A friend and i will arrive in Auckland on Feb 4 and depart from Auckland on Feb 26.
We are gardening enthusiasts and want to visit many gardens in NZ. In addition, we want to do a wine tour (or two), see some of the national parks -perhaps do a few short hikes, visit culturally important sites and a few museums, art galleries, and/or musical performances would be nice. While we are fine with cities, on this trip we don't want to spend a lot of our time in them - except for the museums, etc, above!

We are thinking of dividing our time about evenly between the north and the south islands.

We know that we want to spend 2 nights in Auckland, to acclimate and rest after the journey there. We think we want to rent a car and use hostels. We'd like to find central locations and do day trips from each location.

We've been told that the glowworm tours are worth experiencing. I wonder if any of you have done one of the raft or tube trips. I see they are available in the North Island and well as the South. What would be your recommendation?

We found the New Zealand garden trust site and have located more interesting gardens than we have time to visit. Any gardeners out there with recommendations? The Garden Trust has a rating system - International Significance, National Significance, Of Significance and Registered. It seemed to us that we should see the International level gardens. Shortening our list of the remaining 38 gardens will be a challenge.

About Feb in NZ - is that as big a travel month there as August in Europe is? We're thinking that we may need to book ahead for a car and several places to stay. Usually, I like to book the first couple of nights, then just wing it from there. That may not work....

While waiting for replies, I am going to work with a map to attempt to locate 'central spots' for us.

Thanks in advance.

Brenda

School holidays will be over so you could wing it.

If you click on my screen name, you'll find a link to my trip report from April 2004. We spent 10 days on the North Island.

We did the Black Labyrinth tour (the shorter one - don't have time to look up the exact name at the moment) with Blackwater Rafting in Waitomo and had a blast.

Try www.bbh.co.nz and www.yha.co.nz for hostels. The BBH member hostels are individually owned, usually smaller than YHA properties, and feel more homelike IMO. We really enjoyed the nights we stayed in hostels.

Lee Ann

Mid summer gardens less interesting than springtime, mostly roses. And I guess the native gardens.

Wellington and Christchurch are cities with especially nice botanic gardens.

Since it's midsummer I'd probably spend more time on the south North Island and the South Island. The north part of the NI has a bit much "humid splendor" for my taste.

My husband did the Black Abyss (5 hour tour) with http://www.waitomo.com in January 2009 and loved it (he is in his 50's but is a keen sportsman), this had to be booked in advance. I did the glow worm cave tour only, which was easy and gentle and could be booked on the day in Waitomo at the Black Cat Cafe (which is where the cave tour meets beforehand).

We visited a lovely lavender garden near Kaikoura called Lavendyl Farm, which is on the South Island (north of Christchurch). Kaikoura is great for whale watching trips.

We used hostels (YHA - as we are members) and also Back Backpackers, you will need to book up well in advance as this will be a busy time of year, especially in popular places such as Auckland and Queenstown. Our favourite YHAs were Wellington and Paihia (Bay of Islands - great place and definately do the top of the north tour). Our favourite backpackers was Bayview Backpackers on the Waikawa road out of Picton. We loved Picton as well.

We also organised our hire car via the YHA and got an older hire car (with something similar to AA cover which we never needed) at a very, very reasonable price - but had to book ahead.

Wine tours - we did 2, 1 from Picton (Marlborough wines - South Island) with Marlborough Wine Tours (you can google them). We were picked up from the backpackers and dropped back there again, we did the medium length tour (5 hours) and really loved it. We did a second tour from Napier (Hawkes Bay and Gimblett Gravels - North Island) with Vince's Wine Tours, which was also equally enjoyable.

The Museums in Auckland and Wellington (Te Papa) are both well worth a visit, very informative. If you only have time for one, then it has to be Te Papa in Wellington (in my opinion).

For chill time it is also worth visiting the Coromandel region, especially Hot Water Beach (North Island).

For the best coffee with a view, we loved the Boatshed Cafe at Rawene (North Island).

A definate must is also Queenstown, the views of the Remarkables and Lake Wakitipu are the best views we have ever seen.

I forgot to add, we also did a 10k walk along the Queen Charlotte Track whilst in Picton, taking the post boat out to the start of our walk and being picked up by the same boat at the end of the walk. A fantastic day, just take a picnic and plenty of snacks and water.

Thank you, all!
I am especially relieved that the school holidays will be over. What a difference that makes.

And Kasyorks, your detailed advice is very helpful. Another place I read that that there is a car rental agency named Apex that rents older cars. I will fid that.

What is the situation with Internet access and wifi? I am hoping to use an iPad to store photos and trip notes as well as to keep in touch with home.

I'm now getting into the read deal of planning, so I expect to be posting lots of questions. Please bear with me

NZ is bit behind on the FREE wifi, but you can find (fairly expensive) pay services and internet stations. Probably a Kiwi can explain but my understanding is that they get charged quite a bit so things like uploading photos are not appreciated by innkeepers that give free internet!

I noticed a service called Global Gossip Internet. Do you know what this is and/or how I can find out more about it? I did search on it and found that it seems to 'belong' to At&T. I wondered if I could enroll for a month or two.... Brenda

Global Gossip is one of the ISPs that some hotels and hostels use. It's not especially good, bad or cheap. Depending on where you stay you're sort of stuck with their provider.

Try some of the alpine areas for many native plants are grown worldwide. Look out for hebes, fuchsia and astelia. Phormium tenax is native here too. City botanic gardens are great, all the cities have them and take a real pride. Check out New Zealand Gardener for some more ideas. Just take a look at the forest, real dinosaur stuff here.

Larchmont Castle on the Otago peninsula (Dunedin) has nice grounds. We enjoyed our few hours there, but I don't know if it is worth a special trip. Definitely add it if you are in Dunedin which also has a wonderful garden.

If you're in Dunedin, don't miss the albatross colony. http://www.albatross.org.nz/