Waitomo-Rotorua Loop - Britz

Four nights and 576 kilometres in a loop from Auckland in a campervan, down through the Waikato to the caves and the geothermal country.

Hamilton comes first, then Raglan on the west coast, where Manu Bay sits on a long left-hand point that can run for several hundred metres and the town has organised itself around that fact since the 1960s, with Bridal Veil Falls inland dropping fifty-five metres off a basalt lip.

Waitomo follows, where the glow worms on the roof of the main grotto read as a night sky and the limestone country above is riddled with caves, several of them run for abseiling and black water rafting. Rotorua comes next in the geothermal belt, with mud pools, the Pohutu geyser at Te Puia and the redwood forest trails, then Hobbiton at Matamata, the film set preserved on a working sheep farm, before the run back to Auckland.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Five days for 576 kilometres is comfortable and all of it is sealed. Waitomo and Hobbiton both run guided tours only and sell out in summer, so the dates want fixing before the trip rather than during it. Rotorua is the stop worth two nights if the schedule allows, since the geothermal parks, the forest and the pools each take half a day. This is also about the easiest introduction to the North Island there is, with nothing on the route more than two hours from the last stop.