Private Tour [3 Days]: Hobbiton, Waitomo Twin Caves & Te Puia

Summary: Our 3-day tour and overall experience with ExperienceKart Tours New Zealand and its owner/driver/guide, Karthik, was fantastic! I honestly could not come up with a single complaint. This was my family’s first trip to New Zealand (Me/Wife/18-year-old son), and we were so happy that we chose to start off our vacation with this fabulous “chauffeured” tour of some of the popular north island sites. Karthik, as our 3-day driver and guide, definitely did his part to ensure everything went smoothly and is great to talk to during the driving portions. Karthik handled all of the arrangements for the various site tours and activities, including checking us in as we arrived at each site. We never had to stand in line. We highly recommend ExperienceKart Tours to anyone who wants to see various north island sites while leaving the driving and travel plans to someone else. The rest of this review is lengthy, but if you are really interested in a fantastic option for seeing beautiful and unique parts of New Zealand with a great tour guide, I recommend you take the time to read about our adventure. We booked the Golden Triangle Experience with ExperienceKart for June 16-18, 2023. This was a three-day tour, leaving from Auckland, of some of the popular sites on the North New Zealand island, including Waitomo Glow Worm Cave, 2 other caves, Te Puia geothermal valley, Maori cultural experience/lunch, and Hobbiton. When booking, we were given a couple of options for the afternoon of our second day, and we chose the Ultimate Canopy Zipline experience. ExperienceKart took care of the arrangements for all the individual tours and activities. The booking process was trouble-free with quick and helpful responses from ExperienceKart (allowing for time-zone difference). Unlike other bus tours from Auckland, this is a true 3-day tour that minimizes over-all driving time by taking you to the more central town of Rotorua for two nights. We were responsible for arranging for our hotel in Rotorua, though ExperienceKart can help with recommendations and reviews to find the hotel or Bed & Breakfast that best serves your needs. We chose the Novotel Rotorua, which isn’t necessarily budget friendly, but was a wonderful hotel on the lake and across the street from the restaurant district (Eat Street). Before I get into the details of the tour, I just want to explain why we decided to book this particular tour in the first place. When we decided to take a family vacation to New Zealand, we identified all of the sites that we wanted to visit. While Auckland has a lot to see and do, many of the unique New Zealand sites on the North Island are several hours from Auckland by car. The best options seemed to be renting a car and doing a lot of driving, or doing single-day tour bus trips that spend more time on the bus than at the sites. Since I am from the US, the idea of spending a significant portion of my vacation learning how to drive on the left side of the road, in car that has the steering wheel on the “wrong” side, on streets and roads that I am not familiar with, was not appealing to me. I wanted this trip to be stress-free, if possible. So, when I found ExperienceKart via on-line searches, it offered the perfect alternative. Our tour started with an early morning (7:30) pick-up at our Auckland hotel. Karthik, our guide and driver, showed up in a large Mercedes passenger van. June is off-season in NZ, and this was listed as a private tour, so we were the only people on this particular trip and had the van to ourselves. ExperienceKart offers shared experiences (much smaller than typical bus tours) or private experiences. Not only is Karthik the driver, he is the owner of ExperienceKart Tours and very dedicated to his business. Currently, he is a company of one, so we were smart to book the tour several months early. Karthik helped us put our over-night bags in the van and we were off to go visit the cave systems a few hours south of Auckland. And this is where the benefits of this tour approach started. Traffic getting out of Auckland was bad. Construction and/or accidents had backed up the major road going south. Karthik pointed out that the large bus tours out of Auckland (that we could see on the road) will stick to this road and may not make it to the caves at their assigned tour times. In which case, the passengers might be out of luck. But, Karthik was using GPS routing and found a route that bypassed the traffic. During the drive, he shared his knowledge about New Zealand with us, talking about culture and pointing out various sites along the way. Karthik is very friendly, quick to answer questions, and uses a microphone system to ensure that all passengers can hear him. After a quick stop for bathrooms and coffee, we made it to the Waitomo Glow Worm Cave in plenty of time for our reserved tour. This is a review of ExperienceKart, so I won’t go into details about each activity we did. I’ll just say we were not disappointed by anything. After the Glow Worm Cave, Karthik drove us to the nearby Aranui and Ruakuri caves for two additional unique cave tours. After the caves, started the 2-hour ride to Rotorua, where Karthik dropped us off at the hotel. We were on our own for dinner, but invited Karthik to join us. The next day Karthik picked us up at our hotel and took us to a few of the public Rotorua sites, including the Government Gardens and Kuirau Park Mud Pools. Karthik walked these sites with us, providing various tid-bits of information and taking family photos. Definitely a nice bonus beyond our scheduled activities. We then drove to the Te Puia Geothermal Valley for our walking tour of the hot springs and geysers, and Maori cultural experience. A great lunch buffet was included with the tour. Karthik then drove us to the nearby Rotorua Canopy Tours and we spent the afternoon walking through the lush forest zip-lining, and walking over swing bridges. Karthik then took us back to the hotel in Rotorua where we were on our own for dinner. Karthik asked if we wanted to be picked up a little earlier than planned on the third day so that he could drive us to some of the nearby sites before heading to Hobbiton. We agreed and he took us to see the local Redwood forest and the Blue and Green lakes. Unfortunately, it was raining, so we did not get out to explore these areas and the lakes were not as beautiful as they could be. However, after the trip, Karthik did send us beautiful pictures of the lakes. It took a couple of hours to get to Hobbiton, raining all the way, but we made it early enough to enjoy a coffee before our scheduled tour. I was glad I didn’t need to do that rainy drive. Just as the tour started, the sun came out and we had a wonderful experience (definitely a “must-do” if you are a LOTR fan). After the tour, Karthik picked us up and drove us back to Auckland, dropping us off at our hotel. All told, this was a fantastic way to see parts of New Zealand. Karthik and ExperienceKart made this part of our vacation stress-free and very enjoyable. If we ever return to NZ, I would definitely use them again for planning other tours to different parts of the north island. I didn’t know this at the time, but Karthik can help set up a unique experience beyond the ones that they list on their website.