Day Trips from Christchurch

Six places, compared

What the three day types mean. An easy day leaves you plenty of time there and gets you home for dinner without an early start. A long day means an early start or a lot of travel, but you still get enough time for the thing you came for. Stay overnight means the place is worth going to, but a return in one day would spend most of it travelling; go for a night or two instead.

Four places that work as a day from Christchurch

Two easy days and two long ones, in the order of the table.

Waipara Valley

Waipara is Christchurch’s wine country, about an hour north on State Highway 1. The region calls itself “the coolest little wine region”, and New Zealand Winegrowers names pinot noir as its signature grape, with riesling and chardonnay close behind. Most of its vineyards are small and independently owned, so a tasting is often poured by someone who helped make the wine. It suits anyone who would rather spend a day at a table than on a trail.

Visit Hurunui, the district’s tourism body, counts more than 20 cellar doors and 10 vineyard restaurants. A good day is two or three tastings before a long lunch among the vines, then home. The restaurants make a point of local produce: venison, seafood, olive oil, even truffles.

The drive is the simplest on this page: straight up the highway and back, about two hours in all, which leaves four or five hours in the valley. We could not confirm opening days for every cellar door, and small producers often close midweek or in winter, so check each one before you set out and book lunch ahead.

The one real constraint is the wine. Whoever drives home cannot join the tastings, so take one of the wine tours that run from Christchurch or agree a driver before you leave.

Verdict: easy. A short drive, a long lunch and no early start.

Hanmer Springs

Hanmer Springs is a small alpine village built around hot water. The thermal pools are the reason most people come: a large open-air complex of mineral and freshwater pools, with hydroslides for children, set among tall trees with the mountains behind. Around the village, forest tracks begin almost at the door. It suits families, tired walkers and anyone who wants a day with very little effort in it.

The shape of the day is a walk, then the water. The Conical Hill loop, about 6 km and 90 minutes to two hours, climbs through forest to a lookout over the basin. Then give the pools the afternoon.

Visit Hurunui gives the drive as an hour and a half, 131 km, so allow three to three and a half hours in the car across the day. A daily bus also runs from Christchurch and must be booked; we could not confirm its times.

On the day we checked, the pools were open from 10am to 7pm. An adult pass was $40 if bought online by 10pm the day before, or $43 for a flexible pass. Buy the night before and the saving is yours.

Verdict: easy. The drive is longer than Waipara’s, but nothing is timed and you can leave when you like.

Castle Hill and Arthur’s Pass

State Highway 73 is the great road out of Christchurch. It crosses the plains, climbs into the high country and reaches Arthur’s Pass National Park in about two hours, the Department of Conservation says. On the way is Kura Tāwhiti, or Castle Hill: a hillside of what the department calls “towering limestone boulders”, an hour and a half from the city. At the far end are beech forest, a 131-metre waterfall and the kea, the mountain parrot. It suits walkers and anyone who wants to see the Alps close.

Stop at Castle Hill first. The track to the rocks is easy and takes about 40 minutes. The place is sacred to Ngāi Tahu and protected in law, and visitors are asked to keep to the track. Then drive on to Arthur’s Pass village for the Devils Punchbowl walk: an hour return, with more than 400 steps, to the foot of the falls.

That is four to four and a half hours of driving, and four or five hours at the two stops, much of it walking. Leave by eight. Carry warm clothes in any season, and never feed the kea; the department says feeding harms them.

Cave Stream, between the two, has a pleasant loop walk above ground. The cave itself is another matter. “People have died at Cave Stream,” the department warns, so leave it alone unless you are equipped and the weather is settled.

Verdict: long. A lot of road, but two of Canterbury’s best short walks at the end of it.

The TranzAlpine

The TranzAlpine is the train across the South Island, from Christchurch to Greymouth on the West Coast and back in a day. Its operator counts 15 tunnels and four viaducts on the way, the highest 73 metres above the stream below. The line follows the Waimakariri gorge into the mountains, where no road goes, and there is an open-air carriage for photographs. It suits anyone who wants the Alps without driving.

The train is the day. By the operator’s own account it leaves the station at Addington at about 8.15am, stops briefly at Arthur’s Pass before eleven and reaches Greymouth around one. An hour later it starts back, and it is early evening when you return. Check-in is from 7am to 7.55am.

On the way the line passes the small red station at Cass, which Rita Angus painted in 1936. Cass belongs to the Christchurch Art Gallery, which records that a 2006 television poll voted it New Zealand’s greatest painting. See it before you go, and look for the station from the train.

You need not go the whole way. Leave the train at Arthur’s Pass, rejoin it on its way back in the afternoon, and you have several hours to walk. The operator’s pages do not give the return time there, so confirm it when you book.

Verdict: long. Ten hours and more for an hour in Greymouth, and worth it if the journey is what you came for.

Better as a night away

Two places worth the journey, where a day return would leave too little time to see them.

Kaikōura

Kaikōura is a small town on a peninsula, with mountains behind it that carry snow in winter and spring, and a deep ocean canyon close to shore. That canyon brings sperm whales within reach of a boat all year, and dusky dolphins and fur seals with them. Few places in the world put large whales this near a harbour. It suits anyone who cares about wildlife, and walkers too: a path runs round the peninsula’s cliffs above the seal colonies.

The whale boat is the heart of a visit. Whale Watch Kaikōura says to allow three and a quarter hours, a little over two of them at sea, and charges $185 for an adult from October 2026. It refunds 80 per cent of the fare if no whale is seen.

As a day return it is fragile. The district council puts the drive at two and a half hours each way. The captain alone decides whether a tour sails, and the operator promises nothing about the sea. Drive five hours for one booked departure and you may get no boat at all. A scenic train, the Coastal Pacific, has also run this route; we could not confirm its current season, so check with the operator.

The better plan is a night or two. Book a morning boat with an afternoon one in reserve, walk the peninsula, and eat crayfish, which gave the town its name. It also breaks the drive between Christchurch and the Picton ferry, which is how our New Zealand in two weeks route uses it.

Lake Tekapo and Aoraki / Mount Cook

Lake Tekapo is a turquoise glacial lake in the Mackenzie Basin, under some of the clearest night skies on Earth. The basin and Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park beyond it form an International Dark Sky Reserve, designated in 2012 and covering 4,367 square kilometres. Further on, a road runs up the side of Lake Pukaki to the foot of Aoraki / Mount Cook, the country’s highest mountain. It suits walkers, photographers and anyone who has never seen the Milky Way properly.

By day there is the lake shore and the Hooker Valley Track at Mount Cook, which the Department of Conservation lists as easy, about three hours return; check its alerts page first. By night there is the sky, which is the reason the reserve exists.

A day return gives you neither properly. Tekapo is 227 km from Christchurch, about three hours, and Mount Cook Village is 104 km further, the last stretch up a dead-end valley road. That is six to eight hours of driving, and you would be heading home before dark with the stars still to come.

The better plan is two nights, one by the lake and one at the mountain. Our South Island itinerary does it that way, on the road south from Christchurch. Mount Cook Village has very few beds, so book it as soon as your dates are fixed.

Making the day work

Let the weather choose the day

The mountains make their own weather. A clear morning in Christchurch can be cloud at Arthur’s Pass, and a wet day in the city is still a good one for hot pools or a cellar door. If you have several days, keep the choice open and pick the night before.

Leave early and fill up first

Every drive here begins with half an hour of city and plain. Leave by eight for the long days. Fill the tank in Christchurch: we found no official word on fuel along State Highway 73, so do not count on it.

A tour or your own car?

You need wheels for everything here except the train. Tours from Christchurch earn their price for Waipara, where nobody should drive after tasting. For the rest, a hire car lets you stop where you choose.