I know you shouldn’t get swept away by the small snippet you see of a county when you go on holiday, but I did. New Zealand stole my heart and I wish I could move there.
This is part 1 of a series of blogs on my 2024 trip to New Zealand.
Short Notice
Ever since the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring film was released in 2001, it has been a bucket list item of my other half to visit New Zealand. They have read The Hobbit many times, so when the film put the universe on screen, they had to go see the country behind all those beautiful panning shots.
From an extensive amount of research on the best way to see the country, we decided that we wanted to do a Red Carpet Tour. We could self-guide our way around, visiting all the places separately, but the idea of the Tour appealed to us. If there were any issues the tour company would manage them for us and, if we were lucky, we would get to see some of the lesser known spots that only the locals knew about.
The idea of travelling up and down New Zealand on a coach full of LoTR nerds filled me with dread because I had never read the books. But, I reminded myself, this was a film location tour, the nerds going were film fans; I should be able to blend in.
Red Carpet Tours are booked far in advance (as of writing they are booked up for the next three years) so we signed up to their mailing list to catch any cancellations.
We waited…
And we waited…
Then, almost as we had forgotten about it, on the 18th September 2023, we received word that an opening had appeared on the June 12 Day winter1 tour, and my credit card was hurled into the fires of Mordor.
Was it expensive, yes. Was it worth every penny, absolutely.
In quick succession the tour and flights were booked. We took a gamble on getting the time off from work and being able to find pet care; the opportunity to go on the tour was not ‘once in a lifetime’ but it was rare.
Luckily I work for a very understanding manager who knows how much I have wanted to visit New Zealand for years. That, and the fact I’m an architect (what do we really do anyway), meant I was able to take 3 weeks off in one go.
The tour was only 12 days but there was 3 days of flying, plus I wanted to add a couple of days before and after, in the event of any flight shenanigans.
Red Carpet Tours
I want to take a second to sing the praises of the team at Red Carpet Tours. Julie James, who was our tour guide, was everything we could ask for.
A handful of issues occurred during the tour but Julie handled all of it in her stride.
Winter weather brought some significant rain but we didn’t really notice because Julie and the team re-ordered the days so we were inside when the weather was its worst. I hate to think about the amount of reorganisation that takes, but I guess it was helped by the good relationships with local companies that Red Carpet Tours maintains.
We got to see lots of filming locations and Julie was constantly giving us background and trivia for everything we saw. This blog is going to exclude a lot of the details of the tour days because I think it wouldn’t be fair to the team at Red Carpet Tours if I gave away their secrets.
The tour organised all the evening accommodation for us and I feared that they would have booked us in the worst hotels to increase their profit2. This could not have been further from the truth. Every hotel room we stayed in was spacious and many had phenomenal views. They were centrally located in every town we stayed in and I doubt I could have booked nicer ones myself.
The worst part of the tour was a dates mix-up in the initial email that gave us the 13th as the departure day, when it was actually the 12th. Turning lemons into lemonade, the whole tour group didn’t actually mind as it gave us an extra day to visit various sights (we went to Milford Sound).
Overall, I don’t think anything we self organised would have been as fun as what we got. We met an amazing group of people and by the end of the tour some tears were shed that it was over.
Thank you Julie and the team!
We’re going on an Adventure Tour
Wednesday 29th: Flying to New Zealand
When flying halfway around the planet to basically the antipode of where I live, I wanted to leave a bit of buffer. If we had a delay or cancellation we might end up losing a few days finding a new flight.
The week before we flew, the same flight number (SQ321) experienced severe turbulence resulting in dozens of critical injuries and one death. Needless to say, any time there was turbulence on our flight I told my other half I loved them, fearing it was the last time. It wasn’t helped that the last 3 hours of the flight was plagued with turbulence so bad the wings were flapping like the plane was attempting to ‘fly the natural way’.
Given all that, we flew from Heathrow to Auckland via Singapore without any delays. Singapore Airlines were fantastic and the Premium Economy seats my partner bullied me into booking were quite comfortable.
Friday 31st: Naps on the 35th Floor
Arriving at Auckland I was not as overjoyed to be in New Zealand as I expected, but I was overjoyed to see the bed in my hotel room after 31 hours of travel. We promptly dozed on and off for the next 6 hours; catching up on at least one night’s sleep.
Upon rising, our body clocks having given up guessing what time it was, we did the only thing one can do. We went to the rooftop bar.
If you are ever in Auckland I can recommend the voco in Auckland City Centre. They let us check in early and check out late. Maybe they were taking pity on us having travelled half way around the planet, but it was appreciated.
We liked it so much we stayed there on our way back and would go again for the views alone.
If we didn’t have such a mind-blowing view from our room on the 35th floor then I would say the views from the rooftop bar on the 38th would have dropped my jaw. Auckland reminded me of London, except not as claustrophobic. Maybe it was the fact we were staying in the business district but the city as a whole seemed quiet while we were there.
Saturday 1st: Waiheke Island
We have gotten in the habit of not booking everything before we go anywhere; instead only booking key events that might sell out, and then seeing what the weather is like on the day. This paid off for us because the weather the next day was warm. Like summer shorts warm. In ‘winter’.
We took the opportunity to get the ferry over to Waiheke Island and sample some of the wines the island is famous for. Everyone else had the same idea as us and the ferry was rammed.
Once we got to the island we took advantage of the Hop-on, Hop-off bus with the hopes of seeing a handful of vineyards.
We were worried that when we left the UK we would be leaving summer behind, potentially missing it. However, summer seemed to follow us to each of the vineyards and we enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere each one had to offer.
You could argue that we relaxed too much and that handful of vineyards turned into two and a brewery 
.
Stonyridge Vineyard was our first stop and it set the tone. The view out over the vineyard (pictured above), the sounds of nature, and the comfy chairs, convinced us to have some food and stay a while. A good set of wines, but not the best of the day. We eventually had to peel ourselves away or we weren’t going to be able to see any other vineyards.
The next stop was just down the road, the Soho Family Vineyards Cellar Door. Less of a vineyard and more of a outdoor bar with a food van next to it. We enjoyed the wine more than at Stonyridge and the vibe, although less exclusive, was still relaxing.
Finally, we saw the day out in The Heke, sat on two barrels, with some smashing food. No wine, but the beers (more my speed) were refreshing.
The days were short so we headed back to Auckland.
On the boat back we did what any middle-aged couple would do and we checked out the house prices on the island.
At the time we thought that we had visited what would be called an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ in the UK, not knowing then that most of New Zealand seems to fit that description.
Sunday 2nd: Auckland Zoo
I’m going to speculate a Zoo can tell you a lot about a country. If a country cares for its animals, then I suppose that the Zoo will carefully balance the needs of the animals against them being an attraction, instead of primarily being ‘on display’ to entertain people.
Auckland Zoo has to be, hands down, the best zoo I have ever been to. Every single animal seemed to have a spacious enclosure that looked like it catered to the ecosystem each animal is from.
TripAdvisor told us to plan to spend about 3 hours here, but we probably spent about double that. We must have been the luckiest guest to ever visit because we caught almost every animal during feeding time.
I remember my other half saying:
Its not everyday you see an animal you haven’t seen before and today we’ve seen both a Tasmanian Devil and a Kiwi.3
I’ll be honest, I never put too much thought into the Kiwi but I thought it looked fictional; like the Wild Haggis4. I was happy to find out it wasn’t because it’s adorable!
One of the things we did book before we got to New Zealand was the Sky Tower. We heard it was something we shouldn’t miss and that it gets booked up quick.
The Sky Tower is tall, I’ll give it that. I think that a rotating restaurant in the sky is a great idea.
The fog that rolled in disagreed and we got to spend the evening looking a while wall of it.
3/10 would fog again.
Monday 3rd: The Tour Begins
I’m going to leave it here for part 1. This feels like a good stopping point.
Kia Ora! See you in part 2!
