New Zealand South Island trip - Itinerary guidance
 

Hello,
I am planning a trip to South Island, New Zealand in March 2016.
I was kind of trying to come up with an itinerary and it seems a little confusing. I would really appreciate recommendations/ suggestions.

I'm planning a trip with my parents. My father is 65 and not in the best of his health. A concern for us is that he will not be able to walk for more than a km or 2. So we are planning to skip the glaciers (Fox and Franz Josef)

The proposed itinerary is as follows:

Day 1 Arrive into ChCh
Day 2 Kaikoura excursion
Day 3 Lion encounter
Day 4 Drive to Hokitika
Day 5 Hokitika to Mount Cook
Day 6 Explore Mount Cook
Day 7 Mount Cook to Queenstown
Day 8 Explore Queenstown
Day 9 Explore Queenstown
Day 10 Queenstown to Te Anau
Day 11 Milford Sound to Dunedin
Day 12 Explore Dunedin
Day 13 Dunedun to ChCh airport

Any help is much appreciated.

Thank you.

I too am confused by your itinerary. It's fast-paced and involves a great deal of driving. You will be seeing the island through your wind screen.

I assume you mean sea lions? Are you looking at two nights Kaikoura?

Kaikoura to Hokitika will take about five hours of driving, w/o stops.

Hokitika to Mt Cook will take about six hours, w/o stops.

Queenstown to Te Anau is two hours, then it's another two hours to Milford Sound. If you leave for Dunedin the following day, when do you plan to see Milford?

Milford Sound to Dunedin is well over five hours w/o stops.

If I were 65 years old and someone proposed this itinerary, I'd run screaming in the opposite direction.

You've left very little time to explore the areas you're visiting. NZ has some wonderful tracks, yes, but there's plenty to do for non-hikers as well, and spending a holiday in a car wouldn't be my choice.

Where are you arriving from? Unless you're flying in from Australia, you're going to be exhausted from an overnight flight.

Instead of trying to fit so much of the island into so few days, I suggest you concentrate on what you absolutely don't want to miss.

Unless Kaikoura is an absolute no miss for you, I suggest you give it a pass and concentrate on the areas south of Christchurch, giving yourself more time to actually visit the places you're driving to.

While I agree with Melnq8 that it is a lot of moving around, it is not out of the ordinary for what travel agencies recommend/book for self-drive tours of the South Island. We did something similar, but we were in our 20s so it was no problem and was very fun. We did only scratch the surface, though, so we are heading back in Jan 2016 for a more in-depth 14 day trip. I'd recommend researching exactly what you are interested in seeing and then cut out one or two things to add another day onto a particular location.

If it was me...I'd do the following

Day 1 Arrive into ChCh
Day 2 Kaikoura excursion
Day 3 Lion encounter
Day 4 Drive to Hokitika
Day 5 Hokitika to Wanaka or Qtown (stop at Glaciers for views)
Day 6 Explore Wanaka or QTown
Day 7 Explore Queenstown
Day 8 Qtown to Te Anau
Day 9 Explore Milford
Day 10 Milford to Qtown
Day 11 Qtown to Mt Cook
Day 12 Explore Mt Cook
Day 13 Mt Cook to ChCh airport

Or you could drop Kaikoura for more time to Qtown, Wanaka, Te Anau depending on what you want to spend your time doing.
I wouldn't include Dunedin, unless you like to keep on the move - if you're on holiday it's probably nicer to have some time to be still in some places.
You could stay in Tekapo instead of Mt Cook.
You could stick with your original itinerary and give yourself some more time by flying back from Qtown to Chch.
In March, it's light until maybe 7-8pm. Weather...can be awesome or terrible or something in-between.

Thanks Melnq8, I'll tailor the trip to focus on south island alone. THis will give some breathing space and rest to my parents.
Paulg - you have fun with your relaxing trip this time around.

Thelittlestkiwi - after the comments i think i would want to focus on south island. So we are planning, tentative itinerary

- 2 days ChCh
- 2 days Franz josef glacier (we are planning to do the heli ride: my dad might drop out but my mom is very keen to do it. I hope summers at the glaciers are fun as well)
- 4 days Queenstown
- 2 days Te Anau
- 2 days Mt. cook.

What do you guys think?

I really appreciate the recommendations/ suggestions.

I too am interested in comments to your updated itinerary. My husband and I will be traveling NZ in October/November. We'll be flying in from Sydney and are flexible as to where is best to go in an out of. We have given ourselves 2 weeks to drive the South Island. Are there any specific recommendations for overnight lodgings? If we don't stay in Queenstown for 4 days is there another area where we could split the time: 2 and 2?
Melinq8, I tried to find your write up of South Island but the link says it is not able to be found. I would be most interested in knowing what your itinerary was too.

Spunkie - I have several NZ reports posted, here are a few of the most recent, I hope they help:

Happy to help with accommodation once you've organized your itinerary.

http://www.fodors.com/community/aust...uth-island.cfm

http://www.fodors.com/community/aust...-island-nz.cfm

http://www.fodors.com/community/aust...e-si-of-nz.cfm

Krps, well, I don't know about relaxing. If you ask melnq8, it is anything but relaxing. But then again, we tend to err away from relaxing on our vacations. :)

Regarding your itinerary, I would rather do an extra day in Te Anau or somewhere else like the west coast instead of Mt Cook. Unless that 2 days really means 2 nights just to get one full day in.

Yep, paulg's itinerary isn't what I'd call relaxing, but we all have different travel styles, and I fully appreciate that the average yank doesn't have much vacation time to work with.