Such a pinch-me moment to actually get to say, but I’ve just returned from the other side of the planet!

As I’ve mentioned before, my partner is a Kiwi. He was born and spent a large portion of his childhood in New Zealand. He then returned there during the lockdown and has been living and working there for over a year now. I’ve wanted to visit there for many, many years and I nearly moved there back in 2017 to spend a year or two on a Working Holiday Visa before a stupid boy distracted me from my plans. Fast forward to the last three years and NZ’s borders are totally locked down and visitors like myself aren’t allowed in. James was barely able to snag a quarantine spot to get BACK into the country after visiting me last Christmas. I even tried applying for a special family exemption to see him and no dice. So, you can probably imagine our excitement when it was announced earlier this year that they’d be allowing folks like me back into the country in May. James and I wasted NO TIME booking me a flight.

I work in a special ROWE (results only work environment), so I can work from anywhere, which allowed me to stay for three whole weeks without taking any vacation time. I would have stayed longer, but I needed to get back to the chinchillas at home and make sure they were alright.

I’d never taken a long-haul flight like this before and I’d never been to the southern hemisphere before. I was PROPER freaking out. But we all know how much I love new stamps on my passport, so in late June I packed a couple of bags, called an Uber to the airport, and set off for the adventure of a lifetime.

I’ll spare you the details of much of the trip down there. It was a total of three flights there and the exact opposite on the way back: Fort Lauderdale to Toronto, Toronto to Vancouver, and Vancouver to Auckland with two extremely long layovers (5 and 11 hours respectively) in between. All in all, it went fine. I flew Air Canada and Air New Zealand and all six flights were operated extremely well and as comfortable as could be considering the exhausting circumstances. I even managed to sleep in the airports and on the flights - for pretty much the first time in my life; so in all fairness, I have absolutely no complaints. But, frankly, I would have happily suffered much worse to visit James. I missed him like crazy and I couldn’t wait to visit his home country. 🥰🇳🇿

I arrived and he swept me away to spend the next three unforgettable weeks exploring the North Island of the country.

I’m going to split this vacation into a few seperate posts because I don’t want to TLDR a three week holiday to make it quickly digestable. But let me begin the next series of posts by saying that I adored my time in New Zealand. The food, scenery, and people were totally unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. As it was also mid-winter down there, it was a nice break from the excruciating Florida heat for a few weeks - I got to break in a few of my favorite wardrobe pieces that have never seen the light of day before because they’re just not wearable here. Including this amazing pilot’s jacket my mom thrifted forever ago.

I’ll get into details about where James and I went and what we ate in my next post, but for now, suffice it to say my entire three weeks was a joyous assortment of delicious snacks - including numerous Nandos visits - and the weirdest plants I’ve ever set eyes on.

And for all those out there who have a big love for candy like me, these TNT and Hi-Chew candies are my NEW FAVORITE candy ever. I cannot get enough - they’re like Warheads and Starbursts, but better - trust me.

As for some of the FAQs one usually gets with a trip like this:

No, I didn’t suffer any jetlag because my sleep schedule is so wonky normally anyway and I worked Eastern time zone hours for a lot of the trip anyway so as not to inconvenience my coworkers with my new weird time zone.
My advice for someone about to take a long flight like this that hasn’t before, invest in compressive flight socks and noise-canceling headphones. Both of which made ALL THE DIFFERENCE for me in making me more comfortable both in flight and at the airport. And they both helped me actually get some rest, which was worth the money ten-fold. I’ve linked both of mine that I used here.
For luggage, I took one big checked bag and one carry-on and that’s it and I actually still found I brought more clothes and supplies than I needed for three weeks.
The food was a bit of an adjustment for me as a lot of their cuisine is very heavily influenced by Asian food for obvious reasons. I’ve never been the biggest fan of many Asian cuisines, however, I did really enjoy the ramen and dumplings I ate while I was there, which is super exciting because I’ve never tried dumplings before!
We visited most of the North Island over the course of the three weeks I was there and I think that would have been plenty enough time if we both hadn’t been working during the week and only really going out on the weekends. Trying to cram all the trips and things into just Friday - Sunday was definitely tough and tiring and I don’t know that I’d recommend doing that to most people.
The weather was in the mid-50s and 60s and rainy most days, so nothing too hard to deal with. If you travel the same time frame as I did - June-July - bring a waterproof coat and shoes, something to cover your ears on a windy day, and lots of layers you can take off and put on if the sun decides to come out because BELIEVE ME that whole no-ozone layer thing is real. Even as someone who lives in a warm climate, I’ve never felt HOT SUN like that in New Zealand and you don’t want to be stuck in a massive jumper with nothing underneath when the clouds disappear.

Those are just some of my overall thoughts for now. I’ll spill all the Kiwi tea very soon.

For now, thanks for following along with me on all my amazing adventures, and thanks to the folks of New Zealand for hosting me so wonderfully while I was there.

Catch you all in the next one, friends.

Write on! xoxo