The best time to visit New Zealand? The answer might surprise you

Kiwis are an honest bunch, and they’re very happy to clear up any misconceptions travellers might have.

Take adventure filmmaker Kyle Mulinder, the man behind BareKiwi.

“Everyone assumes you come here in summer,” he says. “But winter is pure magic.”

He calls the low light of a winter’s day “gentleman’s hour”, the sky rolling through pink and purple while the snow falls silently.

South Island local Jennifer Parkes agrees.

“There’s an incredible stillness,” says the photographer and founder of Backyard Travel Family.

“You can stand on the edge of a crystal-clear lake, looking out at the mountains, and be the only person there. The mist rises off the water, everything’s crunchy and frosted, and then the sun warms your back. It’s raw and beautiful.”

For both, the drawcard is the same: winter offers the best of New Zealand, minus the crowds.

“You can still do everything in winter, you just dress differently,” Jen says. “The best way to warm up is to hike up a hill or sink into a hot pool. I love them far more in winter than in the heat.”

It’s a good point, if hard for a southern Aussie to picture: we think rain, wind and grey skies, and chase sandy beaches and pina coladas.

But New Zealand reveals a whole new world, as Sydneysider Sara Treble found.

She and her partner Giang chose the South Island for his birthday: close to home, but not too close.

“We wanted an adventure that still felt like a proper holiday,” she says, “without planning it the way you would for Europe or Asia.”

The cold weather was a pleasant revelation.

“At home, that means staying in with a book and a hot drink,” she says. “In the South Island, it means crisp mornings horse-riding between Glenorchy’s snow-capped mountains, a day kayaking Lake Wānaka, or a scenic hike.”

Two islands, two winters

The South Island serves up alpine theatre: four world-class ski fields within an hour of Queenstown and Wānaka, the Alpine Pacific loop linking whale-rich Kaikōura, the Hanmer Springs thermal pools and the Waipara wineries, and Mt Hutt rising off the Canterbury Plains.

On the West Coast, which Jennifer calls “a place even locals overlook”, winter brings settled weather, clear blue skies and family-friendly helicopter flights onto the glaciers.

The North Island plays a different hand. You can ski a volcano at Whakapapa and Tūroa on Mt Ruapehu, then drop into the geothermal country around Rotorua and Taupō, where the cold makes the steam rise more dramatically.

For Mulinder, who has Māori heritage, the mountain means more than its slopes.

“There’s an immense Māori pride in Ruapehu, real mana,” he says.

“What’s special is that it’s a mountain everyone in the North Island calls home, whether you ski or not.”

It is also the season of Matariki, the Māori new year, when the star cluster returns to the winter sky.

You don’t have to ski

Some of winter’s finest moments have nothing to do with a chairlift.

At Tekapo you float in hot pools while guides trace Saturn, the moon and the Matariki legends overhead.

In the Mackenzie, a rare phenomenon called hoar frost crusts the scrub in ice crystals, typically on a handful of the coldest, stillest mornings each winter, turning whole valleys silver.

And at Coronet Peak, the only night skiing in the country, you can sit by an outdoor fire with mulled wine and live music as the floodlit runs glow and the kids throw snowballs.

On the West Coast, a Franz Josef Wilderness Tour paddles families out to an island in Lake Mapourika, in the Okarito Kiwi Sanctuary. Guide Dale shows the kids the lancewood, a tree thought to have grown its spikes to outwit the giant moa, now extinct, and the kōtuku, the white heron Māori treasure as a sign of good fortune.

For families, that blend of adventure and discovery is the point.

“My answer to everything is to let them,” Jennifer says of travelling with her kids, aged 12, 10 and eight. “If they want to throw snow at each other, fine!”

Hanmer Springs is a favourite family base, with thermal pools, mountain-biking trails, fairy doors in the forest and a winter festival.

The honest truth

However you do it, don’t rush. For Sara and Giang, the quietest moments stuck the hardest: a private onsen above the Shotover River after a long hike, where, Sara says, “you realise the richness of silence”, and a country cottage near Te Anau, “waking to fog on the glass and the smell of woodfire”.

Their advice is to give it time. “There’s so much to explore in New Zealand, and you don’t need to do everything at one. Stay in one area for a full week and remember it’s on a three- to four-hour flight from the east coast of Australia – there’s plenty of reason to return.”

For Mulinder, in Aotearoa the road is the destination: “It’s the people you meet when you slow down and actually take a look. That’s the half of the journey you can’t plan for.”

Discover your winter in New Zealand at newzealand.com.