How I Plan: The Itinerary

After you’ve done your research and have decided what you want to see and do in your intended destination(s), the next step is to start piecing together a loose itinerary. I say “loose” because travel can never actually be precisely planned. Something will always come up – bad weather, illness, a spontaneous impulse – and you have to be prepared to be a little flexible.

Since I haven’t started this stage with my family’s Seattle plans, I’ll use another example. In 2008 when I was studying abroad in New Zealand, two friends and I planned a 10-day trip to New Zealand’s South Island in late October. We started out by asking people we knew for suggestions of things to do down south, and spent countless hours researching possibilities on the Internet (no joke, we started planning the trip as early as August). Eventually, we had a list of things we wanted to do scattered all around the South Island.

The first thing to do, of course, was to decide how many cities we wanted to visit. Obviously, with only 10 days at our disposal, we had to limit ourselves and do a little editing. We eventually decided to start out in Wellington, take the ferry across the Cook Strait to Picton, then travel along the east coast of the island to Kaikoura, Christchurch and Dunedin, then hit up Invercargill and Queenstown before cutting up the center of the island back to Christchurch and eventually Picton and Wellington again.

Once we had our trip (literally) mapped out and our travel dates chosen, we went about tackling transportation first. This was the easiest place to start, since booking all our various tickets would give us a more exact idea of how long we would have to spend in each destination. It was also essential to start here, since things like plane tickets and bus seats are best booked in advance.

When considering transportation on a trip like this that covers so much ground, do your research. You may have a whole host of options available (especially when traveling abroad), and you want to make sure to utilize the types that will work best for you and your sort of trip. For our South Island trip, we utilized everything from a passenger ferry, to multiple buses, to a one-way flight, to renting a car for four days.

Our decisions were based on a variety of things, from pricing to ease to the best way for us to do the things we really wanted to do. For example, we chose to use the Interislander Ferry to get from Wellington to Picton simply because we had all received free round-trip ferry fare from the Wellington university we were studying at. We chose buses in between Picton, Kaikoura and Christchurch because it was the cheapest way (by far) to travel, with bus schedules convenient to our travel plans. We flew from Christchurch to Dunedin to save time. We decided to rent a car in order to drive from Dunedin along the south coast to Invercargill, and then up to Queenstown, because other transportation options would have been too time consuming and limiting as to what we could see along the way.

Our transportation decisions were based on the type of trip we wanted to have (one where we got to see and experience a lot of the country) and how much money we were willing to spend on getting from point A to point B. Utilizing buses when we were able to was perfect for us, as fares were extremely affordable, and we were able to see a lot of the country by simply looking out the window.

After we had all of our transport worked out, we moved on to booking the few activities we were sure we wanted to include in our itinerary, and that we knew would require advanced reservations. For example, we were only staying in Kaikoura for one day, and we knew we wanted to go whale watching there. We also knew whale watching was a popular thing (perhaps the most popular thing) to do in Kaikoura, so we made sure to book our spots as soon as we knew what day we’d be in town.

Other activities that didn’t require far-in-advance reservations (such as touring a chocolate factory in Dunedin and jetboating in Queenstown) we tentatively penciled into our itinerary, but decided to hold off on actually booking until we arrived in those cities. This approach allowed us to be more flexible with our plans.

The next thing to tackle was accommodation. Here was another area we spent a lot of time researching and pricing before actually making any decisions or bookings. For some people, accommodation may be the number one concern when it comes to travel planning. There are some budget travelers who will only stay in hostels because they feel that’s the only “real” way to travel and truly experience a place. Conversely, other travelers (who have the funds) will only stay in high-class hotels and B&Bs when they’re on the road or abroad. My friends and I don’t fit into either of these categories. We were concerned about our budget when looking at accommodation options, but we also were open to trying anything.

We booked hostels (which we researched and read countless reviews on before choosing) in Picton, Dunedin and Christchurch. We chose a B&B in Kaikoura because the hostel pickin’s were slim and we wanted to mix things up a bit. (This ended up being a great choice, because our host was the nicest woman, who gave us rides around town and baked us chocolate chip muffins.) We decided on a farm stay in Invercargill because, again, the hostel choices were slim. And in Queenstown, we booked a room at a ski lodge that offered a free shuttle into town.

Obviously, the hostels were the cheapest places to stay. However, when we stayed at the B&B, farm, and ski lodge, we all shared one room and split the price three ways. In Queenstown, it wasn’t ski season anymore, and so we ended up paying only about $10 more per night at the lodge than we would have staying at a hostel. And, at the lodge, we didn’t have to sleep in bunk beds, and we had our own bathroom – a definite plus. So, even though we were playing the roles of budget travelers on this trip, we didn’t decide solely on traditional budget accommodations. Which worked for us.

This was as far as we went with our itinerary – we booked all our transportation, accommodation, and a few select activities ahead of time, while penciling in everything else we wanted to do along the way. We used the physical itinerary we typed up (which you can see here: South Island) to keep track of confirmation numbers, departure times, and which things we had already paid for, which helped to keep us organized.

Ours was a pretty flexible itinerary to begin with, but we still had to be prepared for our plans to change, and so should you.

We had no major travel disasters along the way, but we did encounter a few minor setbacks. For example, when we got to Kaikoura, a gusty storm blew up from the south and washed out our whale watching plans. Since we didn’t have the time to reschedule for the next day, we simply took a refund and shook our fists at the whales somewhere out at sea.

But, snafus aside, we accomplished and experienced nearly everything we had wanted to on our South Island trip, even if certain things got shifted around. Having the itinerary and a good research base helped keep us on track, but the loose nature of our plan still allowed us to be spontaneous and try things on impulse here and there, like surfing in Dunedin and parasailing in Queenstown.

In the end, this itinerary and resulting trip best fit our travel style. And, hopefully, yours will do the same for you.