Beautiful cruise with only 11 of us on board and the food was superb with a Chilean chef now on board! Dinner was fresh crayfish and beautiful desert, washed down with NZ wine! Other passengers were great fun and a calm overnight sleep. We loved it and the crew were great fun including skipper Carl.
Relaxing Journeys really know how to put together a magnificent holiday incorporating great accommodation an Itinerary to show off this magnificent country. Well done again.
Had and excellent tour of NZ. The country is a definite must do on one’s bucket list! We thoroughly enjoyed it. For us one night in Rotorua would have been good swapped with 2 nights in Wellington. The only other change we would make is the hotel in Christchurch is really really difficult to get to because of the construction there. Maybe a hotel in a little different area would be better until the roads/ buildings are repaired. But we had a fantastic time! We will recommend you to all our friends!
Good communication from start to finish. Very professional.
Accommodations was very good except for Auckland. Ponsonby art hotel was very hot (no air conditioning) and our room was in the courtyard right next to restaurant – a thoroughfare. Also choice of spending 2 nights in Ohakune: we would have been better situated within the national park and closer to mountain walks. Accommodation in Napier was outstanding. A very interesting and varied tour. A big drive on last day.
We had a fantastic time, thanks to the well selected hotels and tours we could enjoy. It helped us a lot to just focus on enjoying NZ 😉 Thanks, Toni!
We have had an excellent tour of North Island. Not rated accommodation as varied. Pace was Ok as we defined it! Would make changes if we were doing it again.
Toni has been a great help by making our honeymoon trip even more wonderful. She is very kind, clear, flexible and patient. We asked for some adjustments in the itinerary and that was all possible. The hotels were well informed by my husbands birthday and our honeymoon. Because of that, we even got free upgrades! Thanks so much Toni!
Joanie and I wanted to take the trip of a lifetime to New Zealand, and being the independent souls that we are, planned to rent a car and drive the country. I figured we could identify what we wanted to see and book our own, but that quickly became overwhelming. So I began searching the internet for sample itineraries, and came across those provided by Relaxing Journeys. Bingo! We chose an itinerary that made sense for us, asked the wonderful Toni to adapt it to our interests, and she created a good one. A few tweaks and we were there. All of the hotels were well-located, friendly, quiet, clean, and comfortable. The recommended sights were spot on. I highly recommend engaging Relaxing Journeys to help guide you in the complex and sometimes time-consuming task of creating your own trip of a lifetime.
This tour was a great way to see many highlights of the South Island. We really enjoyed the freedom of travelling at our own pace and the train journey at the end was a lovely way to end of the tour. There is a lot of driving involved and if we did it again we would include extra days throughout the tour to break up the driving, but the drive was relatively easy because the roads are very well maintained. The hotels were all lovely. Marie organised our tour and was a delight to deal with and always responded to emails quickly. This was our first trip to New Zealand and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
A great mix of train, coach and car. The tour covers the key parts of the South Island. Really liked the trip to the farm with lovely location and a great meal. The location of the motel in Queenstown was great because of the walking access to the town centre. All the pick ups were all on time. Superbly organised. The maps were great, did not need a GPS. The weather also was good at the rights times. Would highly recommend this tour.
We really enjoyed our trip to South Island. Marie has been most helpful in sorting out all our accommodations and answering all our questions. The voucher system works really well and makes the transactions simple and quick. There were a few long drives for the itinerary we chose – from Franz Josef to Queenstown and from Lake Tekapo to Hanmer Springs, about 5 hours each. Other than those, the pace was very manageable. The accommodations provided were all clean and comfortable. Noting the number of toilets in each apartment may be helpful especially when six people share an apartment. Due to our large group size (17), some of us had to be accommodated in some smaller twin/triple rooms at some destinations instead of more spacious apartments. Overall, the accommodations were of excellent quality. The highlight of our trip was seeing lots of wild dolphins and whales on our trip out to sea at Kaikoura. However, the sea conditions were really rough and some in our group had to forgo the whale-watching trip. The tour operator was helpful to allow us to reschedule our whale-watching to the next day without penalty and to allow cancellation for those who suffered from sea-sickness. As SH1 was still closed, we had to take the windy inland route to Kaikoura but the experience of seeing so much wild life at Kaikoura made the drive worth the while.