Make Your Next Trip Extraordinary

Excellent 13-nite trip to New Zealand. Dealt with Fab to plan everything and she was patient, knowledgeable, and prompt. She asked enough questions to make sure our needs were met. Jet-boating, helicopter rides with Marc and the hiking were standouts. Lynn watched over us while we were in country.

We can’t thank Jean-Michel’s team enough for curating and organizing an amazing vacation to their beautiful country, New Zealand. From the planning through the flawless execution, attention to detail and real-time communication—they are without peer.

Jean-Michel’s office more than hit the mark with their selection of accommodation, activities, guides and dining. We loved every minute of this epic vacation and plan on coming back and working with them again to plan another Aotearoa trip.

This is my 5th trip to NZ and first with Jean-Michel’s team as our trip planners. It was superb. The jet boat experience in Fiordland was one of my most favorite days ever in NZ.

Geoff met us at the Fiordland Lodge in Te Anua for our 90-minute drive to Lake Hauroko. Geoff is a chill Kiwi and former guide on the Milford Track. He plans to do a night trail run on the next cloudless full moon on the Kepler Track. In Fiordland, the mutable weather means rain every 2 days on average. We had a perfect day for our jet boat: grey clouds, warm air, and still waters.

Kevin met us at Lake Hauroko and took my wife and daughters, along with Geoff and me, across the lake and down the rapids of the Wairaurahiri River to the bottom of the South Island. The vastness of Fiordland National Park hit me more here than in busier areas that more tourists frequent. Kevin began to hike and camp along the coast alone with a buddy when he was only 13. Twenty years later now and here he hunts and goes out fishing for blue fin tuna. While we gazed out to Stewart Island, he noted that the South Pacific was as calm as he had ever seen it and that 5-meter great whites lurked below.

Lunch was at the Wairaurahiri Lodge a few hundred meters from the ocean. While Kevin and his stepfather prepared a great lunch of fresh venison and vegan dishes, Alan told us about the lodge on the 5,000 acres owned by a Māori tribe in Trust. He lives alone on the isolated lodge surrounded by a magnificent podocarp virgin forest. After a short hike past Rimu and Rata trees, we walked across the river on a new swinging bridge designed with a door to keep possums and stoats off. Kevin’s mom monitors 300 traps in the region, all baited with peanut butter. It’s working, as we saw many ducks, pigeons, and a pair of Kea parrots flying over the river.

From the bridge, Kevin picked us up and revved the engines for the ride back up the Class 2 rapids. On the eerily calm lake, we dallied at Teal Beach to skip rocks. We stopped on a creek to peer at eels and brown trout. We did donuts just below a waterfall. Before departing Lake Hauroko, we quietly passed Mary Island, where the remains of the Māori princess from 1640 lie in repose in a cave.

Geoff drove us back to Te Anua and I enjoyed the thousands of white sheep along the beautiful drive back. It was a stellar day in Fiordland.

Ellen and Gillian did a fantastic job booking our trip. We contacted them in late August for a trip over the Christmas Holiday and they set our expectations regarding how late we were to the game but also launched into planning and looking for great accommodations and an itinerary that would suit us. They came back very quickly and had most of the boxes checked on the first try. We made some minor modifications which they accommodated so quickly and professionally. The trip itself was amazing and all of their choices were thoughtful and all of the accommodations were very nice. We also felt like, given the limited time we had, we did get to see most of New Zealand yet we didn’t feel like we were constantly on the go. We had plenty of down time baked into the plan. For our time period it was pretty much perfect!

Jean-Michel’s office definitely added value by grabbing us great accommodations quickly right at the start of our planning process. We didn’t have time to wait and they worked that angle very hard in the beginning. They also booked dinners for us each night and provided some guidance on where to eat. This made things so much less stressful for us and gave us an anchor each day that we could rely on. Finally, they were incredibly responsive throughout our trip. We really didn’t have any problems but they were available to assist with anything that came up and did so with a cheerful attitude. We did have some re-bookings due to weather and they handled all of that with very little input from us. That allowed us to focus on our trip and not worry about logistics! Finally, they connected us with an amazing guide in Queenstown and spending the day with him was most definitely a highlight of our trip! Overall we would enthusiastically recommend Jean-Michel’s team to plan a trip to NZ. Thank you!

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