We are moving to New Zealand!!!

This has been a dream of ours. We both grew up in Colorado, and love it here! I’ve always wanted to live somewhere else for awhile, why not another beautiful mountainous country.

This has been several years in the making. Cameron was fortunate to get a resident Visa at the time his folks applied for theirs as he was still young enough to be considered their dependent. A couple months into us dating, he mentioned that he would need to return to New Zealand in order to apply for his permanent residency. So 3 months in, we booked our tickets to New Zealand, which would be our first flight together! I fell in love with the country immediately, and knew I had to go back.

In doing some research, we found out I would be able to apply for a Partnership Residency Visa through Cameron’s. So the process began! One year after starting the application process, 7 months after submitting it, and 1 month before our wedding, we received the approval letter! It was official, we would be moving to New Zealand!

Fast forward 1 year, 1 Global Pandemic, and 2 sets of canceled flights later, we will be heading across the world on February 16th! Cameron and I have been very fortunate to be able to live with various family members over the last few months since our lease on our apartment ended. We are very grateful to have all the extra family time.

We will be bringing 3 suitcases full of adventure gear, and 1 shared suitcase shared for clothes and shoes. We leave in less than a week and so far nothing is in our suitcases, it’s in a giant organized mess in the middle of the basement! I still have much to do: fix the packrafts, clean all gear and shoes (to be sure we’re not going to be bringing over any plant diseases), finish final touches on my backpack, finish Cameron’s fastpack v2, start and finish my fastpack and get as many kitten cuddles in as we can!

Upon arriving in NZ, we will be required to quarantine for 2 weeks in a hotel. As soon as we are released, we plan on sticking around in Auckland for a bit to watch the Finals of the America’s cup sailing races! Then we will be eager to buy a self-contained camper van and start driving! We have places we want to see, and places we will want to see but don’t know about yet, but we have no plan. Being a planner and a control freak, I am both equally terrified and excited about not having a plan.

Our “plan” is to travel all around the country, both north and south islands. We will sleep in our van, occasional hostels, holiday parks, but mainly take advantage of the awesome Hut system they have and backpack, fastpack, and packraft our way across the more remote areas.

We will be updating this blog periodically as we go with adventures, photos, trip reports, gear updates and everything in between. Please keep in touch, we will be on our own for quite a while and would love any and all sorts of communication and connection back home.