Creating immersive experiences right here in our backyard

  Russell from Wicked Wanderers met our cruise ship on time for the 4hr scenic tour of Tauranga. Small group, very comfortable air conditioned van. Tour commentary was excellent & well... read more informed, Russell was very personable & helpful too. The trip needed to be adapted slightly due to poor weather to ensure we had a great time. Well done, Russell!!

  This was a veryinformative tour. Our guide was wonderful! We found out a lot about Tauranga and it's surroundings!

  What a great time. I was up from Christchurch at a conference in Tauranga with some time to kill and decided to do this tour. Russell was a great guide... read more and made the trip really enjoyable. The guides at Te Puia were great and I learnt a lot about the local geography and local culture. Highly recommended.

  We were on the Queen Victoria and we absolutely loved this tour! So happy our daughter booked it and happy we didn’t book with the cruise company such a better... read more experience very personal!
I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn about the culture and have a great personalized tour! Our guide was wonderful! Love from the USA !

  We are delighted that we booked this tour instead of one of the cruise ship tours. Russell was well informed and interesting, and his knowledge of the... read more district and history was impressive. We enjoyed every aspect of the excursion. The vehicle was comfortable. We appreciated being part of a small group, it seemed friendlier and more relaxed.

  Had a tour with Russell and it was fantastic!

Saw lots of interesting stuff, learned plenty of cool facts about what we were seeing, and had a great... read more time all round! Very knowledgeable and helpful, great sense of humour and very approachable!

Highly recommend these guys, cannot speak highly enough of their services!

  Small bus was lovely. Very informative and flexible. Enjoyed by all of us including the teenagers. Need ot be able to walk on uneven ground but we are not particularly... read more fit and were fine with the walking so it's not a big issue.

  Small group tour with Russell being very responsive in replies in enquires. Great, smooth and not rushed in timing which were good. A secret local lunch hideout (you will need... read more to join this tour to know this secret which serves fantastic food).
He went to the extend of getting red kiwi fruits for visual experimental which was a bonus.
Thanks Russell!

  Great city tour with a visit to a honey farm, kiwi farm with great tasting kiwi ice cream and a avocado farm.

  Russel was a lovely welcoming guide who took great care of us. Very informative and relaxed. Highly recommend it

  Having booked a small group tour of Tauranga on-line were we really didn't know what to expect. We were pleasantly surprised when Carol took us on a relaxing and very... read more informative highlights tour. Carol is passionate and professional and we were so glad we didn't decide to be part of the "cattle class" on one of the larger tour coaches.
We highly recommend this tour to anyone stopping off in Tauranga. Thanks Carol for providing one of the highlights of our New Zealand cruise.

  We were very lucky to be the only ones on this trip that day, our guide was excellent new what he was talking about and answered any questions we had... read more also the van was very clean. Started with a tour of the city then made our way to a kiwi fruit farm was very interesting and lots of different foods to sample bought quite a few things, the honey farm was good has a nice little cafe also very interesting. The just a quick visit to a avocado farm were we sampled some amazing avocado oils yummy. All up a great day would recommend this tour.

  The views was so amazing & our guide who was with us was very informative about the many locations we went to! Such a beautiful trip & highly recommend

  Our guide Russell was a local man who was at the pier to greet us. The tour showed us around the town of the "Mount", beaches, harbour, the adjoining... read more community of Tauranga, working port, shopping precinct. We then headed out from there to a honey producing company and samples the famous Manuka honey and other blends. Coffee break welcome. Then to a small farm seeing avocado trees laden with fruit (no sample sadly). We did though sample the oil from same. Following this we headed to another farm producing the famous Kiwi fruit and were told about the two main varieties (green and gold Kiwi fruits). Overall I enjoyed the tour and found Russell to be an engaging and helpful guide, but we (as older persons),found getting in and out of the mini bus a bit of a challenge. I enjoyed the visit to the greenhouse on the harbour, but would have liked to go inside the old missionary complex instead of looking from the street.

  On a recent New Zealand cruise we visited a number of ports. Tauranga is a stunning place and our memories will be all the more special because of this... read more excellent shore excursion. Carol from Wicked Wanders was there to meet us when we disembarked with a very warm welcome. There were 8 of us on the tour and the van was very roomy and comfortable. The tour was diverse in that we saw the popular beaches of the area, visited a Manuka Honey farm, a kiwi orchard and an avocado farm but all in a very relaxed and informative way. Both my husband and I could not recommend this shore excursion highly enough.

  The sites are lovely. Russell knew his history. Disappointed about the tea stop being closed but the elms were fascinating

  This was a great tour with Russell so informative he certainly knows his stuff!
Definitely recommend this tour to anyone wanting a bit of history as well as small... read more tastings of the wonderful kiwi fruit and avocado that we definitely don’t get at home !

  What a wealth of information Russell was. We learnt so much about New Zealand history and especially liked the avocado and kiwi fruit tasting. Would highly recommend this tour.

  Our experience with Wicked wanders was EXCELLENT. Carol was an excellent guide showing us Tauranga. great value for money and we saw so much, Had a great... read more lunch at a farm on top of the hills over looking Tauranga. Fish and chips lunch was cheap and was ordered before so we just needed to drive there and pick it up. Well organised. Wood train blocked our way but Carol knew another way to get through. Very informative lovely person and great driver. Great overall. Was a great adventure in Tauranga.

  This trip is well worth it, especially if you want to quickly learn more about the history of NZ. We've tried a few other cultural experiences here but they felt... read more impersonal and weren't as fun or knowledgeable.

Since it's a small tour we got to ask a bunch of questions, and Russ knows his stuff. He's also great to have a laugh with & I recommend asking for him when you book.

We went with a family group including parents, grandparents, Aunts etc. but it'd be perfect whoever you're with.

Thanks for the great day!

  Fantastic and very informative time we had with Russell. He was casual but very well informed on lots of general life, history, commerce and found interesting New Zealand focused... read more things for us to see. I think this is the best tour we did on this holiday.

  Wow! Awesome day spent with Russell! Highly recommend this tour. We covered the area of Mount Maunganti in the Bay of Plenty and all around Tauranga.... read more His knowledge of the Māori and their culture is amazing. Heard a Māori fairy tale, learned about how New Zealand came to be settled and the industry and agriculture of Tauranga. Lots of fun going to kiwi farm, got to taste kiwi, avocado, and avocado oil - Russell has the tasting down to a science! I am a tea lover, so a treat to pick up some tea from Webster’s. Enjoyed a lunch at Organico in their back garden area. Got to put my toes int he sand and water.

  This small group tour was very informative and we had the opportunity to see a selection of locations that had important historical significance. The guide was knowledgeable & able to... read more answer all our questions. Really liked the visit to the the Manuka honey factory & the Kiwi farm. The free sample of ice cream & kiwi was very tasty. The final visit to the avocado farm was also interesting.
Worthwhile way to spend your time

  Took this tour whilst on a day visit by cruise ship. Great choice. Was easy to find just outside of the wharf gate. Comfortable mini bus & Russell was a... read more knowledgeable & friendly guide. Would highly recommend

  Our guide, Nicolle was excellent: professional, friendly, and knowledgeable. She kept us on track to ensure we didn't miss our ship. The tour was terrific: entertaining, educational, and beautiful.

  We were looking for an affordable excursion getting off the cruise ship. We found Wicked Wanders which offered a four hour tour provided by Carol and was very affordable.... read more We went to the Manuka Honey attraction, a kiwi orchard, stopped at a local place and got take out fish and chips. Carol took us to a scenic place overlooking the water for us to eat our lunch. These are just the highlights, there were other places we went as well. Carol is a wonderful tour guide, extremely knowledgeable about her country. When the time for our tour was up and there were still other things we wanted to see, she asked if we wanted to continue on or go back to the ship. We ended up with a 5+ hour tour which was absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend this tour.

  We were on a cruise that unexpectedly visited Tauranga for 2 days. The fist day we did a hop on & hop off bus tour around Tauranga. The second... read more day we booked a tour with Russell who took us on sight seeing tour around the town and told us bit of history of the region - very interesting. We then headed out of town to Comvita Manuka Honey factory, then to a kiwi fruit farm & finally an avocado farm. Russell was an informative, welcoming & good humoured host - very enjoyable.

  When cruising it is easy to book excursions directly from the ship. We have found these can be very expensive and very impersonal. You have 50 on the coach and... read more time taken to get on and off can be wasteful. On our recent trip to NZ and Oz we compared the ship's prices with independent operators. They were often almost half price and everyone worked out really well.
This was our first excursion from our cruise ship and we were not sure what to expect. It was an excellent tour and Carol was a great driver and guide. She was very informative throughout. We visited a small town and the countryside that really gave us a view of NZ life. We visited a Honey farm, Kiwi farm and Avocado farm. She was very knowledgeable about all the growing processes. We tasted honey but were advised not to buy any honey products as banned from Western Australia and we were disembarking in Perth. We were introduced to Golden and Green Kiwis and she bought us kiwi ice creams. Finally she provided bread to enable us to taste the oil at the avocado farm. It was a most enjoyable trip which gave us our first introduction to New Zealand.

  Our tour guide, Russell, picked us up at the dock as soon as we arrived. We drove to Hobbiton and had a delightful time visiting the movie set followed... read more by a delicious lunch. On our return, we stopped and walked trails through a beautiful park with waterfalls. Russell was very knowledgeable and able to answer all our questions and give us details. It was a grand day on our trip and all our expectations about seeing the beautiful New Zealand countryside were met.

  We were on a cruise ship and wanted a low key tour that didn't go too far or for too long. Wicked wanders tours was the perfect choice. Carol was... read more prompt, professional, and pleasant. Her pride of her lovely hometown was evident in the great information she provided along the way. She made several photo stops. The highlight for us were stops to see how manuka honey was made and how kiwis grew. Interesting...
We enjoyed seeing lovely tauranga with a local expert. Thanks, Carol.