New Zealand with children: 13 days, short drives, one flight
New Zealand is one of the easiest countries in the world to travel with children, and one of the easiest to get wrong. The mistake is the same one adults make, only with worse consequences: too many long drives. A five hour day in a car with a seven year old undoes whatever you did the day before.
- Duration
- 13 days
- Pace
- Relaxed
- Hotel changes
- 5
- Best months
- Nov, Dec, Feb, Mar, Apr
- From
- $4,030 per person
So this route keeps almost every drive under three hours, spends most of its time on the North Island where the distances are shorter and the days are more active, and uses a single internal flight to reach the mountains rather than driving the length of the country.
Who it suits: families with children roughly five and up. Two thirds North Island, one third Queenstown.
Day by day
Day 1: Arrive Auckland. An apartment rather than a hotel. Nothing scheduled beyond a park and an early dinner.
Day 2: Auckland. The ferry to Devonport and up Mount Victoria for the harbour view, or Kelly Tarlton’s aquarium if the weather is against you. Afternoon at Mission Bay. This is a soft day on purpose, because everyone is still on the wrong clock.
Day 3: To the Coromandel. Collect the car and drive east, about 2 hours 30 minutes to Hahei. Afternoon on the beach.
Day 4: The Coromandel. Cathedral Cove by boat rather than on foot, which is shorter, cooler and better, and Hot Water Beach in the two hours either side of low tide, where you dig your own hot pool in the sand. Bring a spade. The tide times decide the day and we put them in your document.
Day 5: Waitomo and Rotorua. West and south, about 3 hours 30 minutes in total with the caves in the middle. The Waitomo glowworm caves are a boat ride through a cavern lit by thousands of larvae, and for children it is the sort of thing that makes it into the story they tell at school. On to Rotorua for three nights.
Day 6: Rotorua, geothermal. Whakarewarewa in the morning, a living Māori village on a geothermal field, guided by the people who live there, with sweetcorn cooked in a hot pool. Afternoon at the luge on the hill above town, which is where every family ends up and rightly so.
Day 7: Rotorua, active. The redwood forest treewalk in the morning, then a choice: the Agrodome for the farm show, whitewater rafting on the Kaituna for children over about thirteen, or the hot pools. Rotorua smells of sulphur, everybody comments on it for an hour, and then nobody mentions it again.
Day 8: To Taupo. An hour’s drive, with Huka Falls on the way, where the whole river forces itself through a narrow rock channel. Afternoon on the lake, or the hot springs by the river.
Day 9: To Wellington. The long drive of the trip, about 4 hours 30 minutes down the Desert Road, broken with stops. Afternoon at Te Papa, the national museum, which has a whole floor built for children and an earthquake house.
Day 10: To Queenstown. Drop the car and fly south, about two hours. Collect a second car. Afternoon on the Queenstown lakefront, which after the North Island looks like a different country.
Day 11: Queenstown. The gondola and the luge on Bob’s Peak in the morning. Afternoon on the lake on the coal-fired steamship, or a jet boat on the Shotover for anyone tall enough, which is the single most popular hour of the trip for children over ten.
Day 12: Glenorchy and Arrowtown. The lake road to Glenorchy, about 45 minutes, and a walk on the boardwalk at the Dart delta. Afternoon in Arrowtown panning for gold in the river, which is exactly as effective as it sounds and entirely worth an hour.
Day 13: Departure. Queenstown airport is ten minutes from town.
What is included
Apartment or family-room accommodation, two hire cars with child seats fitted, the internal flight, the Cathedral Cove boat, the Waitomo caves, the Whakarewarewa guided visit, the Rotorua luge and one active afternoon, Te Papa arranged, the Queenstown gondola and lake steamer, a day-by-day document with tide times, driving times and the stretches with no phone coverage, and a WhatsApp group with your specialist and our partners on the ground.
What we would change, and when
- Children under five? Cut the Coromandel and the Tongariro region entirely, add nights in Rotorua and Auckland, and consider whether the South Island leg is worth the flight. It usually is not at that age.
- Teenagers? Add a night in Wanaka, swap the Arrowtown afternoon for canyoning or the Routeburn day walk, and put a skydive or a bungy in Queenstown on the table, which is where the country invented both.
- Travelling in December or January? Book nine to twelve months out. Queenstown and the good holiday parks fill first, and family rooms go before anything else.
- Sandflies. Not really a problem on this route, which is another reason it stays east and north. On the West Coast and in Fiordland they are relentless, and with children that matters.
Related
Shape this trip around us All New Zealand, where the drive always takes longer than the map says trips