If you’re tying to fit Lake Wanaka into your itinerary of New Zealand, here’s a few tips and advice from a Kiwi who’s been there a lot. Forget Auckland if you can find an airline that flies direct to Christchurch.  Auckland is nice but really just another big city and you shouldn’t come all the way to New Zealand to see another big city.

Presuming you can fly into Christchurch, which is on the east coast of the South Island, stay a night or two there then hire a car, drive to Lake Wanaka through the McKenzie Country which is beautiful, and stay a night in Lake Tekapo if a 5 hour drive is too long for you.  If you leave early morning from Christchurch, you can just stop at Lake Tekapo for lunch for a few hours, have a look around then keep driving to Lake Wanaka. There’s not much to do in Lake Tekapo other than admire the turquoise blue lake.

Stay 3 nights in Lake Wanaka, have a good look around and do absolutely nothing in one of the prettiest places in the world.  Now drive to Queenstown, stopping at Arrowtown on the way, a nice little town to have lunch or a coffee at on the way.  If you’re a bit of an adventure junky, you probably want to stay a while in Queenstown. If you’re tying to see as much of New Zealand as you can in a short time, a few nights is enough.  Then head to Milford Sound and think about taking an overnight cruise, it’s lovely if you get nice weather. The area is notorious for high rainfall throughout the year but if you get it on a nice day, it’s amazing.  There’s other bits and pieces you can do along the way, glowworm caves, quaint kiwi towns etc…

Then drive up the rugged West Coast, one of the most remote places in New Zealand. Stay at a local motel at one of the towns along the way and have a beer in the local pub with some hard men and women of New Zealand.  Drive back over to Christchurch, stay a night then take off the next day.  You can adjust the amount of nights at each place to suit your taste, if it was me, I’d be staying 4-5 nights in Lake Wanaka, a couple of nights in Queenstown, and with 1 night at a few smaller places that’ll get you to about 10-12 days and you’d have seen the best part of New Zealand.

Here’s an interesting article here about the growth of Wanaka.

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