Queenstown, New Zealand

Our time in Queenstown was like a holiday!

But I can’t say the same for the flight. The journey was quite turbulent, the worst we’d both experienced. We sat on the flight to let our bodies settle after being thrown around, we let everyone else off before we made our way.

NZ border control is much like Australia; border control took our tent into the lab and came back saying it was very clean! Yes it was, we cleaned everything in Sydney. They didn’t care to check the bikes though, fair enough.

First impressions of landing in Queenstown, ‘this looks a lot like the highlands!’ and ‘I can’t believe we came all this way to a place that looks exactly like home.’

(Don’t worry, we soon found that New Zealand is quite unique once we got to riding!)

While in Queenstown we enjoyed the town, walked around the little trails, went out for dinner, ate ice cream and went out for gin and live music, all between catching up on work. I needed a mega catch-up as I’d front-loaded a tonne of work in Asia to make the Aus bit bearable and now I had to do it again.

We went on a boat ride and up the steepest gondola. It was a joy!

While there, we made a decision, with our engagement now underway we bought Stew more into my work which was a relief for me and a blessing on the trip.

When we left the UK for the second phase of the trip we had planned to stick to our original budget and complete the trip we started as we intended it, but with a very stable income that had somehow increased in Aus, we decided, YOLO.

We’ve doubled our budget for New Zealand.

To be honest, this trip is creating itself in it’s own way, a very unique adventure in its own right and we’re just going with it.

The truth is, Aus on £50/day knowing it could’ve been £100 was tough and we don’t have to camp when its cold or miss out on the opportunities in front of us due to money, so we’re not going to do that anymore.

It’s time to submit to this adventure and let it write itself instead of holding onto what was ‘supposed’ to be.

Working and travelling is a true blessing and something I worked bloody hard to achieve while in lockdown, so, now is time to enjoy the fruits of my labour.