Tours in Review

New Zealand with Tourmasters

Freestyle Holidays (Somerset Mews, 9/5 Rosebery Place, Balmain, NSW 2041, Australia; phone [61 2] 1300 799 197 or visit www. freestyle.co.au) offers many different tour packages, and we chose their 12-day “North and South Islands” tour. Tourmasters (120 Albert St., Box 949, Auckland, New Zealand; phone 64 9 359 8380 or visit www.tourmasters.co.nz) helped us book the tour, March-April ’05.

Tourmasters also has “Thrifty” tours and the “Magic Traveler’s Network.” Tourmasters limits their business to domestic transportation and tours in New Zealand and local hotels, etc.

Freestyle Holidays’ tour packages include flights, transfers, coaches, ferry, hotel pickups and a few sightseeing tours in cities. There was plenty of free time available and a few places where we could choose sightseeing tours.
Our 12-day package cost NZ$1,829 (near US$1,105) and started on the North Island. The tour included Auckland, Rotorua’s glowworm caves (not very impressive), Wellington, the ferry crossing to the South Island, Christchurch, a transcoastal train ride, Greymouth and the transalpine train, glaciers, Queenstown, Milford Sound, Te Anau, Dunedin and flights back to Christchurch and Auckland.

Our hotels were 3-star, usually with a coffeemaker, microwave and fridge. Coach drivers were very nice and gave us running commentary en route.

We spent, on average, NZ$100 (US$61) per day for food and sightseeing. Between the North and South islands, we liked the South Island better because there were a lot of things to do (adventure sports and many, many natural wonders).

We had been to Switzerland, but New Zealand’s beauty is something else. We found March-April a good time to go, as tourist season was at an end and there were far fewer crowds everywhere.
— PRAKASH DESHMUKH, San Jose, CA

From the August 2006 issue.

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