Lucy Sumner
North Island ▷ Auckland Region ▷ Auckland ▷
5.0/5
Myself and my friend (both female, 22 & 23 years old) have just finished our Kiwi Experience tour on the Sheepdog pass travelling from Auckland to Christchurch and would highly recommend it to anyone exploring
ways of seeing the incredible country of New Zealand. We are really glad that we chose to do this as it meant we had no restrictions in terms of our time frame and the cost of the add-ons such as the Milford Explorer did not increase once on the bus. The recommended minimum time for the Sheepdog pass is 17 days and we had 28 days to complete it which meant that we could hop off the bus at several stops along the way.
In total, we had four drivers - Josh, Kea, Kyle and Mangee, all of whom were extremely informative and helpful in advising us on how to manage our time best and book onto different buses and ferries.
We had been considering hiring a campervan to travel the country when initially planning our trip as we thought this would allow us the most freedom. In hindsight, we are really glad we decided to book through Kiwi Experience as, not only would we have been ridiculously cold in the winter season, it actually meant we got to see a lot more of the country than we would have doing it ourselves as all of the drivers are natives of New Zealand and their knowledge of the country is unparalleled. This meant there were a lot of stops en-route for various photo opportunities, walks and visits to local communities that we would never have known about otherwise.
The Kiwi Experience was also a really great way of meeting other travellers and like-minded people who were all enjoying the experience with you and we continually bumped into people along the way who we had met previously.
Overall we are both really glad we chose to book through Kiwi Experience and could not imagine having travelled New Zealand any other way!