Luxury New Zealand Family Travel Review: Rotorua, Wellington, Culture, History, Nature, Hiking, 3-Week Trip

We loved the sequencing of our experiences. By way of background we had almost three weeks in New Zealand and are very active curious people who wanted to understand the country we were visiting for the first time.   We started of our trip with a deep dive into more urban areas and ending up with fewer guides but opportunities to use the knowledge and experiences we obtained in the early portions of our trip as background in subsequent experiences.   
for examples the first two days of our trip we spent in Rotorua where we were able to spend an evening with a Maori family as their dinner guests.   The experience was amazing because the family and its values were very similar to ours.   They helped us to understand the historical and current role of the Maori culture in NZ.   This was a very important insight that we used throughout the rest of our trip.   We also had an expert forestry guide who took us for a day of exploration into an area of old growth forest and educated us about the trees, under forest and history of NZ forests and their animal, and bird populations.   This day allowed us to have some insight into the multiple forests we subsequently explored on our own.  
The same opportunity was provided in Wellington where we were exposed to NZ wine industry.  Later my husband and I had the opportunity to hike and bike on our own visiting areas suggested by Karen and her team.  We were able to sample on our own several of NZ great treks, bike ride for miles and visit the key cities of the South Island. Karen provided excellent insight and guidance as to where we should trek and places of interest we should explore.   The trip really was perfect in every way.