori Arts & Crafts Institute, and later enjoy a Highlight Dinner of hangi inspired cuisine and a cultural performance in a finely carved meeting house, Te Aronui a Rua. It ends on a high at the Pohutu Geyser, where, armed with a hot chocolate you'll view one of New Zealand's geothermal wonderlands.

Included Meals: Breakfast, Highlight Dinner

Accommodation: Rotorua - 2 Nights

Today, it’s your choice. Hobbit fans will want to take advantage of the opportunity to tour Hobbiton movie Set featured in The Lord of the Rings & Hobbit movies. Want a bit of down time? Bliss out at Wai Araki Hot Springs & Spa (both own expense).

Meals: Breakfast 

Welcome to Auckland, the ‘City of Sails’. You’ll understand how it got its moniker when you glimpse yachts gliding around its two harbours. But today your sights are firmly set on New Zealand's national game: rugby. The interactive All Blacks Experience explores an introduction to the game as a part of New Zealand culture.

Included Meals: Breakfast

Accommodation: Auckland - 1 Night

Haere rā and Bon Voyage!

It’s amazing how much of two islands you can see in 18 days. Provided you have the right people at the helm, and like-minded company, that is.

Included Meals: Breakfast

Flights to depart anytime from Auckland Airport

Itinerary Variations
The provider strives to improve trip itineraries. If improvements can be made, or if circumstances beyond their control make changes necessary, the provider reserves the right to vary itineraries and to make substitutions.