Hi guys, have bought my tickets for 9 days (excluding flight) to South Island. Is it sufficient to see the main sights? I'm a scenic person. Reaching christchurch at 2pm.
Thinking whether to pay an extra 100 bucks to extend by 2 days.
Saw this itinerary and think may not need so many days at QT, any suggestions?
d1 - arrive in cc. take a day trip to kaikoura or akaroa. have a good night rest
d2- collect car. drive to fox glacier / franz josef glacier . overnight
d3 - ice walk in glacier. drive to wanaka. over night @ wanaka
d4 - QT
d5- ??
d6- ??
d7- dunedin
d8- lake tekapo
d9- mt cook
d10- ??
d11- sg
When will you be going? For day 1 I don't think it's possible to day-trip out to Kaikoura without your own car since it's a 2-hr drive each-way.
FJ is also quite out of the way, since you have 9 days only, I suggest you skip it and just keep to the central/east parts.
Assuming you're flying back out from CC, maybe you can consider this:
Day 1: Arrive CC, collect car, drive to Lake Tekapo and overnight
Day 2: Tekapo - Mt. Cook, short walks (Hooker Valley track 3-4hrs return; worth it), spend the night at Mt. Cook/Twizel
Day 3: Wanaka (spend 2-3 days here if possible, go for one or more hikes if you're able and the weather is good)
Day 4: Wanaka
Day 5: Wanaka/Go to Queenstown
Day 6: Queenstown
Day 7: Queenstown
Day 8: Queenstown/Glenorchy
Day 9: Dunedin, overnight
Day 10: Drive up the east coast back to CC, overnight
Day 11: Flight back to SG
From Queenstown you can also take a half-day trip out to Arrowtown (historic Chinese settlement), drive up to Glenorchy for nice views of the lake, and at Glenorchy/Paradise there's some awesome scenery as well.
Can also consider taking a daytrip by coach ex Queenstown to Milford Sound (takes up the whole day).
You can cut QT short by a day for Dunedin, but Dunedin itself has nothing much to me, probably drive around see the architecture, world's steepest slope, Cadbury factory, and maybe drive up the peninsular to the castle but there's nothing too exciting there.
You'd also notice I didn't budget much time for CC, but that's because there's really nothing much to see in town haha. Drop by the cardboard church, downtown area to see the destruction/makeshift mall, and I'd say you're pretty much done.