This was my first lengthy trip on the road: just over three weeks, travelling down from the North Island of New Zealand, around the South Island, and back again. I had seen a fair bit of the North Island already, having lived in Mount Maunganui for 12 months, and enjoyed several road trips from there. I had barely explored the South Island during my year so far, with a few days in Queenstown shortly after arriving, before hitchhiking to Tauranga.

This road trip was planned to explore the riches of the South Island: the coast, the mountains, the lakes, and the wilderness. It would require sleeping in a car for those three weeks, cooking outdoors, braving the weather, and doing without many of our modern conveniences. It also meant living and breathing the great outdoors, seeing every sunset and sunrise, in an exhilarating trip of a lifetime. It promised to be a spectacular finale to my time in Aotearoa – the land of the long white cloud.