Southern Scenic Route Classic - Britz

Eight nights and 1,197 kilometres in a loop from Queenstown in a campervan, following the Southern Scenic Route round the bottom of the South Island.

Te Anau and Milford Sound come first through the Homer Tunnel, then Tuatapere, which calls itself the sausage capital of New Zealand and is the trailhead for the Hump Ridge track, and Riverton on the Foveaux Strait coast.

Invercargill follows, with Bluff at the southern tip, where the signpost at Stirling Point gives the distance to the South Pole and the oyster boats work out of the harbour. The Catlins take up the rest: Curio Bay, where a petrified forest lies on the tide line, fossilised stumps and logs from a Jurassic forest exposed at low water, the Purakaunui Falls dropping in three tiers through beech forest, and the Nugget Point lighthouse on its headland above the rock stacks. Dunedin and Tunnel Beach come next, the latter a sandstone arch reached through a hand-cut tunnel, before the run inland to Queenstown.

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. Nine days for 1,197 kilometres is a comfortable pace and the Catlins are where the extra time should go. Yellow-eyed penguins come ashore at Curio Bay and Nugget Point in the evening, and the viewing is managed and timed, with no sighting promised. Some of the Catlins side roads are unsealed and slow. The loop format avoids a one-way relocation fee, and this is the quietest coast in the country, which is the whole argument for driving south rather than north.