Kia Ora, New Zealand!

Kia Ora: a Maori-language greeting which translates literally as "have life" or "be healthy". It can be used to mean good morning, hello, good luck, and take care. New Zealanders are the actual nicest.

I've been putting off writing this blog because that means my trip of a life time to New Zealand is officially over... but now I think it'll be bitter sweet to re-live all the memories that were made and the adventures that we went on. So here we go!

First things first, my initial part of the blog is to answer WHY New Zealand?? When I was teeny tiny I basically wanted to be Steve Irwin. I love animals, I love adventure, I love jungle like places that also have incredible beaches, I love their accents, I loved the Mary Kate and Ashley movie Our Lips Are Sealed (come on...). So Australia was always my #1 destination as a kid. As I got older, I realized there was also this place called New Zealand. It has the adventure capital of the world, Queenstown. It has no dangerous animals but just nice ones. The people are just as friendly. They have everything from beaches to jungles to caves to mountains to country sides. It was starting to slide into the number 1 spot. I heard the Women's World Cup was going to be in Australia and New Zealand, and quite frankly it was game over from there. I did a lot of research, a lot of predicting for games, a lot of map quest and googling, and decided that going to New Zealand made the most sense. I would've loved to do both Australia and New Zealand, but who knew they were a 3 hr plane ride away from each other??? Maps and globes are my Roman Empire. So anyways, discussed this plan of mine with my sister, Katie and brother in law, Nick. If you know us at all, you know we are similar but also very different. While I had a broad plan and was just ready to get there and go from there, Katie was like okay. Well, we are going to go with you because that will be fun (plus COVID ruined their honeymoon plans) and also we are actually going to PLAN things like normal humans (Nick was also a very large contributor to these so called "plans"). Nick also mentioned that New Zealand was on his dad's bucket list, and then Ransom (his brother) also came along because why not?! So the crew is set, the destinations are set (Queenstown, adventure capital of the world, & Auckland, capital of NZ and location of soccer game). Now comes the fun part!

Of course, like previous blogs about travel, you know I love to include the actual travel portion. Which I know, I know..this part can be boring. BUT, it's essential to hear about if you're thinking about taking a trip to one of these places!

So flight to New Zealand went like this....

Friday, August 4th

Charleston 7:18pm -> Dallas 9:13pm = 2 hr 55m flight

1 hr 17m

layover

Dallas 10:30pm -> Sydney, Australia 6:15am Sunday, August 6th (time travel!!!!!)= 16 hr 45 minute flight

3 hr 15m layover

Sydney 9:30am -> Queenstown, New Zealand 2:30pm= 3 hr flight

Time difference: 16 hours ahead of South Carolina :)

Season: Winter

Total travel time including layovers: around 26 hours and 32 minutes

Total air time: around 22 hours

So.. it's safe to say, the travel to New Zealand is an adventure in itself. But honestly, everything went perfectly on the way there! I say that as someone who took 3 melatonin gummies, had no one beside her on the ~17 hr flight, and slept probably 12 hours of that flight. But for the most part, very successful.

Our first AirBnb we splurged a little bit on, but OH. MY. GOSH. Out of a magazine. It was the coolest place I have ever stayed with views that looked like a green screen. I mean... Look at these pictures.

So for our first day, we arrived to our AirBnb around 3:30ish. We thought we would be exhausted so we kept our schedule pretty clear just in case we all crashed. Well, turns out we were kind of ready to rumble. Our AirBnb was only about 5 minutes from downtown Queensland, so we got in the rental and headed towards the city! (Nick took some driving classes with Al and did a phenomenal job learning how to drive on the left side of the road. We only almost died a handful of times).

Lifts & Luges

So classically, this group isn't very good at sitting still. So on our first day which was supposed to be for "rest", we actually ended up luging, going to an Ice Bar, and then having a nice dinner at a place called "Nest" which was absolutely delicious.

For the luge, we had to go up a lift to get to the very top of the city. Most of us enjoyed the view....one of us was having a bit of hesitation.. (cough, cough Katie). But we made it!

The luging was actually very fun. You basically just went to the top of the hill, got in these little plastic carts, and took off down a slope. You were in charge of your own fate and could go as fast/slow as you wanted and there were two tracks. I think we had a pass where we got 6 rides. We found out quickly that the left track was faster than the right s

o most of us went left 5/6 of the times we had. I'm sure knowing us you know that we were very safe, slow drivers and didn't make a race out of it every single time.......... Anyways. It started snowing towards the end of our luge adventure so the visibility disappeared, but it was still so fun!

Ice Bars & Brews

Afterwards, we headed to a local brewery/pub for some snacks and brews before going to the ice bar and then dinner and calling it a night. They had lots of license plates which reminded me of our lake house- we even sat right in front of a South Carolina one!

Please enjoy these pics from the ice bar. They claimed it was the closest we would ever be to Antarctica and I believe them. They had lots of ice sculptures (that you could pose with) and they had many cocktails that you drank out of a frozen glass mug. At the end , you got to smash your glass into the trash can and head out with a bang bang. All in all, a very good, very warm welcome to Queenstown and we were just so excited to keep going!