A first-person YouTube travel vlog by Nate Buchanan describing how to RV around New Zealand's South Island over six days. The host draws the route and narrates a day-by-day itinerary (Christchurch → Lake Pukaki → Mount Cook → Queenstown → Milford Sound → Lake Wanaka → Fox/Franz Josef), with practical tips about Freedom campgrounds, vehicle requirements, waste-water management, refill/Wi‑Fi needs, and recommended activities (Nevis bungee, hang gliding, Milford Sound cruise).
Questions this video answers
Six days.
Around 11:00 AM.
134 meters.
Southern Discovery, two hours.
About six and a half hours.
For those of you who are regular viewers of the vlog, today is going to be a little bit different. Normally we don't do how to videos, but I think that RVing around New Zealand is on enough people's bucket list that we wanted to take the time to share some tips and tricks that we learned from our six amazing days rving around the south island of New Zealand. I'm going to start by drawing out our entire route on this map and then I'll come back and go into detail about what we did and where we stayed each day of the trip.
Each of these stars represent where we stayed the night on our trip. On the first day of our trip, we started here in Christchurch. We picked our RV up around 11am and we took the drive south down. We made a quick stop at Lake Tapako, you have to forgive the pronunciation of these, and then we finished the day down and we stayed on Lake Pukaki. There is an awesome Freedom campground here, which basically means a free place to stay. The Freedom campground that we stayed at had absolutely amazing sunset views over the lake as well as amazing views of Mount Cook. In order to stay at a Freedom campground in New Zealand, you, you need what's called a self contained vehicle. Basically, it means a vehicle with a bathroom. There are a few Freedom campgrounds that will let you stay at it if your camper doesn't have a bathroom. But it's so much easier to find Freedom campgrounds if you have a self contained vehicle. The next morning we woke up with amazing views of the lake and we drove 45 minutes up to Mount Cook. Right here at the base of Mount Cook, there is a glacial lake, which is the only glacial lake in all of New Zealand. It's a short 30 minute hike and we would highly recommend it. After the short hike to the glacial lake, we drove back down the same road we came up and then we made the drive south to Queenstown. That night we stayed about 20 minutes north of Queenstown at a Freedom campground called Lake Hayes. This is another Freedom campground that we would highly recommend. Again, more amazing sunset views. The stars that night were absolutely beautiful. They also have a bathroom here, which is good because you want to avoid using the bathroom in your camper as much as possible. The next morning we drove into Queenstown and this is where we did the bungee jumping and hang gliding. All three of these things were huge adrenaline rushes and if you're into that kind of stuff, we highly recommend it. The Nevis bungee jump is the tallest bungee jump in all of New Zealand at 134 meters. The next night we stayed at a holiday park in downtown Queenstown. I'll write the name of the holiday park in the description below. It was a five minute walk from the city. There were three reasons we chose to stay in a holiday park. We needed to dump the gray and black water tanks, which is basically the gray water is the water that you use for dishes and the black water is your sewage. And we also needed to refill with fresh water because we'd use the majority of it flushing the toilet and washing dishes. And we also needed some WI fi to connect back with the rest of the world. The next day was by far the most driving we did of the entire trip. We drove from Queenstown through Te Anu all the way to Milford Sound. This is the only way to get to Milford Sound and it took six and a half hours. You could do it in five. But you'll definitely want to stop and see some sights along the way. Once you get to Milford Sound. The only way to truly enjoy Milford Sound is is by going on a cruise. We booked a two hour cruise with Southern Discovery which we really enjoyed. So if you find yourself in Milford Sound and you're looking for a cruise company, definitely look into Southern Discovery. After finishing the cruise at 5pm we drove seven hours to Lake Wanaka. We stayed at another Freedom Campground on the north side of Lake Wanaka. We didn't get there until 12pm but when we woke up the next morning we had absolutely beautiful views of the lake. The next morning we woke up early and we drove two to two and a half hours to the Fox Glacier and the Franz Josef Glacier. You can't get close to either one of these glaciers unless you book a helicopter hike or a guided hike.
That's a helicopter with too many blades. We hiked as far as you could without booking a guided hike and we were able to get about.
400 to 700 meters away from the glaciers. This gave you a view of the glaciers, but you really couldn't truly appreciate it. So if you're going to make this drive, I definitely recommend booking a heli hike. If you have the money for that or if you want to go a little cheaper option, you could go with a guided hike into the glacier. Next we drove two hours to the town of Hakita. I have no clue if I'm saying that right, but we stayed at a holiday park there that was right on the beach. It was our last night of the trip and you're required to have your Gray and your black water dumped and bring the camper back from full. So for those two reasons we booked at another holiday park and paid to stay an additional night. For four people it was $80. For some reason the holiday parks here in New Zealand charge per person, which is kind of annoying if you're traveling with a group. The last morning of our trip we woke up. We took a short walk on the beach to get some coffee and some breakfast and then we made the four to five hour drive back through Arthur's Pass all the way back to Christchurch and made it back just in time to turn in our camper van at 4pm I don't know why I put it out there. So this is an overview of how we spent our six days RVing around the south island of New Zealand. During our trip we stayed in two holiday parks and three freedom campgrounds. This entire route was approximately 2,000 kilometers. We spent about $250 in gas. Scratch that, we spent about $250 in diesel and at the time of taking our trip Diesel cost around A$10 per liter. We rented our camper from Britt's camper van and for four people for six days the total came out to about a thousand dollars USD. We also cooked the majority of the time for ourselves inside of the camper van because we had a gas stove. We cooked a lot of pasta and tacos and the total cost for food for the week cost about 300 USD. I think that about wraps it up. I'm sure there's something I left out. So if you have any questions about camper vanning around the south island of New Zealand, definitely leave those in the comments below and I'll do my best to get back to every comment. Also, our friends Jordan and Julianne flew out of New Zealand this morning, which is really sad. But next week Kara and I are downgrading to a smaller camper and we're going to be doing the same thing around the north island of New Zealand. So make sure you stay tuned for that.
