New Zealand – The Drive, The Seasons, The Adrenaline

New Zealand was one of those places I had always admired but was never quite sure I wanted to visit. My only knowledge of this island nation in the Pacific Ocean stopped at the land of the hobbits and elves. I knew it’s beautiful and is near Mecca status for photography enthusiasts and outdoor aficionados. But I’m neither. I’m more of a tropical beaches, museums, and ancient ruins kind of traveler. But what can I do, the first year we initiated the “Pick a Destination out of a Hat” tradition, we landed on New Zealand. As if meant to be, Air New Zealand started direct flights from Houston to Auckland that same week. The destination was drawn on Christmas 2015, and we booked the flights for November 2016 within the next week.

Contrary to me, New Zealand was Sam’s No. 1 destination. As a die-hard Lord of the Rings and the Hobbits fan, and a lover of mountains and hiking, New Zealand has been a dream of his. Naturally, I was all too happy to leave the planning to Sam for this trip. We decided to do a 2.5-week long road trip around both the North and South Islands. As any responsible engineer would, Sam’s plan was meticulously laid out in Excel format. (Let me know if you are interested in copying this itinerary, I do realize the image is too small to read, but that’s because the plan is too wide to fit…)

Honestly, 2.5 weeks is not enough to see New Zealand. Particularly if you want to see both islands and do it on a road trip. It’s not a big country, but places are far apart and there are a lot of mountainous roads so it takes a bit of travel time. But we were determined and we did it! Along the way, we experienced all four seasons from the scorching summer heat to the frozen glaciers. We saw unbelievably varied landscapes packed into such a small country. We broke up the tranquil nature hikes with adrenaline pumping activities.

As soon as the trip was booked, we knew we were going to cross off a few bucket list items while there. This included skydiving, bungee jumping, glacier hiking and maybe camper van-ing(?). To prevent myself from chickening out, I told everybody that I was going to skydive and bungee in New Zealand for 11 months between booking the flights and actually leaving for the trip. To all who had to listen to my repeated declarations, sorry guys, and thank you for your patience. So did we successfully check off all the items we planned to do? I’ll tell you when the posts get there.

For today, I’ll leave you with an overview of our itinerary. Sam’s plan was packed, but kudos to him, we never felt rushed in any place and were able to see so much in such limited time. He even kept me, who is generally apathetic towards anything nature related, entertained and excited the whole trip. We slept in a different place nearly every single night. That’s A LOT of unpacking and packing back up. Even though I was already traveling super light by my standards, this was exhausting (this was before I discovered these wonderful things called the packing cubes…).

Until next time then.

C.