Thanks DejaDeb. Nice to see people still reading this report after over 5 years !

Wow - I loved your TR. We are leaving for OZ in one week and then to NZ so I have been using many of your suggestions. Thank you so much for sharing!! We are not quite finished planning the North Island and wondered if there was one or two things that you thought were the highlights or if you wished you had gone to the Bay of Islands... We are thinking 2 nights in Wellington, one in Napier, one in Rotorua, two in the Coromandel and 2 in Auckland. Thoughts?

Hi Comet,

we led in auckland, then had one night in Coromandel [wished it had been more] 2 in Napier and 1 in Wellington.

It's a long way to Napier just for one night! You won't have much time to see much if you just stay a night - IMO if that's all you can manage there, forget it and stay an extra night in Rotorua. we landed in Auckland, then had one night in Coromandel [wished it had been more] 2 in Napier and 1 in Wellington. An extra night in Coromandel would have been much better!

Hi Comet. We did not visit many of the places that you propose to do, so I cannot help you much. Rotorua is certainly nice and worth 2-3 days. We had only a day in Wellington, and could easily have spent another day.

If you post this question as a new thread, you are likely to get a lot of ideas. Annhig's suggestions above would be highly recommended, since she is an experienced traveller and a regular on Fodors.

If you post this question as a new thread, you are likely to get a lot of ideas. Annhig's suggestions above would be highly recommended, since she is an experienced traveller and a regular on Fodors.>>

that's kind, IC, but should come with the caveat that we have only visited NZ once and made a number of errors, the biggest ones being that we ignored Mel's advice about the time and energy it takes to drive from one place to another and over-estimated out own abilities when it came to that self-same driving. in summary we were over-ambitious.

Do you research about what you really want to see, prioritise those places, and take your time, and you should have a great trip.