Ka kite ano te whanau o Aotearoa!

It's Thursday night, 10.30pm and we are wandering the streets of Hoon Hay, Christchurch. We are on the countdown to leaving (12 hours) and we are figuring how we have ended up stuck in town, with no car and no way home to Lincoln! How did we get here?

A few hours previously we had realised that a key piece of our kit was missing, and after a careful search we figured it must be in our storage unit in Hoon Hay. Obstacle One was that we had given our car away to it's new home . Obstacle Two was our flatmate was out, in his car. Obstacle Three - our bikes are already boxed, otherwise we could jump on them!

In the spirit of travel, an ambitious plan was hatched to get to the garage to retrieve said piece of kit! We wrangled a ride with Ben into town (who was on his way to the West Coast), collected our keys from the neighbour, opened the storage unit, found it within minutes and then set about getting back to Lincoln. The options were a $50 taxi or a few hours walking but after a quick google search we were off running through the streets to catch the last bus that would get us back to Lincoln. Andy had to detour to a BP to get cash out - while I ran ahead and planned to hold the bus. Literally, Andy came running round the corner as the bus pulled up! $10 bucks later, a bus transfer, 40mins and we were home in Lincoln! Go on the old public transport system!

Everything is stored!

Packing up the panniers at Ben's in Lincoln.

We then headed north to Grahams Beach near Manakau Heads in Auckland to celebrate the wedding of one of Andy's cousins. This has been a lovely time camping, walking on the beach, hanging out with Nana, relaxing and enjoying good food and dancing - the last on NZ soil for some time!

Todays has been a mixture of last minute jobs, naming things, reinforcing bike boxes and enjoying our last coffee and hanging out with Andy's parents. We've just found out our first flight has been delayed which means we miss our connecting flight so we are now dreaming up adventures of things to do in Dubai for a day while we wait!

The anticipation and excitement, along with nervousness are all mounting - especially as every person we meet tells us of their best travelling tips for ensuring we don't get ripped off and all our stuff stolen. Between that and all the diseases we can catch I'm looking forward to just getting into it!

Beach wedding! Lovely to spend some time at a new beach



 

And this is what it boils down to for six months:  Two duffel bags filled with our four panniers, two bike boxes and two handle-bar bags (P.S... We were both to exhausted and grumpy to smile without lot's of persuasion)