Preparations

New Zealand.

We never expected to go there in our travels. There are so many places we want to visit now that I am semi-retired. Not that we have anything against New Zealand, it just wasn't on our top ten list. So when the opportunity came up it took us both by surprise.

So since January we have been getting everthing lined up to go. Now that we have most of the arrangements made, we are starting to look forward to the trip. We will be traveling with Sylvia and Roy, my sister and her husband. They live in Australia and had been working on a trip to New Zealand for a while. In any case, it is because they invited us along that we are going. We will be mostly traveling around the South Island. We will have three days in Auckland on first arrival, primarily to get acclimated to the time zone and to see a little bit of the biggest city. Then we are off to Christchurch and will rent a car and drive around the island, from Nelson in the North to Invergargill in the South. We hope to see lots of mountains, sea shore, birds (yes a Kiwi), and on my list is penguins in the wild.

We will be in a separate car from Sylvia and Roy. They are going to rent a Mazda Miata (MX5) which has very limited luggage space. But since Katie and I travel heavier than that we will rent a Toyota size car to carry our luggage, cameras, computer, etc. And I suspect, because it will be available, we will carry some of additional things for Sylvia and Roy.

No guarantees how well I'll keep this blog up to date, but I'll try. Some of it may depend on the availability of Internet access. I'll include pictures of interesting things....but hopefully not overkill.

More later