After months and months of planning the big day has finally arrived (well almost, actually we are off tomorrow). Cases are packed with what seems like a very small amount of stuff for our six weeks on the road. But still I guess we will sort it all out and at the end of the day I am sure we will forget something (there are still things sitting on the table in front of me as we speak, waiting to be packed into some bag or other).

As is common with today’s travel there is a lot of “gadge” going with, namely an iPhone, an Ipad, an iPod, a Sat Nav and two cameras. Apple has been very careful at craftily making sure that each of their devices fulfills a number of purposes but is not actually ideal for all of them. The ipad is great as a reading device and multipurpose computer but it’s not so convenient to listen to music or make phone calls. The iPhone has a quite frankly shocking battery life and therefore the iPod is my weapon of choice for playing music.

Ok, so let’s get down to the trip, what does the itinerary look like? Well here it is in all its gory glory:

South West Australia (9 days)

Perth

Denmark

Pemberton

Margaret River

Busselton

NZ North Island (13 Days)

Bay of Islands

Auckland

Coromandel

Whitianga

Rotorua

Taupo

Tongariro

Hamilton

NZ South Island (17 Days)

Dunedin

Te Anau

Queenstown

Queenstown

Wanaka

Franz Josef

Punakaiki

Kaiteriteri

Blenheim

Kaikoura

Christchurch

South Australia (3 days)

Melbourne

 So 42 days in total – feels like a lot but I am sure it will go quickly.

The logic of starting in Perth is that we pretty much saw the East Coast of Australia when we lived there and I’ve always heard great things about the South West coast. The core of this trip is around New Zealand and we’ve tried to cover as much as possible without overstressing (i.e. we have two or three days in some places to give us a chance to soak up some of the local atmosphere.