(written on February 5th from notes taken previously).
After waking up for the day, we both made our plans and bid each other goodbye.
Seems like we’ve been traveling together for a lot longer than just two days. 🙃 (in a good way)
He had a bunch of errands to run, and I wanted to go do some hiking and walking around over by Dawson Falls.
So I left and headed that direction, snapping some pictures of the beautiful scenery along the way.
I did indeed drive up to the Dawson falls car park, but what actually happened over the next… many hours, was I spent a whole crap ton of time–all day–trying to figure out where I was going to go for my required out of country break from New Zealand.
I can’t be in New Zealand for any longer than 3 months at a time, so I’ve got to be gone by January 26th at the latest before I’m allowed to come back.
For the terms of my visa, I only have to actually physically leave the country. I could come right back if I wanted. I just have to go through customs in another country so I’m physically in another country before I’m allowed to return to New Zealand.
But where to go? That’s the big question.
The main driver his cost, but there are other factors.
I ended up making a spreadsheet with several options, which included different places in Australia, as well as the Cook Islands and Fiji.
Cook Islands had been high on my list, but I didn’t know if New Zealand considered the Cook Islands a different country. They use the same money. Cook Islanders have New Zealand passports… They have other agreements. They seem more….semiautonomous?
I’d been waiting a month to hear back from New Zealand immigration about that, and still nothing.
Well, today was the day. Come hell or high water, I was gonna get it figured out, thank you, very much.
So I researched… Cook Islands, Tasmania, Gold Coast, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Fiji, etc.
I had a spreadsheet with multiple columns. Plane ticket prices, car rental prices, accommodation prices, fuel costs, etc.
The northern East Coast of Australia was easily the cheapest, but what would I do there–plane tickets to the Gold Coast and Brisbane were stunningly cheap.
Rental car prices were okay, and gas prices would be high, comparative to New Zealand.
But what would I do? It would be very hot and very humid, and I’d be traveling alone, and the places I would want to travel wouldn’t be the safest. Can’t hang around the ocean in the North so much because of saltwater crocodiles.
And traveling around a country where so much is dangerous if not deadly just didn’t seem to be the way to go by myself without better preparation.
And especially not if it was going to be nasty hot and humid. 🙃
All day I spent gathering information. I eventually gave up trying to find reasonable ways to get in touch with New Zealand immigration without just biting the bullet and calling them and spending whatever it was per minute for the phone calls. Gratefully, the phone call only lasted two or three minutes, and I was assured that the Cook Islands was indeed a place I could go that would count as a foreign country for my particular visa rules.
Chatted with my brother Richard a little bit, talking to him about the Cook Islands, he having lived on one of them many years ago.
Over and over again throughout the day, I started my engine to charge up my battery, so it was to not drain it down using the internet. On, off, on, off, on, off…
I also spent some time cleaning up my phone, creating folders for people and uploading pictures to the folders, so they could access them.
I bought my ferry ticket to the South Island, setting it for the 29th.
In the end, after all the planning and research and efforts to figure out where I was going to go for my mandatory break away from New Zealand, I decided against the East Coast of Australia because I didn’t want to go to Australia for only a week by myself without much preparation and without much that I felt I could safely explore.
So I removed all those options from the list.
The car rental cost for Tasmania was going to be more than the plane ticket there, so I figured I would do Tasmania as part of a larger Australia trip, which would make going there cheaper overall, so I crossed Tasmania off the list.
The west coast of australia, though my biggest bucket list items for all of Australia (Ningaloo Reef and the Gibb River Road) are out there, was just far too expensive for a one week trip, and the Gib River road is a multi-week, if not multi-month expedition.
The plane ticket costs to all the other countries except Fiji were far too high without great deals I might get every once in a while.
So that left Fiji and the Cook Islands, and I figured that since I have high hopes one day to drag my brother Richard back to New Zealand, as he used to live here, and I figure if I drag him over to New Zealand, I might as well drag him over to the Cook Islands as he used to live there as well, I crossed the Cooks off the list.
And by process of elimination, that left… 🥁…
Fiji! 🏝️
So I bought myself a plane ticket for Fiji (January 26th-February 2nd), reserved myself a super cheap vehicle, found some dirt cheap accommodations, and bada bing bada boom, I’m set!
🥳🎉🥳
It was only after I bought my ticket that I realized that time of year was the hottest time of year in Fiji. 😅
So what is already a hot and sticky Island sauna, is even more so in January and February.
😆
😅
😬
🥵
🙃
So I’ll have a great time, aaaaand I’ll also be really excited to come home. Er… go back to New Zealand. 🙃
Funny, I know this country better than any state in the United States. 🙃
Spent a little bit of time chatting with Kylie (the friend I met at Kauri Mountain Beach).
Then, finally, I went over to Dawson Falls. 😆
It was beautiful, and I snapped a few pictures, and then I just drove right back to the same parking lot that I was in, as they allowed freedom camping, veged out for a bit (stressful, frustrating day for me with it taking all day to get everything figured out, but it’s done now).
Phew!!! 😌
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 