Pack your chilly bin, throw in your beach towels and chuck on your jandals, because this country is at its best from the driver’s seat. A North Island road trip can hand you surf beaches, thermal sand and wine country within a couple of hours of Auckland. Point the van south instead and a single day’s driving takes you from a turquoise glacial lake to rainforest that runs down to the sea. Start the morning at the beach and finish it at the foot of a dormant volcano.
Find the vessel for the trip on Camplify, where owners list everything from trucks with rooftop tents to motorhomes built for a fortnight away. You don’t have to begin in a major city either, because vans are listed in small coastal towns as readily as in the main centres. Two of the five routes below stay on the North Island and three run through the South.
1. Kumeū to Whangārei
Wine country, then a coastline of beach towns, and none of it more than a couple of hours from the city. Kumeū sits about 30 minutes north-west of central Auckland among vineyards and long-lunch restaurants, a gentler place to collect the keys than an airport carpark. Head north on State Highway 1 and turn off at Warkworth for Matakana, where the village farmers’ market runs every Saturday from 8am to 1pm, year-round. Carry on to Omaha for a swim, then Leigh, where Goat Island sits a few hundred metres offshore inside the Cape Rodney-Okakari Point Marine Reserve. Protected since 1975 as New Zealand’s first marine reserve, the water there is shallow and sheltered and thick with snapper, so pack a mask. Cut back to the highway for Mangawhai Heads and Waipū Cove on Bream Bay, then finish at Whangārei and the short loop track around Whangārei Falls. Straight up State Highway 1 the drive is only about 165km and a little over two hours. That makes it the easiest North Island road trip to organise at short notice, though the coastal version deserves two or three days of your time.
Browse the campers listed for hire around Kumeū and Auckland’s north-west, or see what is waiting further up the road with campervan hire in Northland.
2. Mount Maunganui to Whitianga
Nothing says a North Island road trip quite like the Coromandel. Before the peninsula, give Mount Maunganui a day or two, because the ocean beach runs for kilometres and Pilot Bay on the harbour side stays flat when the surf is up. Consider booking a camper that can take a couple of surfboards, and shift east to Papamoa when the Mount fills up. From Tauranga, State Highway 2 climbs to Waihi and the rim of the old Martha Mine, then State Highway 25 runs up the east coast through Whangamatā, Opoutere, Tairua and Pauanui. Hot Water Beach is a short detour, where a spade and the two hours either side of low tide will get you a thermal pool in the sand. The water can surface at 64 degrees, so dig a channel and let the sea cool it for you. Hahei comes next, and the track to Mautohe Cathedral Cove is open again after its restoration. The cliffs there are unstable and the Department of Conservation closes the track at short notice in heavy weather, so check the status on the morning you go.
Tauranga to Whitianga is about 166km and two and a half hours without stops, which is an optimistic figure on this road in January. Loop home through Matamata and the Hobbiton Movie Set Tours, or cut across to Coromandel Town on the 309 Road. Much of that one is unsealed, and some hire agreements ask you to keep the van on sealed roads. The wider range of campers, caravans and motorhomes listed nearby sits on Camplify’s Tauranga hire page.
3. Christchurch to Queenstown
This one is a classic, and it works in either direction. From Christchurch, State Highway 1 runs south to Rakaia before State Highway 79 turns inland through Geraldine to Fairlie, where the bakehouse pies are a reasonable excuse to stop. Over Burkes Pass the country opens into tussock and the improbable turquoise of Lake Tekapo, then Lake Pukaki, where State Highway 80 branches off for 55km to Aoraki Mount Cook Village. Give that side trip a night if you can, because the Hooker Valley Track is 10km return over three swing bridges and ends at a glacial lake beneath the mountain. Back on State Highway 8 you pass High Country Salmon on the canal at Twizel, and Cromwell’s roadside stalls sell cherries and real fruit ice cream through summer. The full run is around 480km and roughly six hours of driving, most of it inside the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve, which is reason enough to stay up late outside the van. Christchurch has one of the widest ranges of campers listed on Camplify, from premium motorhomes to character vans.
A run into Fiordland is worth the extra days on your booking. Queenstown to Te Anau is about 170km and a shade over two hours. Te Anau to Piopiotahi Milford Sound is another 120km with no fuel along the way, so fill up before you leave town. Patea Doubtful Sound departs from Manapouri instead, and the road through the Eglinton Valley is the argument for driving rather than flying. Check with the van’s owner via Camplify first if you are heading anywhere more remote.
4. Dunedin to Invercargill
Start at the bottom of the country and work your way further south. On a map this reads as a city-to-city run, but the road through the Catlins is the point. Dunedin is a surf town underneath the Victorian stonework, so hire a campervan or caravan in Dunedin with room for a board and begin with a morning at St Clair. From Balclutha the Southern Scenic Route swings out to Kaka Point and Nugget Point Tokata, where an 1869 lighthouse stands 76 metres above a line of sea stacks, ten minutes’ walk from the carpark. Purakaunui Falls drops 20 metres over three tiers, a 20-minute return walk through podocarp forest. Cathedral Caves opens from late October to May, for roughly two hours either side of low tide and a small fee you pay on the day. Curio Bay’s petrified forest is about 180 million years old, and Hector’s dolphins work the surf at Porpoise Bay next door. Oreti Beach at Invercargill closes the drive. It is around 250km and three and a half hours of driving, and it repays two or three days.
See the campervans and caravans listed around Dunedin before you set a date.
5. Wānaka to the West Coast
The wild West Coast, where dense forest crowds the less travelled road. Wānaka earns a couple of days first, and Roys Peak is the walk most people come for. Give it 16km return and five to six hours to reach the 1,578m summit, carry your own water, and note that the track closes for lambing from 1 October to 10 November. The Camp on the Lake Hāwea foreshore makes an easy first night, with powered and unpowered sites under old trees. From there State Highway 6 climbs the Haast Pass, about 145km and two and a half hours to Haast with roadside stops at Fantail Falls and Thunder Creek Falls on the way. Jackson Bay is 50km down a dead-end road, with crayfish and a wharf at the end of the country. Ship Creek, 20km north of Haast, has two short boardwalk loops through one of the last kahikatea swamp forests. Lake Paringa campsite sits beside the highway 40km north of Haast and takes campervans and caravans on unpowered sites.
In Glacier Country the Franz Josef valley walk still runs up to the viewpoint. The road into the Fox valley closed after landslides in 2019, so your walk on that side is now the Fox Glacier South Side Walkway, roughly 40 minutes to the first view of the ice. Further north, Hokitika Gorge is 33km inland, with a loop track and a swing bridge over that milky blue water. The glowworm dell at the edge of town costs you nothing after dark. Punakaiki’s Pancake Rocks are at their best around high tide with a south-westerly swell driving into the blowholes. Wānaka to Punakaiki runs a little over 500km one way, so allow at least five nights, and seven if you are driving back.
Browse the campers listed for hire in Wānaka on Camplify.
Wherever you point the van, ask the owner which self-containment certificate it holds before you plan a night outside a campground. The green warrant has been the only valid one since 7 June 2026. Freedom camping in a vehicle that isn’t certified starts at a $400 infringement, and a hire agreement can pass that straight back to you. Sort that out first, and the rest of a North Island road trip, or a South Island one, is just deciding which beach to wake up on.
This article was created in paid partnership with:
