Travel Review: Tour of New Zealand, Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington, Nelson, Punakaiki, Waitomo Glowworm Caves, Arts & Crafts

A group of 14 of us, mostly weavers and ceramicists from Hawaii, just returned from a 15 day tour of the north and south islands of New Zealand. We had the most wonderful trip. I had asked our travel agency to recommend alot of art & museum focused stops on the journey which they did.  Our hotel accommodations were stellar and when we stayed in Nelson for 4 days the accommodations had a kitchen and washer/dryer in each unit which was very thoughtful and useful as this was half way thru the trip and people really wanted to do laundry.

Our driver, who stayed with us the whole time, was informative & very pleasant. He went out of his way to drive us around looking for galleries and other out of the way places.

Our travel agency arranged for us to go to smaller wineries and glow worm caves where we had really personal experiences rather than being part of a big crowd. We had a private tour of Te Papa and learned so much.  our travel agency made suggestions to break up the driving at some towns along the way such as Punakaiki which turned out to be one of the best places we experienced!

When I was working on email to set up the trip, they were always prompt with replies and very helpful with their replies and made alot of great suggestions.  I highly recommend these travel professionals!