New Zealand Beaches and Islands

Auckland sits between two harbours, and its gulf islands are the easiest island-hopping in the country. Waiheke Island is 40 minutes by ferry from the downtown Ferry Building, with frequent sailings all day. Oneroa, a short bus ride or walk from the Matiatia wharf, has the main village and a sheltered beach; Palm Beach and the long sweep of Onetangi on the north coast are better for swimming.

Rangitoto Island, the symmetrical volcano you see from every Auckland waterfront, erupted only about 600 years ago. Ferries take about 25 minutes, and the walk to the 260 m summit takes about an hour each way over black lava fields and through pōhutukawa forest, with a causeway linking it to farmed Motutapu Island. Kawau Island, reached from Sandspit near Warkworth, has the restored Mansion House of Governor George Grey. Tiritiri Matangi, a ferry ride from Auckland or Gulf Harbour, is an open sanctuary where takahē and saddleback walk across the paths; services run on set days, so check the timetable.

Great Barrier Island is the gulf’s wild outer island, about 4.5 hours by car ferry or 30 minutes by small plane from Auckland, with no mains power and International Dark Sky Sanctuary status since 2017. Medlands Beach on the east coast is the classic white-sand surf beach, and the walk up Hirakimata (Mount Hobson) gives views across the gulf to Little Barrier Island, a strict nature reserve you cannot land on.

On the other side of the city, the west coast beaches of Piha, Karekare, Bethells (Te Henga) and Muriwai have black sand, big surf and dangerous rips. Piha, about 45 minutes from the centre, is the best known, with Lion Rock in the middle of the beach; Muriwai has a gannet colony on the clifftops from about August to March. For calmer city swimming, Auckland’s North Shore beaches such as Takapuna and Cheltenham face the harbour.

The Bay of Islands has around 144 islands scattered across a drowned river valley, with Paihia and the old whaling town of Russell as bases; a passenger ferry links the two in about 15 minutes. The classic half-day boat trip runs out to Hole in the Rock on Piercy Island at Cape Brett, and many trips stop at Urupukapuka Island, the largest in the bay, which has walking tracks, beaches and Department of Conservation (DOC) campsites. Waitangi, where the Treaty House stands, is a short walk from Paihia; our historic sites guide covers it.

North of the bay, Matauri Bay looks out to the Cavalli Islands, where the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was scuttled as a dive wreck in 1987. Further up, the road ends at Cape Reinga, about three hours’ drive from Paihia, where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific meet below the lighthouse. Māori know it as Te Rerenga Wairua, the place where spirits leave for the afterlife, so eating and drinking near the lighthouse is discouraged. Ninety Mile Beach on the west side is actually about 88 km long and is legally a highway, but rental car contracts almost always forbid driving on it; take a 4WD bus tour from Kaitaia or Paihia instead, which usually stops to sandboard the Te Paki dunes.

The Poor Knights Islands, 23 km off the coast from Tutukaka, are a marine reserve that Jacques Cousteau rated among the best dive sites in the world. Dive and snorkel boats leave Tutukaka, about 30 minutes from Whangārei, for full-day trips. Landing on the islands themselves is forbidden.

The Coromandel Peninsula, about 2.5 hours’ drive from Auckland, is where Aucklanders go for summer, and its east coast has the most photographed beaches in the North Island. Cathedral Cove, a white-sand beach with a huge rock arch, lies in the Te Whanganui-A-Hei Marine Reserve near Hahei. Storm damage in 2023 closed the walking track for long periods, so check DOC for current access; the boat and kayak tours from Hahei and Whitianga are a good way to see the reserve in any case, and some include snorkelling. From October to April the car park at the top of the track is closed, and visitors park at the village entrance and ride a park-and-ride shuttle.

Hot Water Beach, a few minutes south, has hot springs that rise through the sand: for about two hours either side of low tide you dig a pool with a spade (hire one from the shop) and sit in it. Check the tide table, and do not swim here, as the rips are strong. New Chums Beach near Whangapoua, reached by a 30-minute walk around the rocks and over a headland, is the peninsula’s most unspoiled bay.

In the Bay of Plenty, Mount Maunganui, next to Tauranga, has a long surf beach curving away from Mauao, the 232 m volcanic cone at its tip; the summit track takes about 45 minutes up. Mayor Island / Tūhua, a dormant volcano offshore, is reached only by charter. Whakaari / White Island, off Whakatāne, has been closed to landings since its eruption in December 2019, which killed 22 people; scenic flights still circle it. For surf, Raglan on the west coast, near Hamilton, has one of the longest left-hand point breaks in the world at Manu Bay.

Abel Tasman National Park is New Zealand’s smallest national park and its most famous stretch of coast: a chain of golden-sand coves, granite headlands and clear water backed by native forest, with some of the highest sunshine hours in the country. There are no roads through the park. You arrive at Marahau or Kaiteriteri, about an hour from Nelson, and go in by water taxi, sea kayak or on foot. Water taxis drop walkers at Anchorage, Bark Bay, Awaroa and Totaranui, so you can walk one section of the 60 km Coast Track and ride back, or kayak one way and walk the other.

A guided kayak day around Adele Island and the Tonga Island Marine Reserve, where fur seals haul out on the rocks, is the best single day here. The Coast Track’s huts and campsites are booked through DOC as a Great Walk and fill months ahead for January; our New Zealand hiking guide covers booking. The Awaroa estuary can only be crossed on foot around low tide, so plan that day by the tide table.

Over Takaka Hill, Golden Bay is quieter still. Wharariki Beach, a 20-minute walk over dunes near Cape Farewell, has rock arches offshore and fur seal pups in the rock pools in winter and spring; the surf and rips make it no place to swim. Farewell Spit, the long sand spit at the top of the South Island, can only be visited beyond its first few kilometres on a licensed tour from Collingwood.

The Marlborough Sounds are a maze of drowned valleys at the top of the South Island, and most travellers see them only from the Cook Strait ferry, which threads Queen Charlotte Sound on the 3.5-hour crossing from Wellington to Picton. The 70 km Queen Charlotte Track follows the ridges above the water from Ship Cove, with water taxis from Picton carrying your bags between lodges so you can walk with a daypack. Motuara Island, near Ship Cove, is a predator-free bird sanctuary where the water taxis stop. Beyond, Arapaoa Island lines Tory Channel, D’Urville Island is a remote outpost reached by its own ferry, and Maud Island and Stephens Island are closed refuges for frogs, tuatara and giant wētā.

Across Cook Strait, Kapiti Island lies about 5 km off Paraparaumu Beach, an hour’s drive north of Wellington. It is one of the oldest bird sanctuaries in the country, and visitor numbers are capped: you go with a licensed boat operator, who arranges the DOC permit, and walk tracks through forest full of kākā, takahē and North Island robins. An overnight stay at the lodge on the north end includes a guided walk to look for little spotted kiwi. In Wellington harbour, Matiu / Somes Island, a 20-minute ferry ride from Queens Wharf, is an easy half day, with tuatara, a former quarantine station and views back to the city.

The South Island’s west coast is beautiful but rarely swimmable: grey sand, driftwood, heavy surf and sandflies. Its highlight is the Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki in Paparoa National Park, 45 minutes north of Greymouth, where layered limestone stacks are pierced by blowholes that perform best at high tide with a westerly swell. Hokitika beach is the place to watch the sunset over the Tasman.

On the east coast, the Moeraki Boulders lie scattered along Koekohe Beach, about 40 minutes south of Oamaru. These near-perfect spheres, some 2 m across, formed on the sea floor millions of years ago and are best seen at low tide, early in the morning before tour buses arrive. Around Dunedin, St Clair and St Kilda are surf beaches within the city, Tunnel Beach is reached through a rock tunnel carved in the 1870s so the Cargill family could get down to the sand privately, and the Otago Peninsula’s beaches are where to look for sea lions and yellow-eyed penguins.

South again, the Catlins coast has Nugget Point, with its lighthouse above sea stacks, and Curio Bay, where a petrified forest about 180 million years old is exposed at low tide. Yellow-eyed penguins come ashore there in the late afternoon, and Hector’s dolphins often surf in neighbouring Porpoise Bay in summer.

Stewart Island / Rakiura, New Zealand’s third island, is an hour by ferry from Bluff across Foveaux Strait, or a 20-minute flight from Invercargill. Its only town, Oban, has a few hundred people, and about 85 percent of the island is Rakiura National Park. The best day out is a water taxi to Ulva Island in Paterson Inlet, a predator-free sanctuary that is free to visit, where saddleback, yellowheads and Stewart Island robins come close on the tracks. Stewart Island is also one of the few places where you can see kiwi foraging in the wild, on guided night trips or at Mason Bay, and on clear winter nights the aurora australis.

The Chatham Islands, about 800 km east of the mainland, are reached by Air Chathams flights from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, taking around two hours. The islands keep their own time zone 45 minutes ahead of the mainland, have a population of a few hundred, and are home to the Moriori, whose history is told at Kōpinga Marae.

The New Zealand Sub-Antarctic Islands, including the Auckland Islands, Campbell Island and Enderby Island, are a World Heritage site of albatross colonies, sea lions and giant megaherbs. They can only be visited on expedition cruises that carry DOC permits, usually sailing from Bluff in the southern summer, and landings are tightly limited.

The best beach months are December to March. Sea temperatures peak in February at around 20 to 22°C in Northland and the Hauraki Gulf, falling to the mid-teens around Dunedin and Stewart Island, so many people swim in a wetsuit in the south. Christmas to late January is the domestic holiday rush: campsites, water taxis and ferries to the islands book up, and Coromandel and Bay of Islands accommodation can need booking months ahead. February and March bring warmer water and far fewer people. Our best time to visit guide has the month-by-month weather.

Fullers360 runs the main Hauraki Gulf ferries, SeaLink the car ferries to Waiheke and Great Barrier, and Interislander and Bluebridge cross Cook Strait; our getting around guide compares them. Booking DOC campsites and Great Walk huts is done online at the DOC website, and the beach campsites at Abel Tasman and in the Bay of Islands are among the first to sell out. Most foreign visitors pay the NZ$100 international visitor levy with their visa or NZeTA; there are no entry fees for beaches, marine reserves or national parks.

New Zealand’s surf beaches are more dangerous than they look, and drowning is a serious problem. Swim only between the red and yellow flags, which Surf Life Saving New Zealand patrols set up on popular beaches in summer, mainly from December to March and on weekends either side. West coast beaches like Piha and Muriwai, and Hot Water Beach, have strong rips. If caught in one, float, raise a hand and wait for help rather than fighting it.