New Zealand Here We Come
Lynne has long embraced the idea of exploring New Zealand having seen photographs in calendars posted from her older step sister to her Mum over many years.
I have resisted for some time not excited by the long journey and time away from home not to mention the expense. However, following our Canadian road trip in 2019, New Zealand began to gain traction in our minds. We are getting older and there will only be so many years we can manage such a trip.
The pandemic put a stop to any planning for a couple of years, with no understanding of what the future held with regard to travel, but by summer 2022 we were talking of it really happening but didn't push on with it until it was already too late for early 2023.
By the end of summer 2023 we had talked it over to the point of knowing that if we did it we would go for 3 to 4 weeks at the end of the New Zealand summer so February-March 2024. We would travel both islands in a rental motorhome as transport and accommodation, a departure from our previous big road trips but something we have done many years in Scotland in April.
We have always booked previous trips ourselves online as separate components but with such a complex and high value set of bookings across flights, RV rental, hotels and inter-island ferries, any of which could throw the rest, we approached a specialist travel company in October and outlined our plan. Everything took off from there, our travel advisor Gemma turned out to be everything we wanted and we were able to book the essential components as a package giving us security whilst retaining the freedom of sorting out our own route and RV overnights.
Flights out with Emirates from Manchester (UK) to Auckland (North Island) where we pickup our RV. We have 22 days of exploration before returning the RV at Christchurch (South Island) from where we will fly home.
The exact route, highlights and overnight stops are still being researched but it will be a journey of more than 4000km (2500mi) and will take us away from home for 30 days.
Blogging again
I am hoping to write a live blog as we cross though previous trips have demonstrated this to be an onerous task with long days and poor connections so we'll see how it goes. We'd be delighted anyone follows us so please leave comments, you can select anonymous.Previous Trip Blogs
Exciting times, look forward to following your journey
ReplyDeleteHi Ged & Lynne , Really looking forward to keeping up with your blog and enjoying seeing all your fantastic travels ! Jill x
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