- Buenos Aires - Steak, Inflation, Tango and Jetlag From the moment we began planning this trip, we knew we wanted to visit South America. Our list of must-see countries went something like this: “Ireland, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Australia…and somewhere in South America.” We always figured that by the time we had to buy airline tickets, we would have actually figured out where the heck we wanted to go. We talked to friends and fellow travelers from various South American countries, we read blogs and looked up cost estimates in an attempt to pinpoint the ideal destination. The problem was, we had only three weeks, and South America is HUGE! Finally, after literally years of consideration, we narrowed our choices down to: Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, or Argentina. So now that we’d determined we wanted to be in either the North, South, East, or West of the continent, we were ready to start planning the details. Yeah…it was a month out from when we were supposed to be in South America and we still had no clue. So we did what any good budget traveler would do: we checked what the cheapest flight was from Sydney. The lucky winner was Buenos Aires, so that’s what we picked!
- Just Scratching the Surface of Sydney We were lucky enough to ring in the new year down under, and with 2018 still fresh we flew out to the capital of the southern hemisphere: Sydney. We arrived there with no real expectations and no knowledge of the city, other than that there’s a big spiky white building on the harbour that’s probably slightly overrated.
- Melbourne A lot has changed in Melbourne since its early days as a gold-mining town on the very fringes of civilization. For one thing: its name. The original name of the city was supposed to be, get this, Batmania! It was supposed be named after its founder, John Batman, but the Aussies were trying to curry favor with the British crown at the time, so ended up naming it after Lord Melbourne instead. Which is how we missed out on having one of the greatest city names in history.
- A Beachin' Christmas The time had come to part with our huge campervan, which we had grown rather fond of despite how woefully unsuited it was to the narrow snaking roads of NZ. Bags in hand, we headed out to the street to try to catch the city bus to our hostel in downtown Auckland. Somehow we had yet to take a public bus on our adventure so far (maybe we’re bad backpackers, because isn’t that a ritual of backpacking?) so we were mentally preparing ourselves for all the different transfers we’d need to take to get to our hostel. We’d been waiting at the bus stop for about 30 seconds when a sedan ducked out of the rush hour traffic and pulled up next to us. The driver asked if we were heading downtown and if we wanted a ride. Dana, forgetting all basic safety rules like “don’t hop into cars with strangers”, (although in the age of Uber is that still a rule?) promptly chirped “Awesome, thanks!” and hopped in. Thankfully he was just a nice guy and not a serial killer, so we made it downtown without incident, and failed yet again in taking the public bus. Then we had a long talk about jumping in cars with random guys.
- Regarding Hobbits Finally, the reason we’d come to New Zealand in the first place: Hobbiton! Just kidding, but we are ginormous dorks so we were pretty excited to see the film set. We showed up in the afternoon and had a few hours to wait before our tour started, so we killed time scarfing down ice cream and perusing the gift shop. Because of course there’s a gift shop. You can buy Gandalf’s magic scarf (pretty sure Tolkien never mentioned a magic scarf, but hooray merchandising).
- One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor We careened north from Wellington in our trusty mega-van, excited to be spending the night at Tongariro National Park, aka Mordor! All the land we’d seen so far in the North Island was pretty flat, with occasional rolling hills. But then in the distance, out of the clouds reared a huge volcano.
- The West Coast Glaciers and Wellington The scenery changes dramatically once you get onto the west coast of the South Island. Dry scrubby hills and dramatic snow-capped mountains give way to dense rainforest and raucous rivers. A very wet and windy road brings you at last to the flat lowlands beside the coast, which look eerily similar to the Oregon coast. Except, you know, glaciers.
- Don't Be Hasty... We thought two weeks would be plenty of time to see the sights on the south island, but it turns out you could easily spend two years exploring here. So we passed the days doing a lot of driving, trying to fit in all the sights we wanted to see. Our path took us from the beautiful high lake country in the center of the island, throught Queenstown, down to the fjords and rainforest of the Millford Sound area, and finally to the very southern tip of the island in the hopes of seeing some penguins. Mostly we spent our time driving and enjoying the scenery, or walking and enjoying the scenery, or hanging out in camp with a beer and enjoying the scenery. We don’t really have any exciting stories from this week, so we’ll let the photos do the talking!
