Nya Zeeland

So long described as Queenstown's smaller and more demure sibling, Wanaka now feels grown up enough to have moved out of home and asserted its own identity.

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.

For many New Zealanders, the phrase ‘up north’ conjures up sepia-toned images of family fun in the sun, pohutukawa in bloom and dolphins frolicking in pretty bays. From school playgrounds to work cafeterias, owning a bach (holiday house) here is a passport to popularity.

Before Whanganui was Whanganui, it was Petre, a town built at the mouth of the river in 1940. As one of New Zealand's oldest towns (and the fifth-largest until 1936), it's an amalgamation of Māori culture, heritage buildings – take a 60-minute self-guided tour with the free Whanganui Heritage Guide from the i-SITE – and a thriving local art community.

Forest and coast unite in dramatic form in the Buller Region. This northwesterly expanse of the South Island is a promised land for trampers. Trails wend riverside through primeval forest, some accessing geological marvels like the Oparara Arch.

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.

The Napier of today – a charismatic, sunny, composed city with the air of an affluent English seaside resort – is the silver lining of the dark cloud that was the deadly 1931 earthquake. Rebuilt in the popular architectural styles of the time, the city retains a unique concentration of art-deco buildings. Don’t expect the Chrysler Building – Napier is resolutely low-rise – but you will find amazingly intact 1930s facades and streetscapes, which can provoke a Great Gatsby-esque swagger in the least romantic soul. Linger a while to discover some of regional New Zealand's best restaurants and also a few excellent wineries less visited than the bigger names around nearby Hastings and Havelock North.

For many travellers, Marlborough and Nelson will be their introduction to what South Islanders refer to as the ‘Mainland’. Having left windy Wellington, and made a white-knuckled crossing of Cook Strait, folk are often surprised to find the sun shining and the temperature 10°C warmer.

Nya Zeeland är en favorit för såväl naturälskare som backpackers. Vandra mellan gyllene stränder i Golden Bay, landets hippie-tätaste område.