Ten days in New Zealand: what fits and what has to go

South or North: the choice in one table

If you have never seen a glacier or a fiord, take the South. If the trip is with children under ten, or in the depths of winter, take the North. The island comparison argues both sides at length.

The South Island ten, in outline

1. Days 1 to 2, Christchurch: land, decompress, punt the Avon, eat well.
2. Day 3, over the alps: the TranzAlpine to Greymouth with the car meeting you, or the drive through Arthur’s Pass with the kea.
3. Day 4, glacier country: Hokitika’s pounamu studios south to Franz Josef; the heli hike decision is yours and the weather’s.
4. Day 5, Haast Pass to Wanaka: the West Coast rainforest narrows into the pass and opens onto the lakes.
5. Days 6 to 7, Wanaka and Queenstown: a night each, or two in your favourite. The comparison settles which is yours.
6. Days 8 to 9, Fiordland: Te Anau base, the Milford road slowly, the cruise, the spare morning.
7. Day 10, depart Queenstown: fly out over the mountains you just earned.

The North Island ten, in outline

Auckland two nights, a Coromandel beach or the Waitomo caves, Hobbiton on the way to two nights in Rotorua, Taupo, two nights at the volcano for the Tongariro Crossing and its weather day, and Wellington to finish. Warmer water, stronger culture, gentler driving: about twelve hours on the road in ten days against twenty in the South.

What has to go

• The other island. Genuinely. It will still be there, and second trips are how this country is actually consumed.
• Dunedin and the Catlins on the southern loop, painful as it is: they belong to the two week and longer versions.
• The Bay of Islands on the northern route, unless you drop Wellington and fly home from Auckland.
• Any day with two headline activities booked. One icon a day plus an unplanned discovery is the ratio that survives contact with reality.

The hybrid, and when it is allowed

People ask, so here it is. Auckland to Queenstown is a one hour 55 minute flight with more than fifteen departures a day, so a ten day trip can be three nights in the North, a flight, and six in the South. It costs the Coromandel, Northland, the West Coast and the Catlins, and it is a busier trip than either island alone. We build it for people who know they will not be back, and for nobody else.

Solid itinerary, lots to do at each location, not too much driving.

r/newzealand_travel, on a Queenstown and Wanaka based ten day plan

That reply, on a South Island ten with two-night bases and no long days, is what a ten day plan should sound like when someone who lives here reads it. The Alpine Icons self drive runs the southern loop from Christchurch; the 10 Day Signature South Island does it by coach; and A Taste of the Pure South is the same shape with lodges.