Private or Ship Sourced Excursions on Solstice for New Zealand / Australia

[TMLAalum]

Our 10 days on the North Island prior to our Solstice cruise out of Auckland were well worth the planning. Thanks to our friend from NZ's advice, we spent 3 nights on the Coromandel peninsula, 3 nights at a B&B outside Rotorua and 2 nights near Waitomo at a quaint B&B with its own glowworm cave! The 1st and last nights were in Auckland. Just wonderful.

 

We did all private tours on our cruise, excepting the overnight Celebrity excursion to Queenstown. We arrived in a deluge so did not venture from our hotel save for the included steamer across the lake and the wonderful dinner/sheep herding & sheering that was part of the tour. For Bay of Islands, we wandered on our own. Wellington did a walking tour with Gene, Tauranga booked a gold mine tour, and in Tasmania booked with EyeSeeTasmania for a rain forest hike and the Bonorang wildlife preserve. My nephew who is a professor at Otago U in Dunedin toured us around the Akoroa peninsula and we DIY'd it in Melbourne & Sydney.

 

I would go back to NZ in a heartbeat, especially to the South Island since we only had a taste of it via the Celeb shorex.

[Chef Heather]

Just throwing another thought out there: The road from Christchurch to Wanaka (done over a 2 or 3 days) would be a great introduction to Sth Island driving. The Canterbury plains to Tekapo are very straight. The road into Aoraki/Mt Cook village (my personal favourite spot in the country) are wide sweeping style roads rather than sharp corners. Then it gets windier as you travel over the Lindis Pass, but nothing too bad.

 

OskarNZ, I so greatly appreciate your insight and could really use your help; is there a way to email you so I don't bore everyone else with my concerns? Not sure what is allowed to be posted here. Thank you!!:cool:;p

[oskarNZ]

OskarNZ, I so greatly appreciate your insight and could really use your help; is there a way to email you so I don't bore everyone else with my concerns? Not sure what is allowed to be posted here. Thank you!!:cool:;p

 

Happy to help. I love my country and are always keen for visitors to love it too.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t think Cruise Critic has a message function like many similar travel forums. If you are comfortable putting your email on here (space it out with dot instead of . etc) then I’ll flick you an email back. Otherwise, perhaps start a thread over in the Australia/NZ Port of Call section. I’m sure there will be other posters weighing up a cruise vs. a land trip. You could list the ports of the cruise your considering so a proper comparison can be made. :-)

[Beanb41]

OskarNZ, I so greatly appreciate your insight and could really use your help; is there a way to email you so I don't bore everyone else with my concerns? Not sure what is allowed to be posted here. Thank you!!:cool:;p

 

I wouldn't be too concerned about expressing your issues in open forum. That's what these forums are for. Your concerns and issues are probably echoed by others who are not prepared to ask the questions. Any answers given are also bound to be of benefit to others as well. Beside others may also be in a position to expand on answers to your queries if they know about them

[Chef Heather]

Happy to help. I love my country and are always keen for visitors to love it too.

 

Unfortunately, I don’t think Cruise Critic has a message function like many similar travel forums. If you are comfortable putting your email on here (space it out with dot instead of . etc) then I’ll flick you an email back. Otherwise, perhaps start a thread over in the Australia/NZ Port of Call section. I’m sure there will be other posters weighing up a cruise vs. a land trip. You could list the ports of the cruise your considering so a proper comparison can be made. :-)

I will post another response with some ideas per your and beanb41's suggestion; but would appreciate using email here's mine mscheather@gmaildotcom

[gogo65]

My only suggestion would be to push your dates 2 weeks, mid January is still school holidays and peak season. If you push to first week of February everything will be much cheaper!

[Beanb41]

My only suggestion would be to push your dates 2 weeks, mid January is still school holidays and peak season. If you push to first week of February everything will be much cheaper!

 

I am not convinced that February will be cheaper because it is still peak season but traffic on the road will be less and there will be far fewer children around tourist resorts. They wont all be gone but the numbers will be significant fewer than in January