Christchurch to Franz Josef via Hokitika: West Coast One-Day Small-Group Journey

The morning opens grey and sharp as the Sprinter pulls away from Christchurch, the city shrinking into a ribbon of pasture and river flats. Rain clings to the windscreen; your guide, practiced and pragmatic, points out where the Canterbury Plains give way to the Southern Alps. By mid-morning the road has climbed into a different world: tussocked saddles, a jagged skyline and a series of quick, deliberate stops—Lake Lyndon’s glassy trout waters, the otherworldly limestone spires at Castle Hill, the alpine hush of Arthur’s Pass.