The five of us(mother, father and three teen/late teen daughters) are off to NZ.

We are clear about our intinerary except the last night and most od the following day.

We will be driving from Queenstown towards Christchurch on 20 Feb in order to catch the evening flight on the 21st.

My question is:

Should we drive from Queenstown and stay at Lake Tekapo?

Methven?

Fairlie, Geraldine

Timaru?

Any experiences of these locations? Suggestions what to see?
any favourite eateries?

I will report on return

All the locations you have mentioned are fairly small to very small, so the choice of accomodations would be limited. Except perhaps Timaru, but even there choices are a bit limited.

You could of course, with a reasonably early start, travel from Queenstown up to Christchurch in the day with stops to see Lake Tekapo, a detour through to Mt Cook, etc. The travel time with rest stops is about 8 hours.

If you want to stop off and break the journey, you could in Tekapo and enjoy the view of the lake, Twizel and be close to Mt Cook (Or in Mt Cook itself, though not much there facilities wise)

If head straight out to the East Coast and Timaru you will be leaving the centres more attractive landscape behind.

In order:

Lake Tekapo

Mt. Cook

Twizel

Thanks you

Mount Cook

That was our plan until we ran out of gas enroute and the gas stations were closed (they close at 9pm) and the self service wouldn't take our credit card.

We ended up having to stay in Omarama. We were only there for about 12 hours and then went on to Mount Cook for the day. We also had a pm flight out of Christchurch.

The downside of Mt Cook is if the weather isn't good you may not be able to see the mountain.

Why not just leave that night open, see how the weather looks and decide were to stay while in Queenstown? That's what we did for the entire 2 week trip and it was AWESOME!!!

The less expensive options in Mt. Cook book up ahead of time. It definitely is a gamble, but one sometimes gets lucky.

Twizel almost always has something, though.