Babbling Brooke’s Travel Blog

A Long Journey and First Impressions

The trip I haven’t been able to shut up about is finally here! And in an attempt to capture it all and not forget any details, I have set out to put my stream of consciousness into actual text. This trip has been in the works basically since Matt and I’s first date and definitely was the first place we talked of traveling to once things got serious. However, the journey isn’t an easy hop, skip, and a jump so we opted for VERY delayed gratification in order to do it “right”. AKA how can we maximize time away, do EVERYTHING we want and not leave any stone unturned- and afford it. 5 years later and a lot has changed in our lives. We got married, built an ADU, and waited for the stars to align. Through that, the trip itself grew into a larger beast as well. Not only did we want to come check all New Zealand has to offer from a traveler’s enthusiast standpoint- but also want to see what it felt like to fully immerse into life here in an attempt to answer the big question: “Do we want to move across the world and have an epic adventure?”.

So we booked the flights, the Airbnbs, the rental car, the excursions that needed pre-booking (Hobbiton here we come!) and patiently waited, and waited, and waited (and stuck to a strict budget in the meantime).

We left Seattle December 10th @7AM to fly 6 hours to Honolulu before connecting to Auckland- another 9 hour leg. By the time we landed last night it was December 11th at about 9pm since we crossed the international dateline.

After sitting on the tarmac for a few minutes, staff came through and sprayed all of the luggage in the overhead bins with disinfectant. This was a first for us! The airport was calm and quiet, and we got through customs with no issues. It is important to note you need a tourist visa to come from the US! We applied back in September via the NZeTA app and it was approved within 3 days for us. After customs, we went through a declaration process as we brought camping gear with us. We learned that they do not allow any animal products whatsoever so unfortunately had to toss our pre-bought dehydrated camping meals. I spend a lot of time cleaning our shoes before we left (esp. hiking boots) and made sure our tent was clean. They did take the tent into a lab and I’m assuming sprayed it with a disinfectant. All this work because they do not have hand, foot, mouth disease here which blew my mind. And even though it sounds like a lot of extra steps, it was so seamless as they had adequate staff to help you through the process. Okay enough with boring airport details!

By the time we got to our little Airbnb in Ponsonby (basically the Ballard of Auckland) we crashed out for the night.

This morning we awoke to first light happening at a lovely 5:30am!!! Gone are the 8am sunrises and atmospheric rivers. The birds were chirping and I felt the seasonal depression levitating out of my body before being whisked away on a gentle breeze.

These first two weeks Matt will be working remotely and given the time difference his work day runs ~6am – 2pm our time. With a rumbling tummy and a desperate need to buy deodorant I set out on a morning walk to a nearby grocery store to pick up some essentials. On the way home I stopped at a cafe called Ozone Coffee to grab some take-away for us both. After having only airplane and airport food for a whole day yesterday, my stomach rejoiced at real ingredients and delicious flavor. Great Scott I already love it here. The view outside our Airbnb even shows the tip of the Sky Tower poking out behind the hill.

Sitting here writing all of this out in hopes that, by the end, perhaps an answer to our big question will reveal itself. And if not, at least I’ll have some pretty epic memories to look back on. In the meantime, I am going off all social media and disconnecting from the rest of the world. I want to know what it feels like to be here, to be present, and try to experience as much as I can with the time we have here. I am so grateful for this opportunity and for the hard work that Matt and I did leading up to this adventure. I’ll be updating this lil’ blog as it feels natural to me and in the meantime if anyone is reading this you can text or whatapp me!