Nya Zeeland

Perhaps best known as the gateway to the Routeburn Track, Glenorchy sits on a rare shelf of flat land at the head of Lake Wakatipu. The small town is a great option if you want to be beside the lake and the mountains but prefer to stay once removed from the bustle and bluster of Queenstown. The tramping around Glenorchy is sensational, and the town is also a base for horse treks, jetboat rides, helicopter flights and skydives. It's Queenstown on sedatives.

Verdant rolling hills line New Zealand’s mighty Waikato River, and adrenaline junkies can surf at Raglan, or undertake extreme underground pursuits in the extraordinary Waitomo Caves.

'Gizzy' to her friends, Gisborne (pronounced Gis-born, not Gis-bun) is a pretty place, squeezed between surf beaches and a sea of chardonnay, and it proudly claims to be the first city on Earth to see the sun each day. It’s a good place to put your feet up for a few days, hit the beach and sip some wine.

Landlocked cities in an island nation are never going to have the glamorous appeal of their coastal cousins. Rotorua compensates with boiling mud and Taupo has its lake, but Hamilton, despite the majestic Waikato River, is more prosaic.

Det lider ingen brist på magiska naturunder i Nya Zealand. Fjordlandskapet i Milford Sound tillhör ett av landets mest besökta plaster, vill man däremot uppleva mer natur och färre turister ska man bege sig till intilliggande Doubtful Sound.

Rolling hills that turn from green to gold in the relentless summer sun provide a backdrop to a succession of tiny, charming gold-rush towns where farmers mingle with Lycra-clad cyclists in lost-in-time pubs. As well as being one of the country's top wine regions, the area provides fantastic opportunities for those on two wheels, whether mountain biking along old gold-mining trails or traversing the district on the Otago Central Rail Trail.

Tauranga (pronounced 'toe-run-gah') has been booming since the 1990s and in 2017 it leapfrogged Dunedin to become NZ's fifth-biggest city. It's especially popular with retirees cashing up from Auckland's hyperkinetic real-estate market, along with young families who can no longer afford to buy there.

Det finns mängder av vackra platser över hela Nya Zeeland. Vagabonds webbredaktör har dock en hemlig favorit på sydön som många missar – Punakaiki. Platsens mest kända sevärdhet är en rökridå för den mäktiga natur som bokstavligt talat finns på andra sidan vägen.

Vild västkust, bohemisk östkust och krokodiler i norr och Australiens röda inre. Upplev vingårdar och kängurur innan Nya Zeeland väntar med turkost vatten, vita stränder och utomjordiska landskap. Ta del av Vagabonds bästa tips på en långresa i Oceanien.

Greymouth is the largest town on the West Coast and the region's 'Big Smoke'. For locals it's a refuelling and shopping pit stop, for travellers it's a noteworthy portal to tramping trails. Arriving on a dreary day, it's no mystery why Greymouth, crouched at the mouth of the imaginatively named Grey River, is sometimes the butt of jokes. But with gold-mining history, a scattering of jade shops, and worthy walks in its surrounds, it pays to look beyond the grey.