Britz Southern Explore road trip - Britz

Four nights and 717 kilometres in a loop from Queenstown in a campervan, taking in Central Otago, Mount Aspiring and Milford Sound.

Arrowtown comes first, a preserved gold town on the Arrow River with the remains of its Chinese miners’ settlement along the bank, where two dozen restored huts and stone shelters stand in the willows. Cromwell follows in the orchard country above Lake Dunstan.

Wanaka comes next, then Mount Aspiring National Park up the Matukituki valley, where the Rob Roy track climbs through beech forest to a hanging glacier at the head of a side valley. Gore carries the route south through farmland, then Te Anau on the edge of Fiordland, and Milford Sound at the end of the road through the Homer Tunnel, a single-bore tunnel cut through the Darran Mountains that drops steeply into the Cleddau valley, with cliffs rising more than a kilometre out of the water at the sound itself.

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 717 kilometres is a fair pace, with Milford the long day in it: four hours each way from Te Anau and the cruises need booking. The Matukituki road is unsealed with fords on it, which is worth checking against the hire terms. The loop format avoids a one-way relocation fee. For a first trip in the lower South Island this covers the gold country, an alpine valley and a fiord inside five days without a long transit on any of them.