Coverage / New Zealand
New Zealand
Australasia
Remote island nation at the bottom of the Pacific, with dramatic alpine scenery, volcanic coastlines, and a culture built around outdoor exploration. One of the world's great adventure destinations, compact enough to traverse in two weeks, diverse enough to fill a lifetime.
9 activities · 11 pairings · 22 verified providers
What you can do in New Zealand
Flight Experiences
- QueenstownJan Feb Mar Apr Oct Nov Dec Queenstown has helicopter companies with direct access to Fiordland, Mount Cook, the Remarkables, and the Milford Sound valley. What makes it one of the better helicopter destinations in the world is the proximity of genuinely remote mountain and fiord terrain to a well-resourced tourist town. The Milford Sound flight landing is the classic program: 45 minutes of flying through fiord country, landing in the sound itself, before returning over the Divide. More ambitious programs set down on glaciers or the Tasman snowfields. The quality of the terrain and the professionalism of the operators are both consistently high.
- WanakaJan Feb Mar Apr Nov Dec Wanaka hosts New Zealand's most serious collection of vintage and warbird aviation, and the best access to aerobatic flight experiences in the Southern Hemisphere. The Warbirds and Wheels museum maintains a flying collection of WWII aircraft including Spitfires, Mustangs, and Kittyhawks. The biennial Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow (Easter weekend, even years) is one of the top five airshows in the world. But the everyday offering matters too: aerobatic companies based at Wanaka Airport run dual-control flights in Pitts and Extra-type aircraft over the Southern Alps, with instruction available for those who want to actually fly, not just ride.
Sailing
- AucklandJan Feb Mar Apr Nov DecAuckland treats sailing roughly the way other cities treat cycling. The Hauraki Gulf starts where the marinas end, the islands are an easy day sail apart, and the sheer number of boats means instruction is normal rather than exotic. November and December are late spring into summer with no cyclone risk, since the ex-tropical lows that reach Northland arrive from January to March. Two operators run from Westhaven, one a yacht club school teaching the Yachting New Zealand framework on keelboats, the other an IYT school running everything from a taster sail to bareboat skipper and ICC.
- Bay of IslandsJan Feb Mar Nov DecEvery November the Bay of Islands fills with boats that have just crossed an ocean. The Pacific cruising fleet runs south from Fiji and Tonga ahead of the tropical cyclone season, and Opua is the customs port where most of them land. For a few weeks the marina holds crews who have just finished a thousand-mile passage and are about to disperse, which is the densest supply of experienced sailors and short-handed berths anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. The school here teaches the Yachting New Zealand and IYT ladders across a sheltered cruising ground of 144 islands, and the courses are built so the final days are sailed without an instructor aboard.
Best months at a glance
| J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D | |
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| Wine & Spirits |