Auckland Travel Guide | Volcanoes, Two Coasts and the Way South

Auckland is a door, and the country is the point

We should be honest about this, because most Auckland guides are not.

New Zealand's case is not made in its cities. It is made in fiords, on volcanic plateaus, in beech forest, on empty coast roads and in the ridiculous middle of the South Island. Auckland is where you land, and travellers who allocate it five days invariably tell us afterwards that three of them belonged somewhere else.

So the recommendation is two days. Which is not dismissive, because the two days are good, and they are good for reasons that have nothing to do with the things Auckland puts on its brochures. Get a New Zealand quote.

You are standing on about fifty volcanoes

This is the fact that reframes the whole city, and almost no visitor arrives knowing it.

Auckland is built on a volcanic field. Not near one: on one. Roughly fifty separate cones, craters and lava flows sit inside the urban area, and the suburbs are draped over them. The hills you drive up are volcanoes. The lakes are craters. The stone in the old walls is basalt from the last time this landscape rearranged itself.

Maungakiekie, One Tree Hill, and Maungawhau, Mount Eden, are both cones you can walk up in half an hour, and both give you the entire isthmus laid out with the harbour on either side. They also carry the terracing of the Māori pā that occupied them for centuries, which is visible in the ground once someone points it out.

And then there is Rangitoto, the low symmetrical island sitting in the harbour like a diagram of a volcano. It erupted roughly six hundred years ago. Māori were living here and watched it happen. The field is described as dormant rather than extinct, which is a distinction the city carries with impressive calm.

The walk up Rangitoto from the ferry takes about an hour, crosses raw lava fields with pōhutukawa growing straight out of the rock, and is the single best thing to do in Auckland. Take water; there is none on the island.

Two seas, one hour apart

The other geographic oddity, and the one that produces the best day out.

Auckland sits on an isthmus so narrow that it has two harbours facing two different oceans. The Waitematā looks east to the Pacific. The Manukau looks west to the Tasman. And the two coasts could not be less alike.

Drive west, forty minutes or so, and you reach Piha: black sand, and genuinely black, because it is iron-rich volcanic sand that will get hot enough to hurt and will stick to a magnet. Big surf, a large rock in the middle of the beach, bush coming down to the sand, and a coastline that feels like the edge of something. It is beautiful and it is dangerous water, so swim between the flags and take the local warnings seriously, because that coast has a genuine reputation.

Drive east instead and you get calm white-sand bays, safe swimming and families with picnic sets.

Doing both in one day is the most Auckland thing available, and it is the clearest demonstration of why the city is more interesting than its skyline suggests.

The largest Polynesian city in the world

That is a demographic fact rather than a marketing line, and it is the most important thing about Auckland's character.

Māori and Pasifika culture here is not an exhibit. It is the city: in the food, the language, the music, the sport and the way people talk. The Auckland War Memorial Museum holds an outstanding Māori collection and runs cultural performances, and it is a legitimate way in, particularly on a wet day.

But the better way in is a market. The Ōtara and Avondale markets on a weekend morning give you the actual city rather than the presented version, and they are where you will eat best. If your dates land on Pasifika, the big Pacific festival, go, and let the rest of the itinerary bend around it.

Waiheke, and the ferry habit

Auckland has one of the highest rates of boat ownership anywhere in the world, and once you have spent a day here you understand why: the harbour is not scenery, it is the transport network.

Waiheke Island is the day trip. Forty minutes on the ferry from downtown and you are among vineyards, olive groves and beaches, with a bus system that works and a pace that is roughly half the city's. Do not take a car. Do go for the whole day rather than the afternoon, because the last ferry back is the only real deadline and it arrives quickly.

The other ferries are worth taking on principle. Devonport is ten minutes across the water and is a small Victorian town with a volcano behind it, and the trip costs almost nothing.

What to skip

The Sky Tower, unless you are jumping off it. The view is a view and the city's genuinely good vantage points are volcanic cones that cost nothing and involve a walk. If a controlled fall off the side appeals, that is a different proposition and it is real.

The generic city bus tour, which drives you past things you could reach on the ferry.

Queen Street, which is a shopping street that could be in any city on earth. Ponsonby, Karangahape Road and the waterfront do everything it does, better and with a view.

Five days in Auckland. We keep saying it because the itineraries keep arriving.

When to come, and the visa trap

Summer, December to March, is when the city is at its best and its most expensive. Autumn, roughly March to May, is our quiet recommendation: settled weather, thinner crowds, softer fares. Winter is mild and wet rather than cold, and the local line about four seasons in one day is a genuine forecast rather than a joke, so pack a jacket in every month of the year.

Now the important one, because it costs people flights.

Australian citizens do not need a visa or an NZeTA for New Zealand. Australian permanent residents who are not Australian citizens generally do need an NZeTA arranged before departure, and airlines enforce it at check-in. This catches families out constantly, particularly when one member holds an Australian passport and another holds an Indian, British or other passport with Australian residency. It is a quick and inexpensive thing to arrange in advance and an expensive thing to discover at the airport.

If your household's passports are not all the same, check every one of them before you book. It is the sort of detail we go through when we quote, and it is a good illustration of why our why use a travel agent guide argues what it argues.

Getting there, and where to go next

Sydney to Auckland is about three hours, which is roughly a Perth flight with a passport. It is short enough that the cabin barely matters and the schedule matters a lot, because a good departure time can turn the travel into a morning rather than a day.

The real planning question is not Auckland, it is what follows it. Fly in and out of the same airport and you will spend a day backtracking. Fly into Auckland and home from Queenstown or Christchurch, an open-jaw, and you save that day entirely, which on a ten-day trip is a meaningful fraction of the holiday. Booking sites price open jaws badly when they price them at all; it is a five-minute job for a consultant and it is the single most useful thing we do on New Zealand itineraries. Tell us the shape of the trip rather than the flights you think you need, and let us build it backwards from there. Ask us to shape a New Zealand trip.