My accountant and his wife who was my administrator for 15 years moved out to Dunedin because his daughter and grandchildren were there. We went to visit them three years ago and also did a driving tour of most of South Island and a couple of days at Auckland. Christchurch is very familiar, you could almost be in England and we could live there easily. It's very quiet, we drove 120km one evening on highway 1 and only 40 vehicles came the other way. North Island is quite a bit different but warmer.