14 days · 13 nights · 9 bases · self-drive + ferry · Auckland in, Queenstown out
This is the fortnight that survives our own audit. We read thirty-six published two-week both-islands itineraries day by day, built five tests out of what was wrong with most of them, and then held ourselves to the same tests. This route passes all five. It also still moves eight times and sleeps five single nights, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
Shape
Linear, north to south. No backtracking
Bases
Nine in thirteen nights
Longest drive
317 km. Nothing over the 350 km cap
Ferry
Yes — day 8, and it matters
Best for
A first visit that wants both islands
Wrong for
Anyone who wants to unpack once
Season
Late February to April. See below for winter
Budget
NZ$293 a day, median, before flights
Where this comes from, before you follow it. The North Island half is walked — we drove it in 2026 and wrote it up as we went. The South Island half is researched, not recently walked. We have been, but before the Christchurch earthquake, and that is not a basis for telling you what to do on a Tuesday. So every South Island claim below names where it came from: the Department of Conservation, NZTA, an operator’s own timetable.
The route at a glance
Fourteen days, and where each one puts you
Every day, its distance and its bed, in one screen. Tap any line to jump to that day.
Five single nights: Napier, Kaikōura, Christchurch, Lake Tekapo and Queenstown. Two nights each in Auckland, Rotorua, Wellington and Te Anau.
The map
The shape of the route
Auckland → Rotorua → Napier → Wellington → Cook Strait → Kaikōura → Christchurch → Lake Tekapo → Queenstown → Te Anau. Linear, north to south, no backtracking, and every leg under the 350 km a day cap our getting-around page arrives at.
What it costs
The money, before you commit to the route
NZ$293 a day, per personmedian, excluding international flights
The government’s International Visitor Survey puts median spending at NZ$293 a day on a median ten-day stay, excluding international airfares. This route runs longer than the median and includes a ferry crossing and a fiord cruise, so budget above it. We have not measured a four-way split of our own and are not going to publish someone else’s as if we had.
Day by day
The fortnight, in order
Every day is open on the page. Nothing is behind a tab, because the shape of the trip is the thing you came to judge.
Auckland from Maungawhau. Days 1–2 of the route, February 2026.
Day one
Land, and do nothing much
Arrival day · Auckland, on foot
DistanceNone
The carDo not collect it
CharacterFlat, close, forgiving
All day — plan nothing you would mind missing
NZTA’s own visitor booklet says it plainly: “Get enough good sleep before you drive, especially after a long flight.” Fatigue was a factor in nine per cent of fatal crashes here between 2021 and 2023. Take the bus or a taxi into town and pick the car up on day 3.
Wynyard Quarter and the Viaduct are flat, close and full of places to eat. Dinner anywhere with a table outside, and an early night.
Getting in · SkyBus or taxi from Auckland Airport. No car until day 3.
SleepAuckland— night 1 of 2. City Centre or the Viaduct, for a first night on foot. Where to stay in Auckland →
Day two
A volcano and an island
Easy · Auckland and the Hauraki Gulf
DistanceNone by car
On the water40 min ferry each way
CharacterThe best half-day Auckland offers
Morning — early
Around fifty volcanic cones sit inside the city and several are walkable. Twenty minutes up Maungawhau / Mount Eden, and the whole isthmus with its two harbours lays itself out. Free. More on Auckland.
Afternoon
Waiheke Island. Vineyards, olive groves and swimming beaches, forty minutes from downtown. Lunch at a winery — book if it is summer. Other day trips.
This is the morning the hire car starts, not day one. Everything before this was deliberate.
Afternoon — on arrival
Whakarewarewa, the living village. A geothermal village where people still cook in the ground and bathe in the pools. The sulphur smell is unmistakable, pervasive, and something you stop noticing after half an hour.
Evening — book ahead
Te Pā Tū. A welcome, a haka, a hāngī lifted out of the ground and a glowworm walk after. What it is actually like.
The day the argument rests on · Rotorua, no driving
DistanceNone
Road—
CharacterThree unlike things inside eight hours
Morning — from 9 am
Te Puia and Pōhutu. Pōhutu erupts around twenty times a day, up to thirty metres. The Māori Arts and Crafts Institute on the same site is where carvers and weavers train.
Afternoon
The Redwoods. Five thousand six hundred hectares of trails in Whakarewarewa Forest, and a grove of Californian redwoods planted in 1901. Walk it or hire a bike; there is a treetop walkway for the less ambitious.
Evening
Eat Streat — covered, central, easy.
This is the day the whole argument for New Zealand rests on. Inside eight hours you can stand over boiling ground that has been sacred for six hundred years, watch a haka performed by the people whose ground it is, and ride a forest floor of red bark and silence. Nowhere else compresses three unlike things that tightly. Notice how little you had to drive to get between them.
The North Island’s only single night · and it earns its place
Distance217 km
RoadSH5
CharacterOff the volcanic plateau, down to the coast
Morning — the drive is the day’s work
SH5 runs off the geothermal plateau and down into Hawke’s Bay. It is the change of country that makes the leg worth having rather than anything you stop for, so do not plan a stop.
Check the NZTA journey planner before you set off · this is the one road on the route where a closure is likely enough to plan around, and the detour is long.
Afternoon — on arrival
The art deco streets. Napier was flattened by an earthquake in 1931 and rebuilt at once, in the style of that exact moment. Walking it is unlike walking anywhere else in New Zealand. More on Napier.
Evening — before dinner
Marine Parade. The Norfolk pines along the promenade went in from 1890, four decades before the earthquake — among the few things on Marine Parade that came through it. A shingle beach, a long straight walk, and the Pacific.
SleepNapier— one night. The only single night in the North Island, and it exists because the alternative is one very long day from Rotorua to Wellington. Napier guide →
Day six
Napier → Wellington
The longest drive of the trip · and still inside the cap
Distance317 km — the longest
RoadSH2 south
CharacterA driving day, start to finish
All day — the drive is the day
There is no way to shorten this one without breaking the route. Napier to Wellington is the single leg with no halfway town worth a night, which is why the day exists in this shape and why nothing should be added to it.
Evening — late afternoon
Into the capital. Compact, walkable, windswept and genuinely lively. Leave the car where you park it — you will not need it again until the ferry. Dinner on Cuba Street, and the best coffee in the country in the morning. More on Wellington.
Te Papa Tongarewa, then He Tohu. The national museum, NZ$35 for international visitors aged 16 and over, valid 48 hours — the earthquake house, the colossal squid, and Signs of a Nation, built around a full-size reproduction of the Treaty. The original Treaty sheets are not here. They moved in 2017 to He Tohu at the National Library, ten minutes away and also free. See both, in that order — you will understand the rest of the country better for it.
Afternoon — an hour or two
Up by cable car from Lambton Quay, walk down through the botanic garden. The bucket fountain on Cuba Street is on the way back and is exactly as silly as it sounds.
Evening — the one thing you must not forget
Check tomorrow’s sailing and set an alarm. Check-in closes an hour before departure and the winter timetable has very few sailings to miss.
SleepWellington— night 2 of 2. Last night in the North Island. Wellington guide →
One island only?
Then you are done, and it has been a proper trip — geothermal Rotorua, a Māori welcome, art deco Napier and two days in the capital, on 761 km of easy road. Fly home from Wellington. The median international stay in New Zealand is ten days, and ten days on one island is a better holiday than fourteen across two. If you have the full fortnight, the ferry is tomorrow, and it is one of the better days of the route.
The last hour of the crossing, into Queen Charlotte Sound. Day 8.
Day eight
Wellington → Cook Strait → Kaikōura
The crossing · and a deliberately short drive after it
DistanceFerry 3 h 30, then 156 km
RoadSH1 south from Picton
CharacterShort on purpose, after a crossing
Morning — the last hour, on deck
The Marlborough Sounds. The open-water hour is unremarkable. The last hour is not: the ship turns in through Tory Channel into Queen Charlotte Sound — drowned river valleys with bush to the waterline. Be outside for it. It is included in the price of getting the car across.
Check-in closes 60 minutes before departure · and in the 2026 winter timetable there may not be another sailing today.
Afternoon — after the crossing
Down the coast road. The road runs along the sea with the Seaward Kaikōura range rising straight out of it. Seal colonies at Ohau Point, and the whole thing rebuilt after the 2016 earthquake lifted the seabed.
The Kaikōura Canyon runs to around a thousand metres deep and its head sits roughly a kilometre off the coast, which is why sperm whales feed here all year rather than seasonally. Stand on the peninsula at dusk with mountains behind you and that trench in front, and the scale of the place stops being scenery and becomes something closer to weather.
SleepKaikōura— one night.
Day nine
Kaikōura → Christchurch
Whales first, city second · boats sail early
Distance180 km
RoadSH1 south
CharacterEasy. Splits a long run south
Morning — early, and weather-dependent
Whales, dolphins, or the peninsula walk. Boat trips run year-round and sail early. If the sea is up, the peninsula clifftop walkway is three hours of the same coast from above and costs nothing.
Afternoon — from mid-afternoon
The rebuilt city. A hundred and eighty-five people died here in 2011 and the centre is still being remade. The Transitional Cathedral, the Botanic Gardens and the river are all walkable from one another. More on Christchurch.
The deliberate break · in a run that is over the cap
DistanceHalf of 482 km
RoadSH1 · SH79 · SH8
CharacterFlat, then the Alps arrive at once
Afternoon — half the run south
Christchurch to Queenstown is 482 km — over the cap. Our own getting-around page says treat it as two days, and this is the break. Flat farmland for an hour, and then the Southern Alps arrive all at once. Tekapo’s water is the colour it is because of rock flour ground by glaciers and suspended in the meltwater.
Declared · we have measured the whole Christchurch–Queenstown run at 482 km but not each half separately. The Tekapo break is our judgement of the midpoint, not a measured figure.
Evening — after dark
The dark sky. This is an International Dark Sky Reserve. On a clear night you will see the Magellanic Clouds — two satellite galaxies of our own, invisible from anywhere in Europe or North America.
If the sky is clear, walk away from the village lights and give your eyes a full twenty minutes before you look up — that is roughly how long human dark adaptation takes. Most people manage two, glance up, and see a good night sky. Twenty minutes buys a different one.
SleepLake Tekapo— one night. Aoraki / Mount Cook village is a detour of about an hour each way if you want the mountain closer.
Day eleven
Lake Tekapo → Queenstown
The second half of a run that is over the cap · Central Otago into Queenstown
DistanceRest of 482 km
RoadSH8, the Lindis Pass
CharacterTussock country. A winter closure risk
Morning — over the pass
This is the second half of the 482 km, and it gets a day of its own rather than being bolted onto yesterday because our own getting-around page treats any alpine pass as half a day’s driving.
In winter the Lindis closes for snow, usually for hours · and chains may be required. The chain rules that carry a fine are further south — see Driving here, honestly, below.
Afternoon — mid-afternoon
Into Queenstown. Bungy began here, on the Kawarau Bridge, in 1988. There are three jump sites, jet boats on the Shotover, four ski fields and a wine valley at Gibbston. More on Queenstown.
Evening — know what you are walking into
The town centre carries more than 150 bars and restaurants and its own tourism board publishes a guide for hen and stag parties. That is a compatibility question, not a criticism. If it is not your scene, Arrowtown is twenty minutes away and completely different.
Stop here and fly out of Queenstown. You will have had both islands, the crossing, the coast, the alps and the dark sky — a complete trip with nothing obviously missing from it. What follows is Milford, and Milford is the reason to have the extra two days rather than a bonus on top of them. Done properly it needs a base at Te Anau; done from Queenstown it is a twelve to fourteen hour day, and that is the fifth of our own tests failed.
Milford Sound in rain, when the walls run with waterfalls. Days 10-11.
Day twelve
Queenstown → Te Anau
A short day on purpose · tomorrow is the long one
Distance171 km
RoadSH6 then SH94
CharacterArrive early. Prepare
Afternoon — arrive early, and prepare
Fill the tank. The Department of Conservation is explicit that there is no fuel between Te Anau and Milford, and limited mobile coverage past the town. In winter, hire chains here and learn to fit them before you drive anywhere.
Evening
The lake, and the glowworm caves. The second-largest lake in the country, with the Murchison Mountains on the far shore and no road along them. Boat trips run to the Te Anau glowworm caves after dark.
SleepTe Anau— night 1 of 2. This is our fifth test answered: Milford is five and a half to six hours each way from Queenstown, and a twelve to fourteen hour day. From here it is not.
Day thirteen
Te Anau → Milford Sound → Te Anau
An eight-hour day · leave at seven
Distance240 km return
RoadSH94 · Homer Tunnel, one-way
CharacterDOC says allow eight hours with the stops
Morning — allow 3 h each way
The Milford Road itself is the attraction. Mirror Lakes, the Eglinton Valley, Monkey Creek, and then the Homer Tunnel — 1.2 km hewn through rock, one-way under traffic lights, with delays up to twenty minutes in summer. The stretch between the Hollyford junction and The Chasm is a marked avalanche zone where stopping is prohibited.
Afternoon — 1½–2 hours
The cruise. A fiord, not a sound — carved by ice, not a river. Mitre Peak rises about 1,680 metres straight out of the water (1,683 m on the NZ topographic map, though operators round it up). Book ahead in summer.
Winter, and this road. DOC: “During winter (May to September), driving conditions can be extremely challenging. The road can often be covered in snow and ice… snow chains may be required.” And the sentence we would repeat to anyone: “If you are not confident about driving in winter conditions, take a bus.” Coaches run daily from Te Anau and there is no shame whatever in taking one.
Hope for rain. Milford takes up to seven thousand millimetres in a year, and it is the wet days that people remember: the walls run with hundreds of temporary waterfalls at once, cloud sits halfway up the rock, and the scale becomes impossible to hold. Sunshine gives you a photograph. Rain gives you the place.
SleepTe Anau— night 2 of 2.
Day fourteen
Te Anau → Queenstown Airport, and home
Build the connection into the day · not into the airport
Distance165 km
RoadSH94 then SH6
CharacterNot measured by us — check on the day
Morning — settle the connection before you book
Eastern Australia: you fly home from here. Everywhere else: you are connecting through Auckland (1 h 50, from NZ$119) or Christchurch. Do not book a same-day long-haul connection tighter than four hours — Queenstown is weather-affected and diversions to other South Island airports do happen.
Declared · we have not measured this leg ourselves. Check it on the day, and add the car drop-off on top.
Or: add a fifteenth day in Queenstown and fly out rested. It is the cheapest good decision on this page.
SleepOn the plane— or one more night in Queenstown, which we would.
Before you book the car
The two bookings that decide this trip
Your hire car may not be allowed on the ferry
Ten of the nineteen self-drive fortnights we read put a car on the Cook Strait ferry. Not one of the ten mentioned that four companies forbid it.
Permitted, from the ferry operator’s own list: Avis, Budget, Apex, GO Rentals, Omega, Ezi, Enterprise, Scotties, Snap, Sixt, Mode, Bargain, Hireace, and Ace if you return the car to the island it came from.
Not permitted: Europcar, Hertz, Thrifty, Dollar. With these you return the car at Wellington, cross as a foot passenger, and collect another at Picton.
Apex includes the vehicle ferry ticket in its daily rate. Hertz charges the actual cost of relocating a car left on the wrong island, up to NZ$1,000 plus GST. Ask for the one-way fee in writing before you book.
The ferry is the tightest booking of the trip
The crossing is three and a half hours, check-in an hour before. But the timetable in 2026 is not what it was.
Interislander is running a single ship from 22 June to mid-September 2026 — two sailings per direction per day. Interislander’s own words: “Last minute bookings for private vehicles are unlikely.” Bluebridge runs four sailings a direction in peak and takes bookings to April 2027.
Book the ferry before the car. Foot passenger fares start around NZ$50, and a foot crossing is the fallback when vehicle space has gone.
Reality check
This route, marked against our own five tests
We audit other people’s itineraries on a separate page. It would be poor form not to run this one through the same five.
Test
This route
Does your rental allow the Cook Strait crossing?
Handled on day 8, with the permitted and prohibited lists and the Hertz relocation charge
How many beds, in how many nights?
Nine bases, thirteen nights, five single nights. Leaner than the median eleven, and we publish the number rather than bury it
What is your longest driving day?
317 km, Napier to Wellington. Nothing exceeds the 350 km cap
Is Northland on a both-islands fortnight?
No, and deliberately. Only one of thirty-six published fortnights reaches the Bay of Islands, and it flew the middle and cut back to six bases
Is Milford a self-drive day from Queenstown?
No. Two nights at Te Anau. DOC says the road needs an eight-hour day; our own measured figure makes it 12–14 hours from Queenstown
And the one it does not pass, said plainly. A fortnight across both islands without flying cannot also reach the West Coast glaciers. Franz Josef is 459 km from Nelson and 286 km on again to Wānaka, and the nights to absorb that have to come from somewhere. So this itinerary skips the glaciers. If they are the reason you are coming, fly the middle, or take three weeks.
Make it yours
Four ways to bend it
The big one
Fly the middle
Skip the ferry, fly Wellington or Rotorua to Christchurch or Queenstown. Flying bought back about three bases at the median in our sample — that is Franz Josef and a second night somewhere. Costs: the flight, two car hires, and the crossing itself.
Slower
Take twenty-one days
The honest answer to almost every complaint about this route. Three weeks buys the glaciers, Wānaka, the Catlins and a second night in five places. It is the trip we would take.
Simpler
One island, properly
The median international stay is ten days. Ten days on one island is a better holiday than fourteen across two, and there is no shame in it.
Reversed
South to north
Christchurch in, Auckland out. Works identically and can be cheaper on flights. The one loss: you drive the Milford road before jet lag has fully gone. We would not.
Before you go
Driving here, honestly
You asked for a route. Here is the part that matters more.
The risk is real and it is concentrated on exactly these roads. In 2024 there were eleven fatal crashes, seventy-four serious-injury crashes and 350 minor ones involving overseas drivers. 28.8 per cent of overseas licence holders failed to adjust to New Zealand rules or conditions. In Auckland, about five per cent of crashes involve an overseas driver. In Westland, Queenstown-Lakes and Southland it is between twenty-three and forty per cent — the last third of this itinerary.
And it is not mainly a winter problem. Crashes involving overseas drivers more than double from December to March against winter, and eighty-two per cent happen in daylight.
The rules that catch people out: one-lane bridges — slow down, check, stop if you must give way. Roundabouts go clockwise, give way to the right. Unsealed roads are slippery. No hand-held phone. The breath-alcohol limit is 250 micrograms per litre, and zero under twenty.
Winter, specifically. The Lindis Pass and the Crown Range close for snow — usually for hours. Queenstown Lakes District Council now fines NZ$750 for failing to fit chains when directed on its own roads, including the Crown Range, under a bylaw enforced from winter 2026. Four-wheel drive is not safer on ice, particularly downhill.
And the argument that settles winter. Early July gives Southland about eight hours forty of daylight; mid-January just over fifteen and a quarter. Do not move this route into winter without shortening it.
Paperwork and money
The checklist
NZeTA. Most visitors need one before boarding — NZ$17 by the official app or NZ$23 on the website, valid two years, plus the NZ$100 visitor levy. Allow seventy-two hours.
Your licence. An overseas car licence is valid here for eighteen months from your last entry — but from 1 November 2026 that drops to twelve months.
Book before you arrive: the ferry, the Milford cruise, Te Pā Tū, and the car — in that order. The ferry is the constraint.
Check on the day: the NZTA journey planner for SH5 and the alpine passes, and DOC for the Milford Road.
The regret is never about what people missed. It is always about how much they drove. When you are tired, stop somewhere for two nights and let the itinerary go.
How we know
Where this route comes from
Author experience
The North Island half is walked — we drove it in February 2026 and wrote it up as we went. The South Island half is researched, not recently walked: we have been, but before the Christchurch earthquake, and that is not a basis for telling you what to do on a Tuesday. Every South Island claim on this page names its source.
Most recent visit: 2026Walked: North IslandResearched: South Island
Checked against NZTA, the Department of Conservation, Interislander and operator timetables, August 2026. Fares and timetables move — date-check due February 2027.
Been recently? If the ferry timetable, the Milford cruise times or the fares have moved, tell us what you found — we date every change and say what we altered.
A final word on the fortnight
Two weeks across both islands is a real trip and a moving one. Book the ferry first, cap the day at 350 kilometres, and give yourself a fifteenth night if you possibly can.
Common questionsCan I do both islands in two weeks without flying?
Yes. Nineteen of the thirty-six published fortnights we read do exactly that. What you cannot do without flying is reach both Milford Sound and the West Coast glaciers. This route keeps Milford and skips the glaciers, and says so.
Can I take my hire car on the Cook Strait ferry?
It depends entirely on the company. Avis, Budget, Apex, GO Rentals, Omega, Ezi and several others permit it. Europcar, Hertz, Thrifty and Dollar do not — you return the car at Wellington, cross as a foot passenger and collect another at Picton.
Can I fly home from Queenstown?
Only to eastern Australia. From anywhere else you connect through Auckland, which is 1 h 50 and from NZ$119, or Christchurch. Air New Zealand has Christchurch–Singapore and Christchurch–Tokyo scheduled from late 2026, which will change this.
How many nights should I spend in each place?
This route uses nine bases in thirteen nights, with two nights each in Auckland, Rotorua, Wellington and Te Anau. That is leaner than the median published fortnight, which runs eleven bases.
Is it safe to drive this in winter?
It is, with changes. Alpine passes close for snow and chains may be required. The bigger issue is daylight: Southland gets about eight hours forty in early July against fifteen and a half in January. Shorten the route rather than driving it in the dark.
