Roads go ever ever on

Tomorrow, it will be Halloween, which this year means our last night in the UK for a whole 30 days! I had meant to write an update for the blog before now, however life got in the way as usual. Shortly after my opening blog post Paul got the flu, which morphed into a chest infection and resulted in his worst bout of illness for years (seriously, his patient history at the doctor's is practically non-existent). He was off for two weeks in total and I was a bit worried as to whether he would actually recover in time for us to make it to New Zealand at one point! Thankfully, aside from a residual cough, he is much better now and we are both looking forward to leaving the cold temperatures and the miserable darkness behind when we jet off on Thursday night.

So I thought I would take a break from tearing my hair out packing to post some inspiration in the form of our planned itinerary! Having not been to New Zealand before (and given the distances and expense involved, unlikely to make it back there before we retire...), we found it really tricky to put this together. Although you might think NZ is fairly small on the world map, the majority of the roads are like A roads in the UK and therefore a fair bit of time is spent getting from one destination to the next. There is also some geographical hinderance,  such as an impassable whopping great big mountain range that forms the 'spine' of the South Island. Inevitably, with so many places to see and finite time, we had to cut some destinations out - notably the Bay of Islands, Otago Peninsula and Abel Tasman. We hope to return to do those at some point in the future. The map below shows the route that we eventually settled on for this trip!


View NZ Intinerary for blog in a larger map

01/11 - 04/11: Singapore. Arrive Auckland (A) on the 04/11.
B: 05/11 - 07/11: Waiheke Island
C: 07/11 - 09/11: Cooks Beach, Coromandel Peninsula
D: 09/11 - 11/11: Rotorua
E: 11/11 - 13/11: Taupo
F: 13/11 - 15/11: Wellington. Catch the ferry across the Cook Strait to the South Island on the 15/11.
G: 15/11 - 17/11: Kaikoura
H: 17/11- 18/11: Christchurch
I: 18/11 - 19/11: Lake Tekapo
J: 19/11 - 20/11: Mount Cook
K: 20/11 - 22/11: Queenstown
L: 22/11 - 23/11: Manapouri (near Te Anau)
23/11 - 24/11: Doubtful Sound overnight cruise
M: 24/11 - 26/11: Wanaka
N: 26/11 - 28/11: Franz Josef
O: 28/11 - 29/11: Christchurch. Fly back to the UK from Christchurch on the 29/11.

There you have it! Now to go and tick some more essentials off the packing list.....

Till next time,
Sarah and Paul