13 days

The South Island Run

Christchurch → Wanaka → Queenstown

Flat-white city, adventure capital, lake town: New Zealand's South Island, top to bottom.

Per person

13 days · 3 cities · 9h 05m in transit

$803

Excludes international flights

Between cities

$154

2 buses

Beds

$649

12 nights across 3 cities

Estimated for a 1 Jan 2027 start. Pick your dates and it all reprices.

Christchurch

🇳🇿 3 nights · Day 1–3 · CHC

Bus · InterCity via Tekapo & Tarras · 7h 15m · $121

Wanaka

🇳🇿 4 nights · Day 4–7 · ZQN

Bus · InterCity via Cromwell · 1h 50m · $33

Queenstown

🇳🇿 5 nights · Day 8–12 · ZQN

Full itinerary

Stay · 3 nights · Day 1–3

Christchurch

Your accommodation

Drifter Christchurch

from $52/night

$192 · 3 nights

Free things to do in Christchurch

Free

Riverside Market graze

The rebuilt city's living room: coffee, bao, butcheries and a rooftop bar.

Free

Container-city street art crawl

The rebuild made walls into galleries. Start at the SALT district.

Free

Botanic Gardens & Hagley Park

Thirty hectares inside a loop of the Avon, free and open every day.

Day 4

$121 est.

Christchurch → Wanaka

Bus · InterCity via Tekapo & Tarras · 7h 15m

Most of a day through Mackenzie country, with Tekapo's impossible blue out the left window. Change coaches at Tarras, which is a coffee shop on State Highway 8 and not much else. The cheap Standard seats are a fixed allocation per coach and sell out well ahead; after that the same seat is Flexi.

Stay · 4 nights · Day 4–7

Wanaka

Your accommodation

Wanaka Bakpaka

from $45/night

$202 · 4 nights

Free things to do in Wanaka

Free

Roys Peak at dawn

The photo is real and so is the 1,200m climb, closed for lambing some years.

Free

That Wanaka Tree & lakefront loop

Sunrise for the photo, any hour for the walk.

Free

Rob Roy Glacier track

Three to four hours return through beech forest to a hanging glacier.

Day 8

$33 est.

Wanaka → Queenstown

Bus · InterCity via Cromwell · 1h 50m

The valley route: one direct coach a day, and it puts you in the airport town for the flight home.

Stay · 5 nights · Day 8–12

Queenstown

Your accommodation

Adventure Queenstown Hostel

from $43/night

$255 · 5 nights

Welcome to Adventure Queenstown Hostel, part of the Adventure Hostels family.

Free things to do in Queenstown

Free

Ben Lomond summit hike

6–8 hours and 1,438m of up, though the gondola shortcuts the boring bit.

Free

Explore Arrowtown

A gold-rush main street of miners' cottages twenty minutes out, best under the April colour.

Free

Queenstown Gardens & the lakefront

A peninsula of big trees and the best free view of the Remarkables, twenty minutes round.

The trip ends here

Fly out, or stay longer. The booking links stop, you don't have to.

Before you go

The gaps the itinerary above doesn't cover.

Data that works on landing

An eSIM activates before you fly, so maps and transport apps work the moment you land instead of after finding wifi.

Travel insurance

12 nights in New Zealand. Policies differ on cancellation cover and on whether the activities on this itinerary are included.

We don't recommend one over the other and we're not licensed to advise on insurance. Read each Product Disclosure Statement against your own trip and circumstances.

$803

travel & beds · per person, est.