I was in New Zealand for a month 2 years ago. Greatest month of my life. While I was there I stayed in Christ Church for almost a week, Dunedin, Queenstown for a week, Franz Josef, Wellington, Taupo and Auckland. Every city I went to was extremely nice.
The first 3/4 of my trip I was on the south island and did a bit of snowboarding (such a surreal feeling to snowboard in July.) The landscapes on the south island are beautiful everywhere. The west coast would be a great drive, although I did the most of my travelling by bus.
The roads through the mountains are very twisty and narrow with no shoulders or guard-rails. Bridges are usually one lane wide and there are signs to indicate which direction has priority. If your direction has the big arrow, you have priority, if not then you have to wait till it's clear.
I loved Queenstown, basically NZ's version of Banff or Whistler. If you go there, Fergburger is a great place to have a burger. Dunedin has the country's largest University so it has that "University town", and it was planned to model Edinburgh, Scotland i believe. The Speights brewery has a great tour there, and so does Cadbury's.
Wellington is an amazing city. It is very clean and fairly easy to navigate. Situated between the harbour and hills, it is very compact with everything you need within a 20-30 minute walk. The City is divided into 4 quadrants, each with its own sort of theme, kinda like our "Entertainment District" or "St. Lawrence" district. There waterfront is excellent. You can rent bikes or roller blades and go all around the harbour on the paths and see the city from different vantage points. there are many hiking trails throughout the City and the surrounding hills. there are paths and stairs throughout all of the residential neighbourhoods connecting them with each other and the core. you could walk for days and keep finding new trails hidden all over with little parkettes littered everywhere.
I was only in Auckland for less than 24 hours, enough time though to party really hard on my last night in the country and walk around the City the following day with a really severe headache. As was mentioned, it is a very cosmopolitan city, but not as nice as Wellington, IMO. The Sky Tower would be a cool place to check out, but being from Toronto and been to the CN Tower, it's nothing much.
Overall, the whole country is awesome. I wish I had seen more of the north island like Napier and Rotorura and north of Auckland, but if the people I went with didn't go back to Toronto less than half way through our trip, I wouldn't have been able to go to the north island at all. For the last 2/3 of my trip when i was by myself I stayed in hostels and found them to be really clean and comfortable, 100 x cleaner than in London. Pretty much all of them have kitchen facilities with all the dishes and equipment you need so you don't have to keep eating out or sticking to very basic meals like toast and soups, etc. I am awaiting the opportunity to go back within the next few years and do it all again, I miss drinking Speight's, great beer.
