New Zealand's themed highways and scenic touring routes

New Zealand marks a set of scenic touring routes with distinctive brown road signs. Follow one and you are on a route someone has already thought about: it links the good scenery, the worthwhile towns and the stops that break the drive up sensibly. They are not toll roads or restricted routes — just public highways with a name and a theme.

North Island routes

Twin Coast Discovery Highway

Runs north from Auckland, up one Northland coast to Cape Reinga and back down the other. Easy driving, endless beaches, kauri forest, fishing and diving, and the cultural weight of Waitangi. Give it four days minimum; a lot of people try it in two and see mostly windscreen.

Pacific Coast Highway

Links Auckland to the Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Eastland and Hawke's Bay. The Pōhutukawa Coast through Clevedon and around the Firth of Thames is the classic opening stretch. Coastal scenery, beaches, forest and wine country, with Tauranga, Gisborne, Napier and Hastings for food and a bed.

Thermal Explorer Highway

Auckland to Hawke's Bay through the volcanic heart of the island — the Waitomo cave country, Rotorua's geothermal fields, Lake Taupō, Tongariro National Park and the Hawke's Bay vineyards. Combined with the Pacific Coast Highway it forms what is called the Great New Zealand Touring Route.

Forgotten World Highway

State Highway 43, 150km from Taumarunui to Stratford. Four mountain saddles, a one-lane unlit tunnel, a river gorge and the self-declared Republic of Whangamomona. Parts have been unsealed historically and services are sparse — fuel up first and allow far longer than the distance suggests.

Volcanic Loop and the Desert Road

From Tūrangi, state highways 47, 4, 49 and 1 circle the Tongariro volcanoes. The Desert Road section across the Rangipō Desert is bleak, beautiful and the first road to close when it snows.

Surf Highway 45

105km around the Taranaki coast, named for the breaks at the end of almost every side road, with the mountain over your shoulder most of the way.

Adventure Highway and the Manawatū Scenic Route

Two quieter alternatives. The Adventure Highway threads the Ruapehu district between Tongariro and Whanganui national parks; the Manawatū Scenic Route swaps State Highway 1 for country roads, reserves, swimming holes and small-town cafés.

Classic New Zealand Wine Trail

A 380km self-guided route through Hawke's Bay, Wairarapa and Marlborough — three major wine regions and a Cook Strait crossing, with Wellington in the middle as the food-and-culture stopover.

South Island routes

Great Coast Road

Westport down to Kumara, along the limestone cliffs of Paparoa National Park, through Charleston to the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks and blowholes. You can drive it in about 90 minutes. Don't — it deserves the better part of a day.

Glacier Highway

Roughly 300km hugging the coast from Kumara through Hokitika to glacier country: rainforest, seal colonies, beaches, lakes and the glaciers themselves. One of the most consistently scenic drives in the country and one of the wettest — pack for rain.

Central Otago Touring Route

341km from Dunedin and the Pacific coast to the Southern Alps at Queenstown, through Middlemarch, Ranfurly, Oturehua, Clyde, Alexandra, Cromwell and Arrowtown. Big skies, gold-rush stone buildings and some of the best pinot noir in the country.

Southern Scenic Route

Dunedin along the southern coast to Invercargill, then west and north through Te Anau to Queenstown. The Catlins wildlife coast, Fiordland and the southern food are the reasons to take it. Allow at least three days.

Great Alpine Highway

Christchurch west across the plains, then up through Porters Pass and Arthur's Pass National Park to the West Coast. The Waimakariri and Otira gorges, the Otira Viaduct, and the limestone boulders of Castle Hill and Cave Stream on the way. One of the best day trips out of Christchurch even if you turn around at the pass.

Alpine Pacific Triangle

A short north-Canterbury loop linking the Waipara wine district, the hot pools at Hanmer Springs and the whales and crayfish at Kaikōura, with quiet farm country in between. Three days is plenty and two works.

Inland Scenic Route 72

Amberley down to Winchester, running inland parallel to State Highway 1. The Southern Alps on one side, the Canterbury Plains on the other, and real rural New Zealand rather than the tourist strip. Barely slower than the main road and vastly more interesting.

West Coast Touring Route

Haast in the south to Karamea in the north — the full length of the coast, taking in the Punakaiki blowholes, greenstone in Hokitika and Greymouth, old gold workings and the glaciers. Wet, wild and worth every day you give it.

Treasured Pathway

Across the top of the South Island from Picton to Farewell Spit, through the Marlborough vineyards, Nelson and the edge of three national parks. Heritage sites, beaches and art studios, with Nelson in the middle for a night off.

Southern Heritage Route

Inland past Mount Hutt to Lake Tekapo and the Church of the Good Shepherd, on to Aoraki / Mount Cook Village, then Wānaka or Queenstown before looping back for Dunedin's Victorian architecture. This is the big-scenery route.

Choosing a route

• First trip, North Island, two weeks: Thermal Explorer plus the Pacific Coast Highway.
• First trip, South Island: Great Coast Road and Glacier Highway down the west, Southern Scenic Route across the bottom.
• You've seen the greatest hits already: Forgotten World Highway, Manawatū Scenic Route, Central Otago.
• Food and wine: Classic New Zealand Wine Trail, with a driver.

You don't have to drive any of them yourself. We run these routes as private one-way transfers and full-day tours — you get the views, someone else gets the hairpins.