My friend Emily is going to NZ in Jan 2006 and asked for my advice on itinerary, motels, and so on. She only had a week, flying from Sydney. She wanted more to do with nature, rather than shopping. I recommended the south island and I gave her a summary of where we went and stayed in south island. Here is the email I sent her today. It's repeated here because it serves as a good summary.

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The costal scenic route in south island I had in mind is this: http://www.newzealand.com/travel/destinations/themed-highways/southern-scenic-route/southern-scenic-route_home.cfm We really wanted to go, but we didn't have enough time. We said if we go back, we'll do that route.

We stayed at the following motels in the South island:

Dunedin - Portobello. We like this very much and ranked this as the best of all motels we stayed in NZ. We didn't think the photos on its website have done them justice.

Queenstown - Colonial Village. This is a definite *no* ! We didn't like it at all and were glad to get out.

Franz Josef - Alpine Glacier. This is pretty good. The units are recently renovated. The owners were very nice and friendly, the best we have met in NZ. They gave us good tips as to which heli-hike tour offered best guide that we should join.

Christchurch - Milano. This is very nice and the owners were friendly too. There wasn't much to do at Christchurch and we did a day trip to Kaikoura for whale watching, which was great !

The owners at Alpine Glacier told us that they also travelled within NZ. Their advice is not to stay with motels with the Bella Vista chain as the rooms/units are small. Our own observation is that you should try to avoid big chains including Scenic Circle, especially if you are going in January, which I think is high season for NZ. We saw many Asian tours/coaches and they all stay with the big chains, presumably because they would have enough units to accomodate the entire tour !

Similarly for Milford Sound. We went on a cruise with a smaller "boat" than the large ones and we were glad we did. The large one (e.g. The Red Cruise which is fairly well-known) was packed with tour groups!

As for the car, we got it from Ezi-rent.

Do you or your friend have an ipod? We got a Tune Cast Auto for iPod which worked great and gave us many hours of pleasurable music!