How Many Days Do You Need in New Zealand?

Three lengths of trip

Almost every first trip to New Zealand is one of three lengths. A focused trip, of up to two weeks, gives one region or one island its full attention. A comfortable trip gives one island more than a fortnight, or both islands three weeks. An extended trip, of more than three weeks, lets you stay as well as see. What moves a trip from one to the next is the driving that Getting around New Zealand shows each one involves. Days mean calendar days in the country, from the day you land to the day you fly.

Two weeks is the top of a focused trip, and the most common length people bring. On one island it is unhurried. Across both it can be done, but it is not comfortable: the ferry and the long drives take most of the days, and that is why we draw the line where we do.

Focused: up to two weeks

A week is enough for one part of the country, done without hurrying: two or three bases, two nights or more in each, and no day spent mostly in the car. This is not a shortened version of a longer trip. A week spent properly in one region is a different holiday from three weeks spent moving, and often the better one. Two weeks gives one island the same attention: five to eight bases, most of them for two nights, and no ferry to plan around.

Three of our four itineraries are focused trips. The North Island and South Island itineraries each take a fortnight on one island, and each shows what to keep if you have a week, or cut if you have ten days. Other regions reward a week just as well — the Bay of Islands and its kauri forest, or Christchurch and the Mackenzie with Aoraki/Mount Cook — though neither is one of our routes.

The third, New Zealand in two weeks, takes both islands in the same fortnight. Many people do it, but it moves most days, spends a day on the Cook Strait ferry, and cannot reach the West Coast glaciers as well as Milford. Flying the middle — Auckland or Wellington to Christchurch or Queenstown — buys back two or three days, at the cost of a second car hire; Getting around New Zealand sets out what that involves.

Comfortable: more than two weeks on one island, or three across both

Past a fortnight, one island stops being a tour and becomes a stay: a second night at Aoraki or in Rotorua, a spare day for weather, time for a longer walk. We have no one-island route of this length; start from the island fortnight and add nights where it already stops.

Across both islands, three weeks is where the trip stops feeling rushed. It keeps the ferry, reaches the glaciers and Milford on the same trip, allows a spare day for weather, and leaves several days on which you do not move the car at all. New Zealand in three weeks is our route for it. Northland is the one thing it does not reach: at this length it is bought by giving up the South Island, not by adding days.

Extended: more than three weeks

With four weeks or more, both islands can be travelled the way we suggest travelling one: two or three nights in most places, and longer where a place holds you. It is also the only length at which both islands and Northland fit on the same trip.

We have no extended itinerary, but our two island itineraries join into one. The North Island route ends in Wellington; the ferry crosses to Picton; a long day’s drive down the coast by Kaikōura reaches Christchurch, where the South Island loop begins. That is about four weeks. Many hire companies do not allow their cars on the ferry, so plan to change cars at the strait; Getting around New Zealand explains how.

Counting the days that are yours

Whatever the length, some days go to getting somewhere. Landing, flying home, the ferry and the long drives each take a day or most of one before you have seen anything.

These are our estimates, from the drive times on Getting around New Zealand and the shape of our own routes. The pattern is the point: the both-islands fortnight by road gives you the fewest days of your own, which is why flying the middle, or a third week, changes it most.

If you have less time, or more

With less time

1. Keep the reason you are going. If it is Milford, keep Milford.
2. Move down a length: from both islands to one, or from one island to one region.
3. Drop the place that costs the longest drive — often the West Coast in the South, or Northland in the North.
4. Fly in and out of different cities, or fly the middle, where it saves backtracking.
5. Cut bases before you cut nights. Two nights in fewer places beats one night in more.

What not to do is keep a both-islands route and squeeze it with early starts and long days. The ferry and the drives crowd out everything else, and one island is the better holiday.

With more time

1. Add nights where you already are. A second night at Aoraki or Franz Josef does more than a new town.
2. Add a spare day before the Haast, the Milford Road and the Tongariro Crossing, for weather.
3. Then add one region the shorter trip left out: the glaciers first, then Northland or the Catlins.
4. Take a slower way through, such as the TranzAlpine train over Arthur’s Pass.
5. Only then add special interests: a multi-day walk, a ride, a ski week.

Extra time is as much for depth as for distance. Some people will use a third week to reach more of the country, and that is a real trip; others will use it to stay put, return to a place that caught them, and notice more of it. Both are good uses of the time, and neither is the lesser trip.

Now choose a realistic route

With a length in mind, the next step is a route that fits it. Plenty of itineraries promise more of New Zealand than the time allows. Our New Zealand itineraries set out four we think are achievable, three of them focused and one comfortable — both islands in two weeks, both islands in three weeks, the South Island and the North Island in a fortnight — and explain what makes each realistic: days capped at a sensible driving distance, the passes and the ferry given the time they take, and enough nights in each place to see it. Each also says plainly what it leaves out.