South Island Driving Questions
 

We are planning a trip to NZ in March-April 2025. We'll be renting a car in either Queenstown or Christchurch for most of our trip and have a couple of questions (at the moment): (1) we're thinking of taking the car ferry from Picton to Wellington after 14-15 days on the south island -- we've heard different things about that trip and how rough it can be. We are used to boating in the eastern US and "normal" seas aren't a problem. Does anyone have good info on this? We understand that the weather changes day-to-day, but is there a general sense? I assume many people do this.
(2) Separately, we are not big fans of driving in high mountain areas with narrow curvy roads, and we are wondering about driving south along the coast from Westport to Haast. It's hard to tell the topography from the maps we have. Hill country is fine, but serious steep mountains and altitude would affect our route-planning.

Thanks

Hi
I am American, and we are currently traveling in New Zealand. We rented a car, too, for the entire trip. I cannot speak about Haast Pass because the road was closed there when we were supposed to drive through there. So we had to re-route. We drove over Arthur’s Pass, which was not stressful driving at all. Then when we arrived on to SH6 at Kamara Junction, we drove south to Franz Josef where we had hotel reservations. That section was not stressful at all. A lot of it is flat. There was some hilly driving with narrow, curvy roads.

When we left FJ, we drove north on SH6 to Punakaiki. After spending one night there, we drove towards Westport and headed inland to Kaiteriteri, where we are now. North of Punakaiki, at times the road is straight and flat, and at times the road is hilly, curvy, and narrow, but not high mountain driving.

My husband is doing all the driving and he is not stressed by it.

Several years ago, we drove with our daughter through the French Alps. She did the driving. Driving through the French Alps is terrifying! The driving we have done in NZ is nothing compared to the French Alps. And I also think driving over the Going to the Sun Road at Glacier NP is scarier than what we have done in NZ.

I hope Diamantina, who lives in NZ, will see your post and respond. She obviously knows more than I do. And she can correct what I have said in case my memory isn’t right, even though we drove this route just a few days ago.:)

As I said, we didn’t drive over the Haast Pass so I can’t comment on that.

We've visited the SI a gazillion times and I can't think of a road that I would consider a high mountain road other than possibly Arthur's Pass, which is only 920 meters and certainly not scary. There are plentiful narrow curvy roads though, so you'll want to watch your speed and take your time. Lewis pass is even lower at 907 meters.

Takaka Hill is also an interesting road, but you haven't mentioned it. It's crazy curvy, but not that high at 823 meters.

Caveat - I live in Colorado, where we have some serious mountain passes, so what's tame to me may not be tame to others.

Westport to Hasst is winding and narrow in some areas, but certainly nothing to worry about. The bigger concern is landslips, which are frequent in NZ and can affect your driving route as the west coast gets alot of rain. NZ roads are banked, which helps with the curves.

I've driven on the SI in bad storms a few times, and what concerned me most was falling tree limbs and worry that the rivers alongside the roads might burst their banks. The wind can also be pretty fierce.

I suspect your biggest challenge will be remembering to stay left.

In all our trips we've never taken the ferry between islands, but I've heard it can be rough. We did take the ferry from Bluff to Stewart Island once, and it wasn't much fun - rough - and me prone to seasickness, but it's a lot smaller too. You might reach out to the ferry companies to get a better idea of what to expect.

What Melnq8 describes is how I have described and experienced NZ’s driving and roads.

The road at Haast Pass was closed for about a week because of landslides due to heavy rain. So we had to adjust our schedule and our driving route. You just need to be flexible. It all worked out for us. We had an unplanned night in Methven where we spent 2 hours soaking and relaxing in hot pools!

Yes the ferry crossing can be rough, but I don't know about your time frame specifically. I don't think any of our group "lost it" though. Obviously the car ferries are big ships if that helps.

We went on Bluebridge, there are two different companies, Interislander is the other one.

Here is my trip report with some restaurant and lodging recommendations from late 2022.

https://www.fodors.com/community/aus...aland-1711315/

Thanks very much - this is helpful information.

We have taken three trips to NZ, each one for two months and always in a campervan, always in winter and have driven all over both islands. Roads are very different to those in the US. Narrow single carriageways being the norm often single track roads/ bridges with passing places. There are no "high altitude" roads as such though we have got stuck driving over the Haast Pass on a couple of occasions due to it being closed due to snow. In a camper van with a lot of time, it wasn’t a problem. Park up, cook dinner and stay overnight - such a re the joys of a campervan! The roads are certainly very different to the US! On our last trip to California, we drove from Pasadena to Malibu - NZ was way less stressful 😉.

Each time we went we picked up the van in Christchurch and dropped off in Auckland which meant three trips across the strait on the ferry. One was in relatively rough seas but nothing to worry about, the ferries are built to cope with all sorts of weather.

One further question - and kind of a basic planning one. We’ve got almost two weeks of our 3 weeks planned out on the South Island in March- April. Start in CC - a quick trip to Kaikoura and then down to Tekapo and then Wanaka (3 days each, including a flight to Milford Sound). We were thinking of driving up the west coast (Franz Josef and Punakaiki) ending in Picton, taking the ferry to Wellington and then driving thru Taupo to AKL for the trip home to US. We would have about 5 days on the north island.

An alternative would be to go from Wanaka to QT and fly to AKL and spending more like 8 days up north and seeing Coramandel and maybe Bay of Islands. We’d miss the west coast drive, which we hear is beautiful. Never having been there, we’re not sure what we’re missing either way. We know we can’t see everything. Thoughts?

thanks