We sit at Auckland airport, sad at leaving NZ but ready to enjoy OZ. The last few days have been a wet send off, with two absolutely washed out days in Gisborne. But it hasn't changed our feeling about this lovely country.We've driven 5000 km around the country and seen it North and South, snow-capped peaks and dry flat plains, lush greenery and almost-desert valleys, seas and lakes, hostels and motels. We've walked and boated through hills and fjords, national park and forest. New Zealand has the mountains of Austria, the coastline and beaches of France, the green countryside of England and the orderliness of the Nordics – the most beautiful country either of us have ever seen. And now it's time to move on.
It's a strangely normal thing to get up in the morning, pack up and casually think “we're flying to Australia today”. If we were flying from home, it would have been the source of days or even weeks of preparation. Instead, we have no real plan other than a first night booked in a Sydney hostel and a second night arranged with a friend of Nicki's who came to Australia two years ago. The trip so far has taught us to be flexible and prepared for whatever may come and whatever seems like a good idea, rather than having a rigid plan and desperately trying to stick to it. So we'll get a few recommendations and find our way as we go.
Finally, at the airport we found a person in NZ we didn't like
– or rather, he found us. I am always wary of people who start talking to you in public places for no apparent reason, and often it results in them boring the hell out of you. The definition of a bore, I was once told, is “someone who tells you something you already know, or something you never wanted to know in the first place”. In this case, a guy asked us where we are from and quickly moved on to his main purpose of talking. He ranted on about how we must have wasted our time going to the mountains in the South Island (they were utterly stunning!) and how he went to Newcastle in the UK and refused to see anything. He dropped heavy hints about “travelling with the Rugby team to South Africa” and we ignored the bait, knowing this would lead to more stuff we never wanted to know in the first place. Nicki is polite enough to give such people the time of day – I, on the other hand, have no ability to be nice and do my best to ignore them. Oh well, we'd met so many nice people here, it far outweighed this irritating bugger.We realise how spoiled we are to be able to leave New Zealand for a month in Australia. At the same time, the world tour is flying by and we are very conscious that on Friday, it will be just 6 weeks until we fly home. In a way, we are making our way home as of now, since New Zealand is
the furthest point of the trip – Australia is closer to home than NZ.“Real Life” has of course continued back at home for everyone else and we are thinking about the big “what's the next step?” questions. Three days in Hong Kong and two weeks in Thailand follow on from the Australia leg of the trip and our return date is March 19th - neither of us want it to end, but of course that real-life return is beckoning. A friend of mine recently came back from a very relaxing holiday in a remote part of South Africa and found the return to the busy life at home a shock. He warned me to make a good “re-entry” plan, and we are gradually doing that already.
But for now, we look at the trip that awaits ahead. We land in Sydney tonight and stay for a few days, then we start heading up the East Coast towards Brisbane and onto Cairns, 2600km up the coast from Sydney. The rest we'll work out as we go along.
