After almost 2 years stateside, Brandon and I were ready for another trip and another adventure. While we would truly love to truly hit the road again as long term travelers, this time we will have to settle for a 3 week trip to New Zealand.

After 20ish hours of travel we landed in Auckland (north island) and were making our way from the international terminal to the domestic terminal to hop on a plane to Christchurch on the south island. But along with customs, we had to go through a biosecurity check. New Zealand is big on maintaining their natural ecosystem, which means ensuring that travelers and tourists do not (unintentionally) bring in any invasive species (plants or animals) on used hiking books, camping gear, etc… And since we knew we would be doing a bit of camping, we brought along our tent and other things which needed to be checked — specifically for stink bugs! We did not mind complying, but the process added a few unexpected minutes to our travel day causing us to miss our flight to Christchurch. Luckily, there are many flights each day between the two cities, so they easily moved us to the next one and we were on our way! 

We grabbed our car with the driver’s seat on the right, and headed into traffic driving on the left. We have done this before, but it always takes a minute to get used to – and we always accidentally hit the wiper blades when we want the blinker. But we made our way to our hostel which is in a former prison.

It was clean and quiet – but there was not much going on in Christchurch from what we could tell. So even though we had planned to use the day to relax and recover from travel, we were already antsy to get moving!

The next morning, we hit the road and drove through the Waipara Wine Valley region to do some wine tasting on our way up to Kaikoura. We had a list of a few wineries to visit and were excited as we drove up to the first one on the list: Terrace Edge. Sadly – the tasting room was closed that day. Undeterred we moved on to spot number two. As we drove up, it seemed quiet but nice. But when we walked inside, the entire place was under construction! (We later learned that this place has been advertising for months, but has yet to actually open.) With a solid 2 for 2 record, we stopped at one not on our list on the same winery road hoping for a win. But as you can probably guess — it was a strike 3. This one was a vineyard without an on-site tasting room on site. Whoops!

Luckily, the rest of our stops that day were mostly successful with tasty wines! All in all, our favorites included:

• Waipara Hills (Our favorite wine of the day!)
• Pegasus Bay (Beautiful grounds! The restaurant here is supposed to be great as well, but it was sadly closed the day we visited.)
• Waipara Springs (Had a nice lunch here instead.) 

When we finished up, we finished our drive in Kaikoura where we checked into Albatross Backpackers and got a free upgrade! (Sweet!) We had a private room in a two-room cabin where the other room was an all girls dorm, and I don’t think the loved having Brandon in the same building, but luckily it was just one night. That evening we met some new hostel friends for fish and chips at a place called Coopers and went to bed ready for the next day’s adventure: whale watching!