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New Zealand...
Call Lisa on 01543 258631 or 0845 003 2211
Lisa is our resident New Zealand specialist. Give Lisa a call on 01543 258631 to plan your New Zealand holiday now.
New Zealand is often described as the world in miniature - snow-capped mountains, magnificent coastal scenery, rainforest's, geothermal activity and the rich Maori culture all help make it a wonderful place to visit. We are able to tailor make your holiday to this fantastic destination so call Lisa now.
Please call us on 01543 258631 or 0845 003 2211 to discuss your holiday
to New Zealand.
Excerpt from our New
Zealand feature from our 2011 Travel Explorer newsletter, Edition 1.
Although New Zealand looks tiny on the world map, especially compared to the
hulking torso of its next door neighbour, it's as big as the UK and really needs
at least two or three weeks to fully explore. But for those who want to combine
it with a visit to Australia, or perhaps add a leisurely stopover or two in Asia
or a South Pacific Island, there is a way to distil the ‘Enzed’ experience into
days rather than weeks.
Our compact nest of pleasures starts in the capital Wellington. With its lively harbour, its horseshoe of green hills polished by scurrying clouds and steep streets tumbling with wooden Victorian houses, Wellington is the most handsome of cities. It’s also home to the superb Te Papa museum, a repository of national treasures and the single best introduction to all aspects of New Zealand life, from visiting an active marae, or sacred meeting place, to doing a virtual reality bungy jump.
The ferry to the South island, following in the wake of Captain Cook across the Cook Strait and into the calm, pale blue waters of Queen Charlotte Sound with its jigsaw of islands. Once ashore you would collect your hired car and explore the globally acclaimed Marlborough vineyards, including Cloudy Bay, the winery that ‘lifted New Zealand’s wines from obscurity to respectability’ according to James Halliday, author of the Pocket Guide to the wines of Australia and New Zealand.
The nearby fishing town of Nelson, which faces the wide panorama of Tasman Bay, is the St Ives of New Zealand, a magnet for artists and craftsmen. The local tourist office has a number of different craft trails, linking wood turners with weavers, ceramicists with glass blowers, jewellers with makers of ‘wearable art’, such as a dress I saw with a breast plate made of strips of bacon in perspex and a skirt of wet kelp. I decided against bringing one home as a present for my wife.
Nearly a third of New Zealand is national park. Even our little polly pocket of the country has three, including the Kahurangi, the country’s second largest, Nelson Lakes and Abel Tasman, named after the Dutch explorer who sailed its coast in 1642, more than a century before Captain Cook.
Imagine the perfect beach where a dense natural garden meets the most golden of sands and the calmest, most opal of seas, protected from the prevailing west winds by granite highlands and headlands, and you are looking at the Abel Tasman. You can walk the coast path, explore by sea kayak or hop along by water taxis that operate a scheduled service right along the coast. You may well spot seals and maybe dolphins, but we’re saving the great marine show for the last stop.
The old whaling town of Kaikoura, our most southerly point on this condensed version of New Zealand, is now most famous for whale sightings rather than shootings. In the smorgasbord of food found in the rich mingling currents off the peninsula, there’s a 95 percent chance of a sighting, as well as seeing - and swimming with - dolphins. But Kaikoura would be worth it just for the drive from Nelson. To port, the pale Pacific rollers and beaches littered with kelp and giant arthritic claws of bone coloured driftwood. To starboard, the immensity of 6000 foot mountains, the first appearance of the Southern Alps. Few places in the world celebrate such an intimate marriage of mountain and sea.
TRAVEL BRIEF
7 nights from £899
per person based on two sharing.
Including:
private transfers in Wellington, 2 nights at the Museum Hotel in Wellington
(room only), ferry from Wellington to Picton, 2 nights at Brookhurst in Blenheim
(with breakfast), 2 nights at Awaroa Lodge in the Abel Tasman National Park
(room only), 1 night at Hapuku Lodge in Kaikoura (with breakfast) and 5 days
Group D all inclusive car hire.
- Add this in to a longer trip in Australiasia, Asia or even a round the world
itinerary.
Call Lisa, our New Zealand holiday expert on 01543 258631 for more details or email: lisa@robertbroadtravel.co.uk