Fly to Christchurch, drive down south, then back up

Let me know what you think of this.

Fly down to Christchurch 2nd Jan.  Spend a night or two there.

Christchurch is the biggest city, and I hear there are lots of nice buildings to look at.

Its a good idea to fly to and from here as it will be the cheapest!

Drive down to Dunedin. 5 and a half hours drive.  Spend 1 night there.

Check out the university, visit friends, anything else?

Drive down to Invercargill.  2 hours 50 minutes.  Stay for 1 night?

Whats there to do here??

Same day we should drive down to the Bluff, the southern most point of NZ.  Hope its as good as Cape Reinga!  Its just half an hour away.

Drive up to Queenstown!  Drive 2 hours and 30 min.  Stay 1 or 2 nights.

Do we have any ski or snowboarders?

I'm keen to check out the national parks.  Maybe go for a tramp?

Next, a long drive to Greymouth, along the marvelous West Coast of the South Island.  Google Maps says it will take 7 hours, it may take us more if we are scenic drivers.

This is still up for consideration but I hear its good.

Will need to stay the night there after the long drive.

And if we want to go right to the top, we head up to Westport, again another beautiful drive along the west coast.  Its just 1.5 hours away.

We then drive through rough terrain to get to Picton.  Whats there?  I don't know but people come here to catch the ferry to Wellington.





Its 4.5 hours drive.  Its likely we would prefer to stay in Nelson for the night though.

From Picton back down to Christchurch, its 4.5 hours away.  If we didn't spend a night here at the start, we can spend more time here.

Alternatively we could shedule to spend more time here at the end.

At some point we need to go to Hanmer Springs, as you can see on the map, just 1-2 hours north of Christchurch.  Great for spa-activities.