Cruise v. Land Tour - New Zealand by land and sea
Earlier this year we spent almost a month travelling around New Zealand, starting with a cruise on Holland America Line’s MS Noordam followed by an escorted road tour with Riviera Travel. In this article we aim to address some of the pros and cons or travelling to and immersing yourself in a destination from both a cruise ship and on a land tour.
Cruising:
We started our cruise in Sydney, Australia stopping at Melbourne and Tasmania before heading across the notorious Tasman Sea to the west coast of New Zealand, starting with a day of scenic fjord sailing before making our way southbound around the coast of both South and North island towards Auckland. Obviously one of the biggest advantages of visiting a country like New Zealand on a cruise ship is having the opportunity to visit a number destinations without having to pack and unpack, stay in multiple hotels and endure endless days of driving, be it on an escorted coach tour or a self-drive road trip.
On a cruise most of the travelling from one place to the next happens you sleep the night away oblivious to the fact that you are even travelling. Even if you do travel during the day you will have a very comfortable floating hotel with a permanent seaview and a variety of relaxation, spa or entertainment options to keep you occupied. You will never have to think about where or when your next meal will be, or indeed how much it will cost you - there will be a number of dining options available to you, most of them included in your fare.
On our two week cruise we stopped at 10 different locations as well as our full day of scenic cruising through some of the more remote and inaccessible fjords of the South Island. At every port there were a number of different shore excursions available to purchase, offering a wide variety of activities from sightseeing coach trips, to hikes, kayaking, museums, boat trips, cycling excursions and more.
However, there are a number of disadvantages of visiting a country like New Zealand on a cruise ship, one most notable one being that it makes visiting inland resorts and hotspots very difficult, if not impossible. For example it would be impossible to make it to the remote but beautiful South Island resort town of Queenstown from the nearest cruise ship port, as well as missing out on popular tourist destinations such as Mount Cooke, the glacier lands and New Zealands’s gorgeous inland lakes.
The only way it might be possible to visit these areas was if your cruise offered an overnight stay at a particular port which allowed enough time to get to these places, possible for a night off of the ship - but this would be very rare indeed. Often time your stay in port is only a full day, usually meaning from early morning until late afternoon, with occasional stays being even shorter allowing only a few hours to explore a town or indeed the ship being docked a long way from the desired town or city, meaning that the transfer time eats into the time ashore. Occasionally a ship will stay in port into the evening, with a scheduled late departure allowing guests to go ashore for dinner or just to experience a town or city after sunset, but even then this doesn’t really give much opportunity to immerse oneself in local culture and get a real feel for a place.
Land tours:
Whether on one of the many popular escorted coach tours around New Zealand or on a self drive road trip, visiting New Zealand by land opens up the opportunity to visit dome must see places that just aren’t accessible on a cruise, such as vibrant Queenstown, majestic Mount Cooke, stunning Lake Tekapo, dramatic Franz Josef glacier and the peaceful Abel Tasman National Park - we wouldn’t have wanted to travel all the way around the world and missed out on seeing any of these.
We were also lucky enough to visit Milford Sound twice, once on the cruise ship and again as part of our land tour, alos being extremely lucky with the weather on both occasions. And whilst we have to admit that getting to Milford Sound on a cruise ship is much easier (especially if, like us, the Tasman Sea is very kind to you) than the long and windy road required to access it by land, cruising up and down the Sound on a small tourist boat rather than a larger cruise ship offered a much more intimate experience of the scenery, getting us much closer to the waterfall and wildlife.
Getting up close and personal in every which way was one of the major advantages of a land tour over a cruise experience. Staying in a town for one or two nights, eating with the locals and shopping in the local stores offers a much more ‘real’ insight into an area than the short amount of time ashore from a cruise ship can ever offer. Being able to stop whenever we wanted to (sometimes in some really remote spots), dine in whatever restaurant took our fancy and fully immerse ourselves in an area for more than a couple of hours gave us the chance to really fall in love with New Zealand and the people that live there.
However, the main disadvantage of travelling by road is the amount of time spent travelling from one area to another. Whilst the driving oftentimes offered us stunning scenery with lots of miles to cover in one day the driving can became a little tedious. Even though we had a very comfortable coach spending up to eight hours a day on it was nowhere near as nice as a lazy sea day on a luxuriously comfortable ship. That’s without the added stress of packing and unpacking on a daily basis and not knowing where you will be laying your head every night. During our 16 night land tour we stayed at 13 different hotels, with only three 2 night stays in the whole time we were travelling. Whilst the hotels were all pre-booked four star hotels, each day you had to suss out the local area, where to eat and what amenities were available.
Conclusion:
Whilst we love cruising and the seamless transit from one destination to another, we knew that when we eventually made it to New Zealand, the country that has been top of our bucket list for most of our adult lives, doing a cruise alone would not allow us to see everything we wanted to see. Whilst the cruise was good value for money and was a more relaxing way to visit some of the places on our must-see list (as well as some we didn’t know should be on our must-see list) we just wouldn’t have felt satisfied with the cruise alone. We can honestly say that the Riviera land tour was the best vacation we have ever taken and in our opinion was the best way to see New Zealand.
Have you been? Do you agree? Let us know.
Thank you to Holland America Line who hosted us on a two week cruise from Sydney to Auckland and to Riviera Travel who hosted us on a 16 night ‘The Land of the Long White Cloud’ New Zealand escorted tour Neither Holland America Line or Riviera Travel had no editorial control over any of our content, either before, during our after our voyage and all views are our own.
If you enjoyed this blog please read our North Island Diary and South Island Diary or take a look at our Holland America Line Vista class Dining Guide.
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