On May 24, 2014, my fiancé, Andy, and I got married in New York City. A week later, we hopped on a plane with two carry-on suitcases and two one-way tickets to Paris. We had just pressed pause on our careers, sublet our apartment, and moved all of our things into storage. The only plan was to have no plans at all — and we ended up traveling for 394 days through 25 countries, stopping in nearly 100 destinations. Over the next few weeks, come along on this crazy journey to learn more about how we did it — packing, plotting, budgeting — and see some of the tens of thousands of photos we took along the way.By the time we made it to Japan, we had a serious route strategy to contemplate. We were getting as far east as you can go (before you’re back in America), but we still had Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand on our wish list, and a strategy of getting north before winter took us from Nepal to China to South Korea to Japan (skipping over the countries of southeast Asia). How could we see everything we wanted and still hit South America on our way home? We decided to head southeast to Australia and New Zealand, then fly back to Southeast Asia, and finally depart Vietnam for Brazil — a 38-hour, three-leg flight. Ouch. That part hurt. I’m not going to recommend it. But at this point, all of our decisions were being dictated by the cheapest route.
So, on to Australia and New Zealand we went. After nearly three months of being in Asia, the cultural familiarity of Australia was actually a shock to the system. We landed in Melbourne and suddenly felt like we had been transported to a cool, Californian city. We found ourselves eating cheeseburgers, watching surfers, and driving cars on the wrong side of the road. It was tempting to try and cover some serious ground in Australia, but that’s like trying to see all of America in a couple of weeks. So we focused on the southeastern corner and visited Melbourne, the Great Ocean Road coastline, the island of Tasmania, and Sydney before flying to New Zealand.
When I think of New Zealand, shocking natural beauty is the first thing that comes to mind. And color! For some reason, everything looked brighter, more saturated, and more brilliant; we felt like we needed to get our eyeballs calibrated. We did a two-and-a-half week road trip through both the north and south islands. Ask anyone who’s been to New Zealand, and they’ll tell you that’s a bit...aggressive. (I would recommend about that much time for just one island.) The nature was so spectacular, so diverse, so pure, we couldn’t believe that every inch of it wasn’t crawling with tourists. You had to remind yourself that you were floating in the middle of nowhere on a little island country of just four million people. In that way, New Zealand feels private and protected — an unspoiled, supernatural universe.
The gates to the Luna Park in the St. Kilda neighborhood of Melbourne. The historic amusement park has been in near continuous operation since its opening in 1912.
A canopy of crisscrossing tram cables drapes the neighborhood streets. Melbourne has an impressive and quite charming tram network.
As if coming from Tokyo to Melbourne wasn’t enough of a head flip, we arrived in Australia a few days before Christmas. To distract ourselves from homesickness, I tried to bring the holiday spirit to our Airbnb rental by picking up cheap Christmas decorations and baking cookies. We spent a 75-degree Christmas day on the beach in dollar store Santa hats — a far cry from the frigid Midwestern holidays we are used to.
We traded carolers for kite surfers that Christmas.
After a few days in Melbourne, we rented a car and set out on a three day roadtrip along the southeastern coast of Australia known as the Great Ocean Road. I would liken the views to Big Sur in California, if you added dairy farms, pockets of rainforest, and millions of sheep. (No really, gazillions. Both Australia and New Zealand have more sheep than people.) This was our first foray into driving on the other of the road, so it was a bit a daunting. But after the first 15 minutes of struggling out of the parking lot and cautiously merging into actual traffic, we were solid. Well, Andy was. He drove, and in my blind panic I just shouted the opposite of everything he should actually be doing.
Over the course of about 20 million years, the ocean water has eroded the limestone cliffs of the coast, breaking the edges away until only these unique stacks of rock are left. The most famous of these formations is the site known as The Twelve Apostles — for its series of narrow rock towers dotting the shore.
We really lucked out with the weather on this particular day. The sky was perfectly blue; the water was brilliant turquoise; the earth was rich oranges and red, and the bright sun made all of the colors pop. This was also the day that I learned how intense the sun is in Australia. I frolicked around all day without a hat, because it wasn’t that hot, and came home to find I had a toasted scalp!
I love this photo! The sign of success — footprints at the base of a staircase which leads you down to a popular beach walk.
In our three-day drive, we hit all of the major sites and quaint towns along the Great Ocean Road. We headed back to Melbourne and immediately hopped on a short flight to the southern island of Tasmania. We were headed for The Falls Festival, a musical and arts festival being held in Marion Bay over New Year’s Eve. Camping is the thing to do there, and we were all about it...
Before leaving Melbourne, we planned to grab some light camping gear. Of course, we weren’t your average festivalgoers. We didn’t want to drop a ton of money on gear that we couldn’t bring along with us afterwards. Remember: two pairs of shoes, one carry-on suitcase; we were extremely streamlined. We figured the cheapest tent possible should be enough to get us through a few nights of summer in Australia. We bought a dinky two-person tent for $15, a big fleece blanket, and that was it. We used our backpacks as pillows and planned to layer up clothing if we got cold. It turned out that the weather in Tasmania was absolutely bonkers.
We arrived to a raging thunderstorm, but by the time we reached the campgrounds, the sun appeared. We crossed our fingers and popped up our little tent on a hillside overlooking the bay. Satisfied, we went out exploring. When we got back, there was no tent. Everything we had left was completely gone. Then a guy walked past and asked if we had lost a tent. He had just found one, ripped free by the wind, rolling down the hill toward the brush. It was behind the info desk being held down by two bricks. And this is how we slept for the rest of our stay. The structure blocked our feeble little tent from wind, and the extra spikes (and bricks) we found kept us from blowing away. As you can imagine, the rain and wind whipped up some pretty nasty, cold nights. The backpacks and fleece blanket ended up being far from enough.
After two painful nights in our tent, three days of not showering, two sun burns, and two newly acquired colds — we were toast. We had booked a three-day guided tour of Tasmania for the day after the festival and spent that free day in between holed up in a hotel recovering from our camping trauma. After a little R & R we were human again. We didn’t know what to expect from Tasmania, but found a unique, quirky, and picturesque series of towns and sites. We explored old prisons, climbed mountains in national parks, visited dairy farms, ate fresh roadside oysters, watched blow holes erupt, sampled fresh honey and salmon, trekked through rainforests, and visited exquisite beaches, like the Bay of Fires.
The Bay of Fires rivals even the best beaches of Thailand. It gets its name from these large orange-hued granite rocks that cover the shores. For context, that little speck is me!
In America, kangaroos seem so exotic. In Australia, they’re as common as pesky deer. But we were still slightly in awe of these strange hopping creatures grazing in the backyard of our hostel. And we couldn’t help but laugh every time we passed one of the many kangaroo-crossing road signs. Up close, they seem equal parts cuddly and dangerous. I was amazed at the power in their legs and very aware of their razor-sharp-looking claws. Andy? Not so worried about it…
From Tasmania, we flew to Sydney, where we’d spend the next seven days trying out the daily life of a local. We weren’t as concerned about hitting every site as we were about just living in a cool city. We rented a sweet little apartment in the Darlinghurst neighborhood and shopped, dined, did our laundry at the local laundromat, became regulars at the coffee shop downstairs, ran errands to the grocery store and pharmacy, lounged in the parks, and ate ice cream in the summer streets. Ironically, these longer stretches of time we spent in the bustling cities of the world always felt like a calm in the storm for us. It was a familiar lifestyle that made us feel at home.
Since we couldn’t make it up to the Great Barrier Reef, we made a stop at the Sydney aquarium to see the coral, sharks, and little Nemo fish.
The iconic Sydney Opera House.
We did some people-watching at Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach.
Another perfect day.
Beachside seafood platter. Yes, please.
After three-and-a-half weeks in Australia, we flew to New Zealand. As mentioned, we had a whirlwind itinerary ahead of us. We arrived late at night in Christchurch, stayed one night in a hostel, and set out on the road toward Lake Tekapo the very next morning. I absolutely loved our road trip chapter in New Zealand. For much of our global adventure, so many things were out of our control — how we could get around and how that dictated our schedule, how/if we could communicate, and how open the country was to tourism. It was rare that we drove on our trip, so in New Zealand, we felt totally free. We loaded up on snacks in gas stations, blasted our music with the windows down, and pulled over for breaks or photos whenever our hearts desired.
A couple of hours into our drive to Lake Tekapo, the landscape began to shift. The grassy hills were now vibrant purple mountains, and all that I could think about was how they looked like my favorite crayon color as a kid: Purple Mountains Majesty. Then, we came over the top of a hill and began to descend upon the most electric turquoise water I had ever seen in my life. Lake Tekapo’s unique color is created by rock flour from surrounding glaciers which is suspended in the water. What?! This is a view from Mount St. John Observatory. The observatory was closed that night due to high winds, but we got a chance to do take a stargazing tour from the ground since Lake Tekapo also has famously clear skies.
We drove on to Lake Wanaka and spent two nights in the the popular summer resort town surrounded by breathtaking nature. These are views from the Rocky Mountain track — a few-hour hike about 20 minutes from town. Like most hikes we did in New Zealand, it started with an hour or so of questioning whether it was worth it, and then suddenly we approached the top and hit views like this… Instantly worth it.
A sea of fuzzy, yellow, alien bushes followed us for miles.
From Lake Wanaka, we drove straight to Milford Sound, which is about five to six hours and incredibly scenic. There’s literally only one road that goes out to the area, which dead ends when you reach the fjord.
Milford Sound is home to an enormous fjord, and one of the most famous tourist attractions in the country. The mouth of the fjord is surrounded by enormous rock walls that rise more than 4,000 feet on each side. It’s impossible to truly describe the scale of these walls, but to get an idea, check out that little boat in the lower right corner seem from our morning cruise.
After cruising through the fjord in the early morning, we set out for a hike in the afternoon. The Lake Marian Track was recommended to us by our hostel, so we set out for the journey. After the first couple of hours of hiking through dense rainforest, with nearly no views, I had to ask again was this going to be worth it? I probably did more complaining on this trek than any other, until our overgrown path suddenly opened up to this exact view...
Our jaws were on the floor when we finally emerged from the forest and saw this perfectly untouched lake surrounded on all sides by purple mountains. There were a few tourists lining the lake, pushing back the shrubs to make a place to sit, but other than that…nothing. It made me wonder just how many picture perfect places there are in the in the world, hidden from the public eye, perfectly unspoiled. We hadn’t thought to bring our swimsuits, so we took off all of our clothing and jumped into the frigid glacier water in our underwear. That lasted about three minutes before our organs felt like they were about to shut down. We hopped out, made our own little nest in the bushes, and dried off while taking in these views.
A quick stop at Mirror Lake.
Since our stay, in both Australia and New Zealand, was so close to the holidays, we had a really hard time finding accommodation for our on-the-go plans. Outdoor activities, camping, and road tripping are wildly popular around those parts. We couldn’t even secure a lot of land to pitch a tent. We got to a point where we would have slept in our car... if it was legal. Thankfully, after some intense research, I was able to patch together a series of lodgings — a YMCA hostel here, a cabin on a campground there, a steel box… Yep, just a box with windows.
We flew from Queenstown to the city of Auckland in the northern island of New Zealand. We spent a few quick days in Auckland before driving onto Waitomo to see the glow worm cave (so crazy!). Our next stop was the Tongariro National Park. We wanted to do the most popular day hike in the country, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. This particular hike is famous because it takes you across vastly diverse landscapes — from an active volcano and craters to lush forests. It was a bit daunting because the hike was supposed to take eight to 10 hours, but we hit the trail just as the sun was rising and surprised ourselves by completing it in six hours. This volcano’s other claim to fame is being featured in Lord of the Rings as Mount Doom. Just a little jog through Mount Doom, NBD.
The first half of the hike proved to be pretty challenging in parts. In the early morning, it felt like we were going straight up for hours. Then we reached the summit of the red crater, and had to shimmy down this path of loose rock. It was so steep that I watched several people pretty much tumble down in front of me. At the base of this hill, we emptied out our shoes full of rocks and got a look at the famous emerald lakes up close. These lakes are actually water-filled explosion craters. They get their electric-green color from minerals seeping into the water from surrounding rocks. This whole area is covered by active steam vents and reeks of sulfur.
From Tongariro National Park, we drove on to the town Rotorua for more geothermal fun! Rotorua is one of New Zealand’s most dynamic thermal areas, so much so that the whole town smells of sulfur. We headed over to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland to check out hot springs, neon lakes, and bubbling mud pools. This is a shot of the "Champagne pool," which bubbles like a glass of Champagne.
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