AUCKLAND · NEW ZEALAND
City of Sails, gateway to the gulf.
Waiheke vineyards and harbour cruises, the wild black-sand west coast, and the day trips beyond: Hobbiton, the Waitomo glowworms and the geysers of Rotorua. A whole region from one harbour town.
Only here
Three day trips you can’t take anywhere else.
Harbour cruises and city tours belong to every coastal city. Walking the real Shire, drifting under living glowworms and standing in a field of geysers belong to this corner of the world alone.
Middle-earth
The Shire, for real
An hour and a half south of the city, the rolling green farmland near Matamata is the actual Hobbiton movie set: forty-four hobbit holes, the Party Tree and the Green Dragon Inn, left standing exactly as the films left them. There is nowhere else on earth you can walk through the real Shire.
- 1 Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunch
- 2 From Auckland: Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Day Trip with Lunch
- 3 Auckland: Hobbiton Movie Set Day Trip with Festive Lunch
Living light
The Waitomo Glowworms
Beneath the green hills of the Waikato, a limestone river system glitters with Arachnocampa luminosa, a glowworm found nowhere outside New Zealand. You drift a boat through the dark of the Glowworm Grotto while the cave roof glows overhead like a low galaxy, or abseil and black-water raft the wilder caves nearby.
- 1 Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Guided Day Trip from Auckland incl lunch
- 2 From Auckland: Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Day Trip with Lunch
- 3 Hobbiton & Waitomo Caves Small-Group Tour W Lunch from Auckland
Earth and steam
Rotorua, where the ground breathes
Three hours from Auckland the earth turns restless: erupting geysers, terraces of bubbling silica and lakes of boiling mud. It is also the living heart of Maori culture in the North Island, where a day ends with a hangi cooked in the ground and a haka performed the way it always has been.
- 1 Waitomo Caves & Rotorua – Te Puia Small-Group Tour from Auckland
- 2 Auckland: Hobbiton, Rotorua and Wai-O-Tapu Day Tour
- 3 Hobbiton & Rotorua including Wai-O-Tapu – Small Group Tour from Auckland
Start with the standout
If you only book one thing in Auckland.
More travellers build a day around this one than anything else the city offers.
The classics
Auckland’s Most Popular Experiences
Waiheke wine, the Hobbiton set, harbour cruises and the gulf eco-safaris. The days most visitors plan around.
Where to begin
The days an Auckland trip is built around.
Waiheke Island, the Hobbiton set, Rotorua, the Waitomo caves, the harbour cruises and the wine country. The handful of experiences most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
Out in the gulf
Which day on the Hauraki Gulf?
The harbour opens straight into a marine park scattered with islands and volcanoes. Three ways to spend a day on the water, depending on whether you came for the wine, the climb or the wildlife.
Waiheke Island
An island of cellar doors, a ferry from town.
Forty minutes across the Hauraki Gulf, Waiheke ripens more than twenty boutique vineyards on its warm clifftops and valleys. The island runs hot and dry, so the reds shine: syrah and Bordeaux blends poured at long lunches with the harbour and the city skyline laid out on the horizon.
Read the guide: the best Waiheke wine tours →West of the city
Black sand and rainforest, an hour west.
Over the Waitakere Ranges the Tasman Sea hurls itself at a coast of iron-black sand. Piha and Karekare pull the surfers and the sunset crowds; behind them, bush tracks wind under the kauri to waterfalls and lookouts. A wilder island entirely from the calm harbour side of town.
See the west-coast trips →City of Sails
The harbour that gave the city its name.
On a summer Saturday the Waitemata fills with white sails, more boats per head than almost any harbour on earth. Cross to Devonport on the old ferry, take the helm of a retired America’s Cup yacht, or ride a dinner cruise out under the bridge as the lights come up.
Harbour cruises & sailing →Tāmaki Makaurau
The city’s first and deepest story.
Auckland’s Māori name, Tāmaki Makaurau, means the maiden desired by a hundred lovers, for the fertile isthmus a hundred chiefs once fought to hold. Cultural experiences in the city and out at Rotorua hand that history over first-hand: carving and weaving, a hāngī cooked in the earth, and the haka performed the way it always has been.
- 1 Auckland: All Blacks Experience Guided Cultural Tour
- 2 All Blacks Experience: Interactive Guided Cultural Tour
- 3 Auckland: Rotorua Wai-O-Tapu, Te Puia with Haka
The volcanic field
A city built across fifty-three volcanoes.
Auckland is the only city in the world spread across a live volcanic field: fifty-three cones, craters and lava flows, the youngest of them Rangitoto, risen from the gulf within Māori memory. Climb the harbour-island cone, walk the grassy summits of Maungawhau and One Tree Hill, or take the whole field in from a scenic flight.
See all 13 volcano & Rangitoto trips →By place
The Auckland region, six ways.
Waiheke for the island vineyards. Rangitoto for the climb across the lava. The west coast for black sand and surf. Hobbiton for the Shire. Rotorua for the geysers. Waitomo for the glowworm dark.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Harbour cruise if you want the city from the water. Wine tour if it’s a long Waiheke lunch. Kayak or sail if you’d rather be in it. Māori culture, food, the west-coast bush, or the gulf after dark.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
Never been? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without a wasted hour.
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