New Zealand Self Drive Tour Reviews

We highly recommend First Light Travel to anyone wanting to explore New Zealand. Michelle Srzich took the time to learn about us, and what we wanted to do and see in New Zealand, and the resulting holiday was perfect! Michelle suggested things that we had not heard of, such as the overnight cruise on Milford Sound - one of the highlights of our holiday!

The organisation and communication was swift and stress free. Our dietary needs were easily met wherever we stayed, and our rental car was a perfect size and age.

Thank you Michelle, and First Light Travel, and we can't wait to visit your beautiful country again.

Glorious 3 week South and North island NZ tour by car.

We highly recommend First Light Travel to organise any NZ adventure. We are from the Uk, and visited Aus, NZ and Fiji over a 6 week period during October & November.
We organised our accommodation and activities in Aus and Fiji, but wanted expert local knowledge for our 3 week visit to NZ without paying double commission to UK and NZ agents!
Michelle Srzich was outstanding in listening to our wish list, and then providing suggested accommodation and activities for our trip! We had a couple of back and forths and ended up with a bespoke trip that we had compiled from stories we had from friends who had visited NZ.
A key requirement was to spend a minimum of 2 nights in each location, so that we had time to explore and experience the places we visited rather than just passing through! The trip worked out exactly as planned apart from our boat trip from Kaikoura to see whales. A helicopter is sent out each morning to see if the whales were playing ball! Unfortunately they were not on the day we had planned! We were offered the chance to rebook or receive a refund! We chose the latter, and FLT were able to refund this! The highlights of our trip were:
Queenstown, TSS Ernslaw boat trip across the lake
Mt Cook, glacier walk and visit to “The Old Mountaneers” restaurant in Mt Cook Village.
Return Train trip from Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass
Kaikoura dolphin boat trip
Bleinham vineyard cycle tour
Edwin Fox historic boat museum visit in Picton
Ferry crossing from Picton to Wellington
Lake Taupo and Hukka falls visit
Rotorua - Waiotapu thermal Park

Excellent self-drive trip put together by Naeelah at First Light

My wife and I finally had time to put together a New Zealand trip, after a few aborted attempts. None of the guided tours had everything we wanted, so we put together a self-drive with the aid of Naeelah, our tour coordinator. Went back and forth quite a few times on the where's and when's, but it ended up being a glorious trip, if a bit exhausting. (We underestimated our driving endurance.) Would recommend First Light to other travelers; especially those younger than ourselves (68).

Wonderful trip to New Zealand

We’re just back (Dec 2023) from a trip that included a three week self-drive, mostly through New Zealand’s South Island, organized by First Light Travel. For many years, while travelling the world, we’ve wanted to explore New Zealand. And we couldn’t be more pleased with the results from First Light, especially Danielle, our travel advisor there. In fact, they exceeded our expectations! It was a perfect trip for we 70-year-olds to celebrate our 45th anniversary.

Danielle began our interaction by asking what we enjoy, activity-wise, and what type of accommodations we prefer. So, right out-of-the-gate, this was clearly going in the direction we wanted: a trip customized to our wishes, and not a cookie-cutter itinerary or a check-list of activities.

Danielle is a great listener, very patient, is easy to get ahold of, and a joy to work with. A draft plan was created from that first conference call (which was the response to our emailed contact point). We reviewed it, changed some of our wishes, partly from the great alternatives tabled for us to consider and the opportunity to do more specific research. We started our planning over a year in advance, so this allowed this itinerary to evolve over time and the subsequent calls we had.

The final itinerary was very detailed, including contact phone numbers and vouchers for each activity and hotel. Since many of the activities that we chose were weather-dependent, such as boat trips, a hot air balloon ride, and a helicopter trip, we needed to call and confirm beforehand. One of those numbers went to a recorded message indicating it was out of service. So I simply called First Light Travel’s emergency line and they took care of it for me in a matter of a few minutes.

We thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of our trip. The drive, the scenery and activities were wonderful. Yes, weather affected two of our excursions, but First Light tracked these and issued a refund for the missed ones within a week of the completion of our trip. And it was fun to run into another Canadian couple, at the Clay Cliffs, whose trip had also been arranged by Danielle.

The holiday of a lifetime! Everything was fantastically well organised, the details on the itinerary were clear and helpful and the activities booked were all amazing! New Zealand must be one of the most beautiful places in the world, and its people were welcoming and gracious, we loved every single minute!

We are so happy we booked our honeymoon with First Light Travel. They took all of the stress and guessing out of planning a two-week trip on the other side of the world, providing excellent activity suggestions and a very thorough itinerary. For anybody travelling to New Zealand for the first time, you will be in very good hands. Thank you for the trip of a lifetime!

The trip was amazing and we still can't believe how much we managed to fit in a short space of time! I of course will recommend your services to anyone who I know is intending to travel as it created a super stress free holiday!

We highly recommend First Light Travel to organise any NZ adventure. We are from the Uk, and visited Aus, NZ and Fiji over a 6 week period during October & November.
We organised our accommodation and activities in Aus and Fiji, but wanted expert local knowledge for our 3 week visit to NZ without paying double commission to UK and NZ agents!
Michelle Srzich was outstanding in listening to our wish list, and then providing suggested accommodation and activities for our trip! We had a couple of back and forths and ended up with a bespoke trip that we had compiled from stories we had from friends who had visited NZ.
A key requirement was to spend a minimum of 2 nights in each location, so that we had time to explore and experience the places we visited rather than just passing through! The trip worked out exactly as planned apart from our boat trip from Kaikoura to see whales. A helicopter is sent out each morning to see if the whales were playing ball! Unfortunately they were not on the day we had planned! We were offered the chance to rebook or receive a refund! We chose the latter, and FLT were able to refund this! The highlights of our trip were:

• Queenstown, TSS Ernslaw boat trip across the lake
• Mt Cook, glacier walk and visit to “The Old Mountaneers” restaurant in Mt Cook Village.
• Return Train trip from Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass
• Kaikoura dolphin boat trip
• Bleinham vineyard cycle tour
• Edwin Fox historic boat museum visit in Picton
• Ferry crossing from Picton to Wellington
• Lake Taupo and Hukka falls visit
• Rotorua - Waiotapu thermal Park

When we started to look for a company to plan our travel to NZ, we were concerned that we would inadvertently find a fly by night company and commit hard earned dollars that would disappear. First Light had great reviews but we also knew that you can pay for people to write false reviews online. It also seemed like all 5-star reviews were a bit suspect. We took a chance and reached out and talked with Anna.

Anna was quick to respond and listened to what we were looking for and sent us a few agendas for us to review. We worked together over time to make it just right. Once we got to town, we had a few self-created glitches and Anna was quick to reply and help out.

We had a great time and First Light Travel was completely legit. We would recommend highly.

Louise planned 4 week vacation in Australia and a 4 week vacation in New Zealand for me. Communication was superb, choice of activities excellent and catered to my interests. Very highly recommended!!