So, it’s the big count down with 17 days to go until we fly. We’re heading out from Heathrow Airport on the 6th January, transfer in Hong Kong for 10 hours (yep…10 hours) and then hop on over to Auckland arriving on the 8th January. Mega travel times *breaths deep*.
As we’re having 6, almost 7 months away – mainly working but also holidaying – we’ve planned that the first half month we just get settled into Kiwi life, hopefully get over jet lag and get ourselves on the move. Therefore we’ve got 4 days in Auckland to start getting our heads around what we’ve just done. After that we fly all the way down to Invercarvgill on the south of the South Island and then sail across to Stewart Island for our first nature stop and enjoy ‘The Great Walk’ – the best place in the southern hemisphere to see the Southern Lights, Kiwi birds and just some beautiful nature reserve.
North Island, New Zealand
The next immediate stage is to get back to the mainland and buy ourselves a cheapish car. From here, we head to our mini WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) location in Riverton for a week to get us into the swing of it before driving over to The Catlins Conservation and Forest Parks to begin our first big volunteering session.
Invercargill, South Island
After this we plan to road trip it up the South Island over roughly the next three months. Using our location of work as a base for 3-4 weeks at a time and then using the remaining time for site seeing, leaving at least a week between places to just to enjoy ourselves and chill out. Mount Cook and seeing and hiking up either Fox or Franz Josef Glaciers are a definite! There’s also some potential for some adrenalin sports when we hit Queestown – I’ve now been dared to do the world famous bungee jump – I’m terrified! Eventually we’ll end up in Picton at the top of the South Island and sail on over to Wellington for the next leg of the journey.
Once this is all done, we’ll come home. Probably sleep for a very long time and then spend the rest of the time sorting out the millions of photos that will have been taken. Then sleep some more.
Edited on 20th December 2014.
To Journey Far and Back Again 