The Time to Wander
It is unanimous – we all fell in love with New Zealand from day 1. In fact, we can’t figure out why everyone isn’t already living here.
After landing in Auckland we drove north and took two days wandering around empty beaches and exploring random roadside hikes before we reached the Bay of Islands. We feel like the areas we have visited are the perfect blend of the San Juan Islands, Scotland and Hawaii. Seriously, why isn’t everyone living here again?
We took a quick detour to the Tutukaka region which was an amazing section of coastline on the east coast of New Zealand north of Auckland. The beaches were almost empty except for the local school kids on field trips. We found incredible masses of oysters and mussels on the rocks which was heartening to see with the struggles facing our shellfish back home. Campbell even stumbled upon a Portuguese Man of War.
We finally ended up in Paihia which is the portal city to the Bay of Islands. This area reminded us a lot of Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands. There was a nice beach and many small hikes and shops to explore. Our motel was run by a super nice couple named Sue and Dan who’s family had owned the place for 40 years. Upon arriving at the motel, Sue immediately gave us a small pitcher of milk which apparently is a New Zealand tradition to welcome travelers.
The next day we did a much anticipated visit to a glow worm cave south of Paihia. 
We learned quite a bit about the glow worm life cycle and cave ecosystems. It was the underground version of the bioluminescence we experience in the Salish Sea during the late summer. Nature’s beauty is often immeasurable, but here is an image to share a little of the magic.
Later that day, we executed a late night birding adventure (The Big Year style) to see wild kiwi in their natural habitat. We got to the Aroha Island Eco-Centre around 9:30pm and was greeted by Bob the local camp host who gave us some special headlamps and quick orientation of the islands “bird tracks.” We walked around the island employing our best Explorer’s Club fox trot in the pitch dark while listening for any bird calls or rustling in the bush. Those nocturnal kiwi were not out and about yet. Then around 11:15pm we heard a kiwi calling it’s mate nearby. We tried to track the location of the call, but our amateur tracking skills were not matched for this kiwi. After 15 minutes we gave up and upon returning to the car, we heard the same kiwi call out from the darkness. That bird knew he had beaten another tourist looking to catch a glimpse. While we didn’t make a sighting, it was a unique and memorable New Zealand evening.
We left Bellingham in the early afternoon headed first for Oahu’s North Shore. Months of gear planning was whittled down to what, in theory, are just the essentials that fit into a carry-on size pack. Kim is betting there will still be several items that will be deemed non-essential and cast off at some point – like settlers along the Oregon Trail. Regardless, we each managed to fit six months of personal effects and gear (including two snorkels and masks!) into our 35 to 44 liter packs – not a trivial task. At some point we can share exactly what we elected to bring and how we organize it all – our medical kit alone is worth a post in itself…
Our packed bags are ready!
Arriving at the Bellingham Airport, we were greeted by a group of Campbell’s friends and the Davis family for one last goodbye (Tracy and Skye). As excited as we are to begin this adventure, our week of goodbyes prior to departure remind what an amazing place we call home.
We are ready for three days of R&R on Oahu before the real world trip starts.
This is our first post since we went public with this crazy plan. Since that time, we have made a few significant changes to our travel itinerary.
I should start out by saying that my first piece of travel advice for a trip of this magnitude is I would strenuously advise creating a spreadsheet or other tracking tool for handing the travel visa requirements for each country. Early on, I had casually spent time on the US State Department’s website (the hands down best source for easily obtaining current information in a standardized and good UI) evaluating the entry and exit requirements for the countries that we had never traveled to previously. More than half of the countries throughout our trip either don’t require an entry visa for US citizens or have a simple VOA (Visa on Arrival) system. India, Australia and Turkey have simple online applications. Some, like Vietnam, do require copies of your passport to be mailed to their US Embassy offices prior to your departure, but this all seemed within the bounds of doable. Where we hit a major bump in the road was with Brazil…
Having traveled to Brazil before, I had the hubris to believe I knew the process for obtaining a tourist visa for entry. Insert laugh track…
Without getting into the gory details, Brazil’s visa requirements have changed significantly within the last few years. At present, visas are rather expensive and must be obtained in person at the Consulate in San Francisco (for US Residents residing on the West Coast) with appointments available only months in advance – or you can pay handsomely for an expedition service with an agency. Faced with the fees to obtain expedited visas for four individuals, we were looking at forking over $1400 just to step foot into the country. We began to consider it might be best to let Campbell preserve her innocence and believe that all girls her age still wear full coverage bikini bottoms…
And so Brazil was let go – which set up a series of chain reactions that ultimately led to our decision to re-book our entire trip and to jump down one pricing tier to the 34,000 mile ticket. The final result is that have decided to leave South Africa and Madagascar for another trip when we can explore at a more optimal time of the year and stay for much longer than our original plans could permit. Those days have now given us more time to explore in South East Asia, India and a few new days in Ethiopia. Likewise, with the fall of Brazil and ultimately Argentina (sniff sniff) we have been able to add ten full days to idle in the Azores (!!!), a few days in Columbia and more time in Peru and Ecuador. The final result is a less hurried itinerary that we ultimately feel great about.
This entire reshuffling took some major mental processing. As I had mentioned in my first post – I had optimized our original itinerary to utilize 38,900+ of our 39,000 mile allowance. But just because you can – doesn’t always mean that you should. Gunnar is incredibly disappointed he won’t be encountering King Julian in person right now – and we are all sad to see Argentina go.
But this is just the first experience in letting go – of what this trip will be and how it will unfold.
After months of planning, it’s official – the tickets are purchased and it is just a matter of weeks until we depart. We booked our RTW tickets through the Star Alliance, opting for their largest tier ticket of 39,000 miles across 16 segments. This of course presented an immediate personal challenge for Kim – wanting to optimize our route to make use of all 16 possible flight segments while using as many miles as possible. After hours of fine tuning our route on the Star Alliance’s Book and Fly tool, we finalized a route that will employ 38,931 of our allocated miles leaving just 69 miles to spare and Kim contented…
With the planning behind us we are thrilled, nervous and ready for our travels to unfold.
We invite you to follow us as we wander.