Most days on the road are good, really good. A few are the rare kind that you remember for years; days that were so amazing it almost hurts to remember them – like skydiving in New Zealand. Then, inevitably, there are the days that aren’t so good. Just as in normal life, sometimes we’re exhausted, sick, pissed off or just feeling inexplicably flat. Unfortunately, I was feeling a mixture of all those things the day we set off on our Great Ocean Road Trip.
New Zealand was the first stop on our trip and it proved the perfect country to start our new life of travel. Here’s the lowdown on the best places we visited, our overall impressions of the country and some tips for backpacking around New Zealand.
By the time we reached the South Island in New Zealand we thought we’d seen it all; volcanoes, beautiful beaches, geysers, glowworm caves, mountains and forests – but New Zealand had one more trick up its sleeve: Glaciers.
It’s been a month since we set off on our travels, so how are we coping? Has it been everything we thought it would be? Are we at each other’s throats yet? Here’s how we’re adapting to our new life of travel.
We arrived in New Zealand physically and mentally exhausted. Those last few weeks before leaving were so emotional and stressful; it was a relief to finally be away from the strangeness of those final days. We launched straight into an overnight boat cruise and moved quickly from one place to the next, packing our time with activities. In hindsight this could have caused a complete meltdown, but it actually worked out well for us; seeing as much as possible and taking on new challenges stopped us from dwelling on the massive upheaval we’d just gone through.
