New Zealand 8 Day Itinerary: South Island, Queenstown and Milford Sound

Free, 20 minutes, a few blocks from downtown. It is the first easy stop after check-in, on the way to the Botanic Gardens.

The February 2011 earthquake destroyed much of central Christchurch, including the stone Anglican cathedral. The temporary replacement, opened in 2013, was designed by Japan’s Shigeru Ban using reinforced cardboard tubes, and its facade is a stained glass wall of coloured triangles. Built to last 50 years, it became a symbol of the city’s rebuild.

Free, 90 minutes, a 20 minute walk from the Cardboard Cathedral across Cathedral Square. Open until dusk.

Founded in 1863, it is the best place to understand why Christchurch is called the Garden City. The Avon River runs through the park, with flat bottomed punts gliding slowly upstream; the native plant section is your first introduction to the tree ferns you will see all over the country.

Free, 30 minutes. From Christchurch it is 3 hours by road across the Canterbury Plains, and the church sits right at the entrance to Tekapo village.

Built in 1935 from local stone, the little church is famous for the window behind the altar, which frames the milky blue lake and the mountains instead of stained glass. Photography inside is not allowed, and at night it becomes the classic shot under the Milky Way.

The road to the top has a toll, or walk up in 1h30 on the trail from the village. At night, the Dark Sky Project’s guided astronomy tour costs from 239 New Zealand dollars and needs booking.

The Mackenzie Basin has been an international dark sky reserve since 2012, with rules controlling lighting in the villages. From the top of Mount John by day you see the whole lake and the range; at night, with the observatory’s telescopes, the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way appear to the naked eye.

15 minutes, on highway 80, about 50 minutes after Tekapo. Stop even if you are in a hurry: it is the most famous view on the road.

Lake Pukaki gets its turquoise colour from rock flour, the fine dust ground up by the glaciers and carried by the water. At the far end is Aoraki, 3,724 metres, the country’s highest mountain, which the road follows for the next 55 kilometres to Mount Cook village.

Free, 3 hours return, 10 almost flat kilometres. Leave the White Horse Hill car park early, before 9am: after that the track gets crowded and the wind picks up.

It is the most beautiful half day walk in the country. The path crosses three swing bridges over the Hooker River, grey with glacier water, and ends at Hooker Lake, where chunks of ice float with Aoraki straight ahead. Bring a windproof jacket even in summer.

Free, 45 minutes, 8 kilometres by car from the village along Tasman Valley Road, plus a 20 minute walk up. It is the late afternoon, after the Hooker.

The Tasman Glacier is 23 kilometres long and the largest in the country, but it is retreating so fast that the lake in front of it only started to form in the 1970s. From the viewpoint you see the rock covered tongue of ice, the lake with icebergs and, on the way, the Blue Lakes.

15 minutes at the summit lookout, halfway through the 3 hour drive between Mount Cook and Wanaka. It is the most beautiful stretch of the driving day.

At 971 metres, the pass divides the Mackenzie Basin from Central Otago, and the mountains here are not rocky: they are hills covered in tussock, a native grass that turns gold in summer and gives the place a colour nobody expects to see in New Zealand.

Paid entry, 90 minutes, on highway 84 just before you reach Wanaka. It is the rest stop of the drive, and it is more fun than the facade suggests.

Opened in 1973, the place started with a wooden maze and grew into rooms of optical illusions: the tilted room, where water seems to run uphill, the Ames room, where people shrink from one corner to the other, and the Leaning Tower of Wanaka at the entrance, tilted at 53 degrees.

Free, 20 minutes, a 10 minute walk from downtown Wanaka along the lakefront. Come at sunset, and do not wade in or climb the branches: the tree has been vandalised and is protected.

It is a willow that sprouted from a fence post around 1940 and was left stranded when the lake rose. It became the most photographed tree in the country, and its hashtag is better known than many New Zealand towns.

Free to watch, 20 minutes, on highway 6, about an hour after Wanaka via Cromwell. Jumping is expensive and needs booking; watching others jump is free.

It was here in 1988 that AJ Hackett and Henry van Asch launched the world’s first commercial bungy jump, a 43 metre drop to the river. The 1880 bridge dates from the gold rush, and today it is a pilgrimage site for anyone who came to Queenstown for adrenaline.

Free, 2 hours including lunch, 15 minutes from the Kawarau bridge. In autumn, April to May, the village trees turn yellow and red and it becomes the prettiest photo in the region.

Arrowtown was born in 1862, when gold was found in the Arrow River. Buckingham Street keeps its period facades, and at the edge of the village is the restored Chinese settlement, with the stone huts of the Chinese miners who arrived after the rush and lived on the margins of the town for decades.

About 69 New Zealand dollars return, 90 minutes, with the base station in central Queenstown. Go up in the late afternoon and stay for sunset over the lake.

The gondola climbs 450 metres to Bob’s Peak, and the view from the top is the one on every postcard of the town: lightning bolt shaped Lake Wakatipu and The Remarkables range, which becomes a ski area in winter. If you like, you can ride part of the slope down on the luge, an engineless cart.

15 minutes, 57 kilometres from Te Anau on the Milford Road. Queenstown to Te Anau is 2 hours; leave early, because the reflection only works while the wind is still calm.

A short boardwalk leads to the small lakes, where the Earl Mountains are reflected upside down. It is the first of several stops on the Milford Road, one of the world’s most beautiful drives, which also passes through the rock hewn Homer Tunnel before dropping down to the fiord.

A 2 hour cruise from the Milford terminal; book the midday departure, between the waves of tour buses. Driving yourself and boarding at the terminal costs far less than the coach package from Queenstown, which starts at 339 New Zealand dollars.

The boat heads out to the Tasman Sea between rock walls that rise more than a thousand metres, past Mitre Peak and Stirling Falls, where the boat noses in so you can feel the spray. Do not complain about rain: Milford is one of the wettest places on the planet, and when it rains hundreds of temporary waterfalls appear on the walls.

Free, 30 minutes, the morning walk before heading back to Queenstown. Lake Te Anau is the largest lake in the South Island.

The evening before, if you still have energy after Milford, the night trip to the Te Anau caves is worth it: a boat crosses the lake and, inside the cave, a small boat glides in the dark beneath a ceiling of glowworms. Photography inside is forbidden, which is why the cave only appears here, in the text.

Free, 2 hours, 45 minutes from Queenstown on a road that hugs the lake the whole way. Te Anau to Queenstown is 2 hours; reach Glenorchy by mid afternoon.

The village sits at the northern tip of Lake Wakatipu, where the Paradise and Dart valleys stood in for Isengard and Lothlórien in The Lord of the Rings. The wooden wharf and red shed are the photo; this is also where the Routeburn Track begins, one of the country’s Great Walks, which you can sample in an hour’s walk to the first bridge.

Free, 40 minutes, a 5 minute walk from downtown. It is the walk of the last morning, while the town is still waking up.

The park occupies a peninsula in the lake, with a waterside path that loops all the way round and the best view of The Remarkables without climbing anything. Locals play disc golf among the trees, and the ice rink in the middle of the park runs all year.

About 169 New Zealand dollars per adult, 25 minutes on the water and 1 hour in total, with a free shuttle from downtown. It is at Arthurs Point, on the way to the airport, and it is the adrenaline that closes the trip.

The propellerless boat is driven by water jets and passes within centimetres of the walls of the Shotover River canyons, with 360 degree spins that soak everyone. It has run since 1965 and is Queenstown’s most famous outing after the bungy. Leave 2 hours before your flight.