Six months ago we unintentionally booked a trip to NZ. How do you do that kind of thing unintentionally, you ask? Easy. We had a flight credit, and had planned to maybe visit Sydney, and instead New Zealand was on sale and (as often happens with us) we got distracted by the shiny thing and ended up booking return flights to Auckland.

We then ignored the trip for several months, almost forgetting about it completely until people started asking us, “what are you going to do over there?”. After the third or fourth time that happened and we had no answer, panic started to set in and we decided some planning and booking might be in order.

And thus began the long and arduous journey of “top ten best things to do in New Zealand” lists and YouTube vlogs of other people’s travels. It took us so long to decide where to go that the first thing we ended up booking was a month before the trip – and that was Hobbiton (priorities all in order over here, thank you very much).

We followed that up with a car booking, and patted ourselves on the back for coming up with a decent North Island trip for our two week adventure… And then we changed everything completely when we came across an awesome deal on a motorhome. The catch? We have to drive it from the South Island to the North Island. So three weeks out from the flight, we cancelled everything we had booked so far, booked the motorhome and then proceeded to panic wildly about not knowing where we were going.

We hurriedly researched more (being honest here, Kurt researched more, not Nic) and over the next week or so came up with a new plan. A better plan! It’s now been fleshed out a bit more, with some bookings sprinkled in, and we’re at the airport about to set off on our adventure. (You can thank a one-hour flight delay for this blog post, otherwise we might not have had time for it!)

Day 1 – Saturday 7th: Flight to Christchurch, picking up the motorhome and driving to the Mount Cook area, to what NZ calls a “freedom” campsite. These are campsites that are completely free to use, provided you have a self-sustaining motorhome (which we will!).

Day 2 – Sunday 8th: A morning of fishing, then off to Queenstown.

Day 3 – Monday 9th: Milford Sound! (Hopefully. Weather pending. Fingers crossed!) We’ll be doing a short flight to Milford Sound, followed by a cruise on the water and then kayaking.

Day 4 – Tuesday 10th: Queenstown exploration (and maybe more kayaking, who knows?).

Day 5 – Wednesday 11th: Driving the Haast Pass – gorgeous road through the mountains between Queenstown and Hasst (or so we’ve heard).

Day 6 – Thursday 12th: Franz Josef glacier and a rainforest retreat.

Day 7 – Friday 13th: Driving towards Picton, via Hokitika Gorge.

Day 8 – Saturday 14th: Picton and the ferry ride to Wellington, then (maybe) Weta Workshop so we can maintain our Lord of the Rings nerd-status.

Day 9 – Sunday 15th: Drive towards Napier.

Day 10 & 11 – Monday 16th and Tuesday 17th: Raft fishing, baby!

Day 12 – Wednesday 18th: Hobbiton.

Day 13 & 14 – Thursday 19th & Friday 20th: Redwood walk, Kerosene Creek, maybe a bit of Taupo time. We’ll see how tired we are by this point!

Day 15 – Saturday 21st: Auckland to return the motorhome, and then some city time to re-integrate ourselves into society. Maybe even a shower. Who knows, we’ll basically be hippies by this point.

Day 16 – Sunday 22nd: Flight to Brisbane, followed by the drive back to Bundy the next day.

And that’s it! Our great, unintentional adventure of 2019. Stay tuned for fun times, like us freaking out over emptying the black water from our motorhome (that’s the toilet stuff, we’ve learnt) and Nicole catching more fish than Kurt again.