My husband and I have always been lovers of travel – wherever that may be. Living in Europe, it’s incredibly easy and convenient to hop on a flight for a last-minute weekend trip to destinations like Belgium, Italy and even the Netherlands. As much as we enjoyed exploring these European countries, there’s only so many old towns you can visit and pastries you can eat before it becomes repetitive, and sometimes even tedious. It’s not that there’s anything particularly bad about these regions; in fact, we loved Europe so much that I still occasionally look through my photo book from Snapfish full of all the memories we made there. I certainly recommend them to anyone starting on their travelling journey. But once they’re ticked off, don’t be surprised if you can the itch to next explore somewhere entirely different – somewhere that’s more mysterious and far less spoken about.
My husband had always dreamt about one day visiting New Zealand, though whenever he mentioned it, I never felt particularly interested. Maybe it was the distance that put me off, or perhaps the size of the country and how widely dispersed some of its most popular regions were. Whatever it was, it prevented us from making New Zealand a consideration for quite some time. But then my opinion suddenly changed.
After doing some research, I came to find that New Zealand offered exactly what I was looking for, and what most European countries lacked. The country was much more remote and seemed vastly untouched. Instead of feeling like you’re going 100 mph every day in a busy and overcrowded city, New Zealand could offer us a much quieter experience, still with so much to see and explore. So then it was decided, we packed our bags and headed on a flight to Christchurch Airport.
Immediately as we arrived, we decided to hire a campervan to help us easily get between different areas and cities in the region. Our first destination was Queensland, 300 miles away.
What I quickly came to realise about our trip was how the journey became the star of the show, rather than the destination at the end. Don’t get me wrong, when we arrived in Queenstown, the views were some of the most breathtaking we had ever seen. But some of the most memorable moments of the entire trip happened along the way, when we had no expectations, no plans and no pressure – just the freedom to enjoy the journey and see where the road took us.
There was something so special about stopping in a completely random remote village, with nothing but an old-fashioned general store that felt real and an experience we’d never had before. Above everything, I enjoyed the clear night sky that we obsessively admired every night we stopped. What it taught me about travelling is that the destination shouldn’t always be the end goal. Travelling is, of course, about sightseeing and understanding culture as well as history, but it’s also, more importantly, about the memories you make along the way.