Tailor-Made Trips to New Zealand

Monika and KIMKIM:
Thank you for helping to make our trip to Aotearoa an amazing experience. Your arrangements were flawless and made our busy schedule flow easily. I enjoyed the Great Barrier Island backpack trip, the Aotea Trek, arranged by Mike. The scenic drives around the country were a pleasure, especially Rotorua to New Plymouth and Oamaru to Queenstown. The Transalpine Rail trip and hike were a highlight. The backpack trip up the Caples and Greenstone Rivers was fantastic. And I really enjoyed the Doubtful Sound Cruise, kayaking and diving into the Doubtful Sound from our ship, the Navigator. I also enjoyed the time we spent on Kapiti Island, birdwatching, hiking and learning more about the Maori culture and New Zealand's conservation efforts. I would love to come back and slow the pace a bit.

We have just returned from an extended tour of New Zealand, which we planned with the help of KimKim's New Zealand specialists, Monika and Michelle. Our trip involved two couples traveling together over thirty days, and travel to Great Barrier Island, North and South Islands, Kapiti Island and Doubtful Sound via internal airline flights, ferry, train, bus, shuttles and rental cars. Along the way we stayed in thirteen different cities and towns. Our vacation also included two multi-day backpacking (tramping) trips that we arranged ourselves and incorporated into the KimKim itinerary. In short, our vacation had many moving parts.

Happily, there was not a single hitch/glitch at any point. Every hotel was expecting us, every shuttle driver was on time. Our accommodations were clean and comfortable and located conveniently to venues, restaurants, etc. Monika's and Michelle's recommendations were all very helpful and tracked with the kind of experiences were all were looking for.

We have used KimKim services before, have recommended KimKim to our friends, and will certainly use KimKim again where we choose to do our own planning (as opposed to tour groups).

We worked with Michelle to plan our trip to New Zealand; the trip was beyond our expectations --it was simply fabulous! We have planned most of trips in the past, but opted to use kimkim for this trip as we had no knowledge of what to visit in New Zealand. We are so happy we made this decision as we would have never been able to plan a trip with the kinds of experiences that Michelle booked for us. We thoroughly enjoyed the variety of experiences Michelle booked for us, from visiting Doubtful Sound, to the 4 x 4 trip on a Station, to the kayak trip at the blue penguin sanctuary, to the Geo-thermal park and the experience at the Dark Sky Reserve. As fabulous as those experiences were, our absolute favorite experience was our stay at the Te Karaka Lodge. Whoa! Whoa x 10. We received such lovely pampered attention while enjoying exquisite accommodations and personalized attention from the two incredible chefs. I'm glad that you suggested that we added one more day to our trip to accommodate that extra night. The tour of the farm the next day by James, the farming manager, was informative and allowed us to better understand the life of farming professionals. That stay was THE perfect way to end our trip in your warm and beautiful country. Also, you allowed us enough free time for us to make a couple of our own side trips on our travel days; we made note of the suggested towns along the way and stopped at several during our car rides; they were charming. T
Finally, we don't have enough words to express how much the NZ culture and way of living made an impression on us. We were fortunate to be in your harmonious country during the Middle East crisis; the cultures of our two nations are remarkably different and New Zealand was our tonic to sooth our weary brains and hearts.... Thanks again, Michelle, for helping have such a memorable experience.