I hoping to do New Zealand next year in November? Anyone done the south island?
My personal suggestion is that you just rent a bike or ship one over, and use knopftours.com .
knopftours takes care of your insurance, shipping (cheap if you care to ride it down to Orlando), rentals, B&B, ride suggestions, local tour of Heidelberg and area, maps, motorcycle maintenance and repairs, etc.
Hanging around their shop will introduce you to quite a variety of other riders who are either just coming in from epic rides, or just getting ready to head out themselves.
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sadrik
I've done 5 tours with Edelweiss. They are awesome. They take care of everything and all you have to do is just ride and enjoy. The only weak parts are (1) if you ride with the group, the ride will be tailored to the weakest rider in the group (to avoid accidents) so if you're really skilled you may get bored, (2) if the tour has a large group, you may miss the small stuff - a group of 14 bikes with 18 riders can't stop at the quaint stop for a coffee break - gotta have enough space to park the bikes and be very efficient to handle the size of the group (ordering/serving/paying as well as restroom access). I like to ride slow, take my time, take lots of photo stops and arrive at a reasonable time at the hotel to clean up and have a pleasant dinner - with all the travel hassles addressed. Great for me, but if you want to do it all yourself, don't go with them.
I agree with you on IMT Bikes - I rented a BMW 650GS for two and a half weeks from them in Barcelona; comes with three luggage cases; unlimited KM's; travel anywhere in Europe; roadside assistance; and insurance. Left my luggage with them and packed my almost brand new bike and took off -the wrong way, lol, was too excited I guess. It cost about $100 Euros per day at the time. Rode about 3500 kms - all the way up to the Normandy beaches. I took my own GPS mapped for Europe which I highly recommend unless you are good at navigating roundabouts in foreign languarges! and it maps the photo radar as well, which is everywhere. Has to be much cheaper than a tour for my style, being free to do what I want is, well, what I want! Would definitely rent from them again.