New Zealand Self Drive Tour Reviews

Loved it all but sea kayaking and swimming with dolphins were our absolute favourites Kirsty did a brilliant job of listening to our wish list and packing in our requests without making us feel rushed. We even managed to add a few extras along the way!

The travel itinerary was well laid out and met our expectations on what we wanted to see in New Zealand. We particularly enjoyed the overnight stay on Doubtful Sound, the scenery in Milford Sound was spectacular and the ice berg tour on Tasman Lake at Mount Cook exceeded our expectations. Overall we were very pleased with First Light Travel. It was good to have a knowledgeable person providing us with recommendations on what to see based on our budget and schedule.

Excellent service and guidance from First Light Travel advisor Anna Caudle! We communicated over email and phone for the planning and the resulting self-driving tour itinerary was excellent and perfect for 15 day visit. We requested some golf be included and Anna set us up at 4 beautiful courses with morning tee-times. The hotels she booked for us were consistently great and the activities were fantastic, especially booking us on Air Milford to fly to Milford Sound! Flight was the highlight. Everything was perfect. Can’t recommend their service enough. Top rate!!

Arranging our last minute 10 day trip to New Zealand with First Light Travel and Travel Designer Taylor Nguyen was a great experience that yielded fantastic results. Highly recommend to anyone looking to design a trip to New Zealand. Taylor took the time to understand our profile and interests for the trip, and developed a first class itinerary that required only subtle modifications. She was diligent in ensuring we were comfortable with the plan, range of accommodations and tours. We had an incredible time and the itinerary, accommodations, and tours were awesome and a perfect fit. Taylor's guidance in developing the overall plan and catering it specifically to our needs was outstanding. We are frequent global travelers with multiple major overseas trips per year. Our New Zealand was right up there with any other top tier travel we have taken over the decades! It was so good to return to NZ once again after over 40 years.

First Light Travel and Gina, my Travel Adviser, in particular were amazing! From helping with suggestions initially, to detailed planning - flights, transfers, car hire, fantastic hotels, amazing attractions and expected travel timings, throughout, they had our back. My wife and I fell in love with this amazing country, it's people and culture and this was made possible with Gina's itinerary. Can't wait to come back.

Our trip to NZ including a visit to Warbirds over Wanaka, bookended by a boutique hotel stay at the splendid George Hotel in Christchurch, transalpine train to Greymouth and car trip via Franz Josef to Wanaka, and a wonderful stay at the Hermitage, Mt Cook was curated skilfully by Micala at First Light Travel. This bespoke trip gave us the opportunity to see parts of the South Island at the same time as experiencing Warbirds-a must! When cloudy weather precluded a scheduled helicopter landing on Franz Josef glacier, the company was in contact over Easter to ensure we had alternatives and were happy. This level of personalised attention was reminiscent of our previous high end tours of India with Abercrombie and Kent-high praise indeed!
We highly recommend First Light Travel for either organised or individual tours of New Zealand!

We had the most amazing time, all really well organised and planned by Micala . I contacted First Light Travel back in October 2023 , one phone call and several emails to ensure we were happy with the planned itinerary for 21 days spent in NZ. From day 1 we were picked up at the airport and taken to our first stop in Christchurch .
We had a very full and busy itinerary but looking back it was the best way to cram in as much as possible into 21 days - 2 weeks in the South and 1 week in the North including meeting up with my 2 sons for 3 days . They also used FLT to book places and activities. I can't find one thing that wasn't great, we knew exactly where we had to be and when each day , we stayed at motels for 2 nights, one place 3 nights. There were 4 of us and the only one i didn't like was a bed settee in Dunedin but as it was only 2 nights it was manageable. There was one where we couldn't cook in at all and the town was very busy so struggled to find a place to eat , second night we were more prepared to go earlier out to eat. Apparently this is quite common in Te anau.
We would definitely recommend First Light Travel and enjoyed our holiday so much that we are already thinking about going back in 2025 to see other places.

My husband and I planned to take a one month driving holiday in New Zealand as we had done in 2019 in Australia and luckily my earliest internet search found First Light Travel’s site. I had done all the investigation, planning and booking on the internet myself for our Australia vacation. It was incredibly time consuming and resulted in a trip which was not nearly as educational, nor exciting as the New Zealand trip First Light Travel created for us.

We spent some time on the phone with Anna Caudle to find out what was available and to give her an idea of what we were looking for. Within a few days she provided us with a fully outlined and costed trip plan. The plan was significantly more detailed and vastly superior to the one I had developed for Australia.

Over the next short while we spoke with Anna on the phone a couple more times which enabled her to really personalize it to our dream trip and we decided Version 3 was the one.

When we arrived in Auckland she had a driver waiting at the airport to pick us up and from that point on every day was enjoyable and we never had to feel uneasy about where we should be or how to get there. With the number of activities planned it was inevitable that a couple ended up being cancelled and whenever there was an issue First Light answered the phone and resolved it quickly. At the end of the trip they refunded the cost of the couple of cancelled activities.

One of the earliest activities was a visit to the Kauri museum and neither of us had any knowledge about Kauri but we spent a fascinating few hours learning about this amazing period of New Zealand history. The rest of the trip provided many more educational opportunities and we enjoyed every moment of every day. Anna’s experience curating the trip showed over and over again. An example was when we did a half day bike ride from Arrowtown to the Gibbston Wine Valley along the river valley and over the historic Kawarau Bungy Bridge (the place where bungy jumping was invented). The path we rode about 20 Km on had many hills and would not have been enjoyable but for Anna arranging for our bikes to be electrically assisted. A very nice surprise!

In summary, unlike our Australia trip we did not have to spend countless hours doing research and booking accommodations and activities and transportation. First Light’s trip was far more interesting and enjoyable than what we would have booked. We had the comfort of having First Light available to assist us if we experienced any issues. I am convinced that we would not have saved money if we had booked it ourselves on the internet. I believe that First Light’s professional relationships in the travel industry provide them with lower prices than a consumer can obtain on their own. As well, we found that the service providers gave us “frequent flyer” style service. When we checked in we always stated that we were there as First Light had booked it and they always appeared to treat us in a way that would be positively conveyed by us to First Light. We rate our First Light trip to be 11 on a scale of 1 to 10!

We were very pleased with the itinerary planned for us by First Light Travel. Although we had several excursions cancelled due to weather, the information packet given to us on arrival provided alternative activities which were quite enjoyable. Some of the accommodations were a little dated but all were clean and comfortable with friendly and helpful staff.

First Light did a wonderful job with all activities, accommodations and scheduling. They made a big job a very simple thing. Easiest and best trip ever.