🇳🇿New Zealand

Small City

Held in the embrace of two harbours and built on the remnants of long-extinct volcanoes, Auckland isn't your average metropolis. It's regularly rated one of the world's most liveable cities, blessed with good beaches, wine regions, and a thriving dining, drinking and live-music scene, not to mention subtropical weather. However, it's the rich culture of this ethnically diverse city that makes Auckland stand out on the global stage. Time your visit for any major cultural event, from Pasifika to Diwali, and you'll see what we mean.

Island

Turquoise waters lapping pretty bays, dolphins frolicking at the bows of boats, pods of orcas gliding gracefully by: chances are these are the kinds of images that drew you to NZ in the first place, and these are exactly the kinds of experiences that the Bay of Islands delivers in spades. There are myriad options to tempt you out onto the water to explore the 150-odd islands that dot this beautiful bay. Landlubbers will relish the rich maritime history as successions of visitors arrived on these shores.

Town

Queenstown may be world-renowned as the birthplace of bungy jumping, but there’s more to NZ’s adventure hub than leaping off a bridge attached to a giant rubber band. The Remarkables mountain range provides a jagged indigo backdrop to days spent skiing, hiking or mountain biking, before dining in cosmopolitan restaurants or partying in some of NZ’s best bars. Keep the adrenaline flowing with hang gliding, kayaking or river rafting, before heading to 'quieter' Wānaka and taking your vertigo into overdrive on the via ferrata. https://www.newzealand.com/uk/feature/top-experiences-in-queenstown/

National Park

The spectacular 700-sq-km Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park is part of the Southwest New Zealand (Te Wāhipounamu) World Heritage Area, which extends from Westland’s Cook River down to Fiordland. More than one-third of the park has a blanket of permanent snow and glacial ice; of the 23 NZ mountains over 3000m, 19 are in this park. The highest is mighty Aoraki/Mt Cook – at 3724m, the tallest peak in Australasia. Among the region’s other great peaks are Sefton, Tasman, Silberhorn, Malte Brun, La Perouse, Hicks, De la Beche, Douglas and the Minarets.

Mountain Town

Head to the Glacier Country with one of the worlds most accessible glaciers! Franz Josef is your opportunity to walk on, crawl inside, fly over, skydive over or walk up to a glacier. Get some ideas on how you can take on the glacier here. Nevertheless, theres actually more to do here than glacier gallivanting! Check it out in the list below.

National Park

Here’s nature at its most seductive: lush green hills fringed with golden sandy coves, slipping gently into warm shallows before meeting a crystal-clear sea. Abel Tasman National Park is a postcard-perfect paradise where you can put yourself in the picture, assuming an endless number of poses – hiking, kayaking, swimming, sunbathing – before finally setting up tent at a 'walk-in or boat-in' beachside campground. Book ahead if you want to see it all on the Coast Track, NZ's most popular Great Walk.

Wine Region

Marlborough is the country’s largest wine region, so it’d be sacrilegious not to spend the day making sure that the wine is up to snuff. You can take your pick of the tour options here

Small City

One of the coolest little capitals in the world, windy Wellington is also synonymous with cinema, thanks to local boy Peter Jackson. Residents are also proud of its vibrant arts-and-music scene and special events schedule (from Fringe to WOW), plus dining choices that range from innovative food trucks to high-end gastronomy. But for visitors to the capital, the proximity to mountain biking and walking trails, not to mention a glistening harbour, scores just as highly. Don't miss it.