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Yippeeeee - we are off to New Zealand soon and whilst we are there we are hiring a campervan for a fortnight to tour some of the South Island.

Is there anybody out there who has been in recent years who can advise:

1.  Must see sights

2. Can you get away without booking up any sights?

We are just planning our (loose) agenda and really any information that anybody has to help us make the most of this fantastic opportunity will be greatly appreciated.

We have never been before, so even the most basic advice would be a real help. 

Thanks folks.

We are going to visit our son on 1st December for 3 months and we will also be touring South Island.  However we are hoping to hire the cabins on the campsites and just use a car but as it will be high season we are also backing this up with a tent as well.  Motorhomes are very expensive as we are going for so long.

Dont know what sights to see as we will be shown the good ones by our son but there was a thread here so time ago so try the search button and enter New Zealand and/or Motorhomes in New Zealand and see what you get.

Have a fabulous time

Well Marz, might just bump into you, you never know.  We are travelling a couple of days before you, and staying for four weeks only (only !!!)

I think we may have to book a few large sites at various intervals and go with the flow in between.  I believe NZ is a free camp country and that there are only a few places where you cannot just stop and camp.  But obviously being in a camper van we will need to use chemical disposal points and what not.     Should imagine we can manage with EHU quite easily a lot of the time...........

Do you reckon you could use chemical disposal without staying at the site????  Or is that just not the done thing??

You have a fabulous time too.....

Just book into a site when you need water and to empty your loo.  Campsite fees are not that expensive and most of the sites are better than here or France.

Google top10 campsites new zealand.

Hi Lizzz

You,ll have a fantastic time there!

We live in Oz,so it,s not too far for us to go and it,s such a beautiful country!

When we were there,we just hired a car and didn,t really book anything.We mainly stayed in hotels or cabins,so I,m not sure what the bookings for campsites would be like.Maybe email a few sights just to find out what their bookings are like?

We loved Queenstown...we were there for a week and wished we had longer there.If you are into all of the extreme sports then it,s the place to be and even if you aren,t it,s great just being a spectator and there,s heaps of 'tame' things to do!We loved watching the bungy jumping and the paragliding...where we stayed we could see them jumping off the mountain not far from our hotel!

We went on a jet boat/funyak day trip...the funyaks are like really big inflatable kayaks.The day starts with a 90 minute jetboat ride up the dart river (where they filmed Lord of The Rings) absolutely beautiful scenery...too hard to describe really! At lunchtime you stop at this magical spot by the river where they have set up a fabulous lunch and afterwards they take you to a grotto....it was such a well organised,relaxing day and was the highlight of our trip!

Milford Sound was beautiful as well and the drive out to Mount Cook is well worth it (it,s a no through road,so you have to come back the same way) we made a day trip of it,but next time would probably stay there for a night.

There are just so many great places and sights to see!

I hope you have a fantastic trip and look forward to hearing all about it!

Cheers Mel

We have just got back from NZ. We toured with camper van. it's a long way to go to see similar views compared to Scotland, but still very beautiful.

The whales at Kaikoura, the penguins at Oamaru together with the history there, the dolphins at Christchurch and a tour of Lord of the Rings plains of Pelinor near Mt Cook.

The bird life is very disappointing compared to Oz. They drive on the same side of the road and speak the same language but it is still worth the experience.

Diesel is $1-20 compared to $2-70 over here. Exchange rate is $2-60 to £1-00. We hired a United van for 3 weeks, driving is easy hardly any traffic. We avoided towns like the plague. We also visited many relations over there all ex Brits descent.

Supermarkets are very good with exotic fruits.

Mount Cook is stunning but so is Ben Nevis. Lakes are an incredible blue due to the roick flour from the glaciers.

If I can help in any way rmrfox at uwclub.net

Martyn