The lake is the easy part. Then comes Milford Sound.
Queenstown fits a canyon jet, a gondola and four cellar doors into one valley, then sends you 290km down a single road for the day that ends up on the fridge. Reviews of every tour bookable here, with what each costs, how long it runs and how early it leaves.
Ninety minutes on the lake, straight off the Steamer WharfLake Wakatipu Scenic Cruise (90 Minutes)
★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · from $49
Four days out that decide the shape of a Queenstown week.
The lake, the fiord, the canyon and the caves. What each one costs, how long it takes, and what the people who booked it said afterwards.
01The lake dayWalter Peak Gourmet BBQ & Lake Whakatipu CruiseAcross Wakatipu on a launch to a working high-country farm, with the barbecue lunch that made it famous. Sailings run to a timetable and the midday one goes first.
02The Milford dayMilford Sound Cruise and Coach Day TourTwelve hours out of town for two on the water under Mitre Peak. Long, and the reason most people come this far south.
03The canyon dayShotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in QueenstownThe Shotover at 85kph with the rock a metre either side. Twenty-five minutes, and nothing else in the valley comes close.
04The underground dayGlowworm Caves Guided TourTe Anau glowworm caves by boat, through a limestone river passage into the dark. Small groups, and the evening departures fill first.
Three lakes, two sounds, and a different boat for each.
Wakatipu is a ten-minute walk from your hotel and the sounds are a full day each. What a deck costs on the lake, at Milford and out at Doubtful, and which of them is worth the early alarm.
Queenstown first, then the drives that earn a whole day.
A lake town you can walk across in twenty minutes, a fiord four hours south, an alpine pass over to Wanaka and the gold valleys in between. Six places to book from, and the best day out in each.
Milford Sound is a day trip from Queenstown. Plan it like one.
Two hundred and ninety kilometres each way, with the Homer Tunnel and a dozen stops worth making in between. Coach and cruise is the standard shape; flying one leg buys back most of a day.
Twenty-five minutes on the Shotover changes the rest of the week.
A canyon jet at eighty-five, a skydive over the Remarkables, a helicopter onto snow, a quad bike up a station track. The valley runs on this, and in summer most of it is gone by mid-morning.
- 1Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in Queenstownfrom $113
- 2Shotover River and Kawarau River Jet Boat Ridefrom $89
- 3NZONE Skydive Queenstownfrom $222
The Queenstown days more people take than any others.
Every tour in the Southern Lakes →The tours at the top of the pile in this valley, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Premium Milford Sound Small Group Tour & Cruise from Queenstown
Travel from Queenstown to Milford Sound in a small guided van, with scenic stops, picnic lunch, and a two-hour fiord cruise.
From · $216
Read our review →
2
Cruise Milford NZ Small Boutique Cruise Experience
from $111
3
Walter Peak Gourmet BBQ & Lake Whakatipu Cruise
from $95
4
Glowworm Caves Guided Tour
from $77
5
2-Hour Small Boat Scenic Cruise
from $101
6
Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in Queenstown
from $113
7
Small Group, Award Winning Milford Sound Day Experience & Cruise
from $235
8
Milford Sound Fly-Cruise-Fly Tour from Queenstown
from $462
What a day out of Queenstown actually costs.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. A good number of the best days here come in under the cost of dinner on the waterfront.
Lake cruises, gondola rides, town walks and the short run out to Arrowtown.
The full-day standards: Milford by coach and cruise, the Gibbston cellar doors, the canyon jets.
Fly-cruise-fly to Milford, helicopters onto the snow, private guides and the once-a-trip splurges.
Three things the Southern Lakes do that nowhere else does.
Lake cruises and mountain views exist everywhere. A drowned glacial valley with a waterfall on every wall, a limestone cave lit by larvae, and a boat that turns a full circle inside a rock canyon do not.
Milford Sound
Rain is the point. Milford takes close to seven metres of it a year, and within an hour of a downpour the cliffs carry hundreds of temporary waterfalls that are gone again by morning. Mitre Peak rises 1,692 metres straight out of the water, which is why every boat in every photograph of the place looks like a toy.
- 1Premium Milford Sound Small Group Tour & Cruise from Queenstown★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 3,001 reviews
- 2Cruise Milford NZ Small Boutique Cruise Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,930 reviews
- 32-Hour Small Boat Scenic Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,561 reviews
The Glowworm Caves
The caves under the western shore of Lake Te Anau are young by geological standards and still being cut, so a river runs through them and you go in by boat. In the last chamber the lights go out and the ceiling turns into something close to a night sky. The larva doing it is Arachnocampa luminosa, and it lives nowhere but New Zealand.
- 1Glowworm Caves Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,611 reviews
- 2Te Anau Glow Worm Caves Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 960 reviews
- 3Premium Milford Sound Tour, Cruise & Lunch from Te Anau★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 755 reviews
The Canyon Jet
The Shotover boats draw about ten centimetres of water, which is the whole trick: the drivers take them into rock canyons at a distance from the walls best measured in centimetres, then spin the boat through 360 degrees. The miners who dug this river out from 1862 would recognise nothing about it except the colour of the water.
- 1Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Ride in Queenstown★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,540 reviews
- 2Shotover River and Kawarau River Jet Boat Ride★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,682 reviews
- 3Shotover River Extreme Jet Boat Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,203 reviews
The pinot noir grows twenty minutes from the Queenstown gondola.
Central Otago is the southernmost wine region on earth and it does one grape better than almost anywhere. Most tastings take in four cellar doors and a long lunch, and every one of them is a short drive back over the Kawarau bridge.
Every wine tour from Queenstown →
Four Southern Lakes bookings that will not wait.
Most of Queenstown can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on boat timetables, weather windows and small-group caps that take no interest in when your flight lands.
- 01Premium Milford Sound Small Group Tour & Cruise from QueenstownCoaches and cruises leave on a fixed timetable and the road in narrows to one lane through the Homer Tunnel. Summer sailings fill weeks ahead.
- 02Glowworm Caves Guided TourBoat capacity into the cave is small and departures run to the hour, all year. The evening slots go first.
- 03Walter Peak Gourmet BBQ & Lake Whakatipu CruiseOne steamer, a set number of crossings a day, and lunch sittings that are capped. Turning up at the wharf and hoping does not work.
- 04NZONE Skydive QueenstownCloud over the Remarkables cancels jumps at short notice and operators rebook rather than refund. Leave a spare day at the end of the trip.
Queenstown weather closes the flights long before it closes the day.
Low cloud grounds the scenic flights and takes the tops off the Remarkables, and heavy rain can shut the Milford road for slips. The answer is the same every time. Go underground, go indoors, or go down the valley to Gibbston, where the weather has never stopped a tasting.
By place, from the lakefront outwards
By kind of day, on the water, in the air or up a track
Queenstown, Arrowtown, Glenorchy, Te Anau, Milford: the loop almost everyone drives first.
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