So where to start?

We approached Discover the World, a specialist tour company that we’d used for other destinations and who organise New Zealand trips.

Lindi, their NZ product manager, helped us through the initial maze of self-drive v tour to select self-drive. While this would entail a lot of driving, our past experiences of tour groups nudged us towards the greater flexibility self-drive offers.

Having given Lindi a list of things we wanted to do (or not do), she got on with devising a tailored itinerary. While this meant evenings for us trawling through options, it ultimately gave us what we wanted and, as we subsequently discovered, a well-organised schedule. The alternative would have been to get out there and take it as it came but that would have been more wasteful of our time there even if it would have been more spontaneous.