South Island New Zealand roadtrip with a small group tour: Wild Kiwi review
An honest review of my experience with Wild Kiwi on the 1 week South Island New Zealand tour
I had a very limited amount of time to experience New Zealand and I wanted to see some of the beautiful natural attractions on the South Island without renting a car and I was looking for the social experience of being with other budget minded backpackers in my age range. So this 7-day ‘Southern Voyager’ tour with Wild Kiwi seemed like a reasonably priced way to join a short roadtrip around the island.
I had some great experiences on this tour like taking a boat cruise through the fjord of Milford Sound, hiking and stargazing in Mount Cook National Park, and the cable car and extreme sports activities in Queenstown. I booked this tour in March 2018 and I paid for it myself, so this is a completely independent review.
You can read a detailed day-by-day summary of all the experiences I had on this tour or jump straight to the end where I share what I liked, what could have been better and my final recommendation.
Quick Overview of the Wild Kiwi Southern Voyager tour
Destinations: Christchurch, Franz Josef/Fox Glacier, Queenstown, Milford Sound, Mount Cook, Lake Tekapo.
Highlights: The boat cruise through Milford Sound, hiking and stargazing in Mount Cook National Park, and the cable car and activities in Queenstown were the highlights of the trip for me.
Who was on the tour: There were about 10 of us plus the guide, a few Australians on short holidays, three British girls on gap year, two Germans, an American on leave from the military, a European model, an official tour photographer and a confused South Korean who had been signed up for the tour by a family member and didn’t really speak English but someone got a translation app so she knew what was going on. I believe this was an age limited 35 and under tour, and around 60 percent of the group were solo travellers.
Who was the guide: The guide was from New Zealand and very experienced, professional and friendly. He knew a lot about all the places we went to and gave good advice for things to do and kept everything running on time. I actually had the same guide the previous year on a tour of the Great Ocean Road in Australia.
How did we travel: This tour used a large van style minibus with double seats on one side of the aisle and singles on the other. I found sitting in the very back felt cramped but otherwise the bus seemed safe and clean.
Where did we stay: This tour used hostel style accommodation, I was in a female only four share in Queenstown and the same in Mount Cook. The accommodation was fine for a budget tour, not fancy, but clean and the hostel in Queenstown had a big kitchen and common room area.
Recommended Luggage: You could bring a backpack or rolling duffel or a regular suitcase. We never walked too far with our luggage, but you do need to be able to bring it from the bus to the accommodation yourself.
Franz Josef / Fox Glacier
Unfortunately, I have nothing to write about the first two days of this tour because my flight from the Wellington to Christchurch was delayed and I missed the departure. This is the only tour that I have managed to miss a part of, out of more than 30 I have done, so definitely consider arriving a day early or the night before and don’t make the same travel transportation mistake I did !
Read More : Don’t make these 12 travel transportation mistakes on your next trip
I was able to get in touch with the guide to advise him I would be delayed and someone else on the tour also got stuck in traffic in Melbourne and missed his flight, so the two of us re-joined the group in Queenstown on day 3. Everyone we spoke to said that the weather at Fox Glacier was terrible during their glacier hike, so I don't really think I missed out especially since I’ve done a glacier hike before in Canada. I’ve just illustrated this part with stock images so you can get an idea of what the rest of the group did during the first two days.
Queenstown Arrival
I flew into Queenstown airport from Wellington, having just finished a tour of the North Island with Topdeck New Zealand, and I was able to check into the hostel to wait for the Wild Kiwi group to arrive from Fox Glacier later in the afternoon. I was in a 4 share female dorm with bunkbeds and air conditioning and a private bathroom, perfectly fine for a budget tour.
When the rest of the Wild Kiwi group arrived, the guide brought us on a walking tour around town. Queenstown isn’t too big, it’s like a lakeside resort town with a lot of hotels, restaurants, and outdoor activities and it’s easy to walk everywhere.
A famous place to eat in Queenstown is ‘Fergburger’ which has giant burgers, I got a vegetarian one with cheese, onion ring, avocado, egg and tofu I think ? So much food, but I highly recommend having dinner there, it was good and reasonably priced, and they had a nice attached bakery as well !
Afterwards, we stopped by a bottle shop to get some drinks to have on the beach for sunset. It seems to be perfectly fine to have a beer or cider on the beach if you don’t bother anyone, New Zealand seems more chill about that than they are at home. It was nice to get to know people on the tour, everyone seemed friendly and social. We all went back to the hostel well before midnight, as we had to be up at a reasonable hour the next day for an optional trip to Milford Sound.
Milford Sound
One of the most famous nature attractions in New Zealand is Milford Sound, a fjord area which features dramatic scenery, in particular beautiful waterfalls, wildlife like seals, penguins and dolphins (though I didn’t see any) and overall just an impressive natural landscape. The area was historically inhabited and used by the Maori people, and the traditional name for the area is ‘Piopiotahi.’
Milford Sound is about a 300km drive from Queenstown each way, so we had breakfast at the hostel and departed quite early towards to Milford Sound Visitor Centre, to embark on a cruise boat. This full day excursion was an optional add on but I think the whole group chose to do it, because it seems silly to come all the way to New Zealand and not see the most famous place in the country.
It was a long day on the bus and I brought my laptop to do some school work, I mostly found the bus to be comfortable except for the back middle seat, which I found too squished. People who has started the tour from the beginning were also very territorial of their seats and people never moved from day to day, so that was a disadvantage of arriving late.
Once we arrived at the boat terminal, the guide arranged tickets, and we joined a boat with lots of other visitors and spent around two hours cruising around the fjord. The weather was not great that day, very grey and rainy, which actually made it look very mysterious. I did enjoy this activity (my travel notes say “ it was a nice fjord, not life changing, but well worth seeing”) but it was a lot of driving for one day.
We stopped a few times within the national park on the way there and back for some photo stops as well. I think if you really enjoy the outdoors you might want a few days to really explore the nature areas within Fiordland National Park.
Back in Queenstown, we all went to a restaurant for an optional dinner, and signed up for optional activities for the next day, such as paragliding, skydiving etc.
Tour Tip: Pack appropriate outdoor clothing and footwear for this tour , we did lots of walking and outdoor activities, and don’t forget a good rain jacket !
Queenstown Activities
After breakfast at the hostel, everyone went off to do the optionals they had chosen, or otherwise just had a free day in Queenstown. I joined the photographer girl and a German boy to take the Skyline gondola cable car to reach activities at the top of the mountain. It is apparently the steepest cable car in the Southern Hemisphere !
I am not a big extreme sports person, so I did the luge track at the top, which was both affordable and not too scary in any way. I did see lots of people doing paragliding from the top of the mountain, and I sometimes regret that I was too scared to try, since it was a beautiful day and safety standards are quite high in NZ. There is also a scenic lookout area over the town below and a nice gift shop up there.
Tour Tip: Remember to budget for optionals for this tour, since there are lots of great activities available in Queenstown and the cost could add up if you are not expecting it.
Later in the afternoon, I went on quite an adventure around Queenstown looking through every souvenir shop in town trying to find a Milford Sound pin badge for my collection ( which you can check out over on Instagram). I also accompanied the photographer girl back to Fergburger where we were provided with complimentary burgers because she needed pictures for the website. I served as a hand model holding the burger for this photoshoot, so I may still be on the Wild Kiwi website somewhere.
Group photo courtesy of the Queenstown Pub Crawl
Queenstown Pub Crawl and Ice Bar
For our last evening in Queenstown, there was an option to join a Wednesday night Pub Crawl which stopped by the Minus 5 Ice Bar. I think both pub crawls and ice bars can be hit or miss in terms of how fun they are, but the Pub Crawl was a lot of fun, the leaders were energetic, we met some other travellers and backpackers and it was good value for including the visit to the Ice Bar.
I’ve been to an Ice Bar before in New York City on a tour with Topdeck, and I had more fun at the one in Queenstown, you get a winter jacket and a drink in an ice glass and there are different sculptures all around lit up by colourful lights. We later visited another bar with some silly games (I won the limbo game) and we ended at a more nightclub style place with a DJ and dancing.
I went home with some of the other girls around 1am, and the nice thing about Queenstown is that you can just walk home when you are done, since everything is pretty close together. I found the other people on this tour to be very social and fun to be around, I think everyone came out for the Pub Crawl this evening.
Driving to Mount Cook
After another breakfast at the hostel, and we loaded luggage on the bus to start the drive to Mount Cook. I was a bit tired this morning, and I also made a major move and stole someone's seat on the bus because I was tired of sitting at the back. The scenery in this part of the South Island is just beautiful and reminds me of parts of Scotland, or even Tasmania, which I visited on a tour with Intrepid the year before.
There was a quick stop in the town of Cromwell at a statue of some giant fruits, we have things like this in Canada as well like roadside attractions. We stopped during the drive for the photographer girl to get drone footage and to see a beautiful views of Lake Pukaki, which is a bright shade of blue due to the glacial silt suspended in the water.
The stop for lunch was in another small town called Omarama, and most of us just got takeaway or grocery food, since we were mostly budget travellers, but there was nowhere to eat it so were sitting on these rocks in the middle of a roundabout.
There was a short stop for a walk up to a glacier lake lookout before continuing on into Mount Cook National Park, also called ‘Aoraki’ in the traditional language.
Mount Cook
We made it to the village of Mount Cook in the early afternoon and split off into different groups to do walks and hikes based on preference of difficulty. I joined the easy group to do the 5km Hooker Valley Track which has views of the Southern Alps range and passes over streams and ends at Hooker Lake. We even saw a mini-avalanche at one point with rocks tumbling down the mountainside, from a safe distance away.
Back at the Mount Cook Lodge where we were staying, there was an included dinner of pizza and French fries where they just had several dishes for the table and you could serve yourself what you wanted.
The Aoraki/Mount Cook area is so beautiful, it reminds me of visiting the mountains when I did study abroad in Austria, and another interesting feature of this area is that it is home to the “Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve” which means that light pollution is controlled in the area and you can see more stars and constellations than usual.
I made plans with five of the other girls that night to go for a walk on a pathway just outside the village to see the stars. I was worried about being in the forest at night, since in North America there are bears and cougars and rattlesnakes and various things to watch out for but apparently in NZ, there’s nothing to worry about in terms of dangerous animals. It was such a memorable experience to be out in nature seeing the clear sky and you can get great pictures of the Milky Way with a professional camera !
Group photo provided by the Wild Kiwi photographer.
Return to Christchurch
After breakfast at the lodge, we started the drive back to Christchurch on the last day of this Wild Kiwi tour. There was a short stop at the bright blue Lake Tekapo, to walk around and take pictures for about 30 minutes and there was an additional stop for lunch before arriving in Christchurch.
The tour ended upon arrival in the mid afternoon and the guide showed us some places to go around the city. There were lots of decorations up for Lunar New Year around town, and I visited the Canterbury Museum myself and learned more about the impact of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake on the city, there was still a lot of rebuilding going on when I was there in 2018.
I met up with some people from the tour for one last dinner together at a Mexican restaurant later in the evening and then returned to the hostel early because I had a 7am flight to Melbourne the next morning and didn’t want to miss another plane !
Final Recommendation for the Wild Kiwi South Island Tour
What I Liked: I liked that this Wild Kiwi group was a reasonable size, with around 10 people, we weren’t stuck waiting forever to load the bus in the morning or at rest stops. Having three days in Queenstown was nice to not feel rushed and like we were constantly unpacking and moving around.
Several places we stopped had multiple options for easier or harder hikes and walks, and different optional activities depending on your preference and budget so I never felt like I had to do anything or was stuck doing something I wasn’t interested in. The guide was obviously experienced and professional and gave good advice, and the bus seemed new and safe and all the accommodation was basic but a good standard for a budget tour.
I had not heard of Wild Kiwi before I booked the tour, the overall experience was very similar to an age limited G Adventures or Intrepid tour.
Pre departure information and communication was adequate, I just wish I flown into Christchurch the night before rather than the morning of the tour, since I missed the departure.
What could have been better: The only thing that I think could be improved was how the visit to Milford Sound is incorporated into the tour. As we drove around 600km in one day, I wonder if it would make more sense to stay one night and enjoy more of Fiordland National Park before moving on to the next destination, it just felt like a lot of driving in one day.
The tour ended upon arrival in Christchurch in the middle of the afternoon on the last day, I think it might be nice to have a ‘farewell dinner’ included, but we basically arranged that ourselves anyway, so not a big deal there.
Final Recommendation: I enjoyed this Wild Kiwi tour, I thought it was like being on a little road trip with other budget backpackers, but with the services of a guide. The included transportation was great as I had such limited time and didn’t want to drive alone, especially through isolated areas.
I especially liked being with the group in the wilderness stops and parks, I feel more comfortable hiking with other people for safety reasons. I didn’t feel the week was too rushed, although you could certainly spend much longer in any of the national parks if you really enjoy outdoor activities.
I don’t think this tour would suit someone looking for a fancy luxury experience, (and it’s not marketed that way), and I also didn’t find it to be a partying-focused tour, besides the one night out in Queenstown, which was still pretty casual.
Overall, I think this tour would suit someone reasonably social and active who enjoys outdoor activities and is looking to see some highlights of the South Island in a short amount of time, like if you only had a week for a vacation. I think Wild Kiwi provided the service they advertised and the beautiful destinations of the South Island really made this a memorable experience.
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On this 7 day tour from Christchurch, we went hiking and stargazing in Mount Cook National Park, did a boat cruise of Milford Sound and tried some extreme sports in Queenstown ! Find out if I recommend this New Zealand tour with Wild Kiwi.