Quite literally long days when you’re crossing time-zones. At first the flight is great. There is plenty of technology and entertainment to get your head around, and internet on board is great. That takes about 2 hours to wear off, then it becomes very dull. I’m sure plane seats could recline further in the old…
Packed
All packed and ready to go, with the average weight under 7kg. This is our first time using packing cubes, and it makes locating things in your bag very much easier. I only wish I’d used them earlier. Each of us has a 2 cubes for clothes, medicines divided to distribute weight, a few electrical…
Walking Home from the Bus
Jess has been taking the bus home lately, but unless she’s quick out of school she has to catch the bus that drops her about 800m up the road (the quick bus drops her only 100m away). It’s not so bad though – if the tide is not fully in she can walk home along…
Cameras
On previous trips like this half the weight I carried was camera related – camera body, lenses, video camera, chargers… Then there’s the rigmarole of getting the cameras out, looking like a muggers target, stashing it all away again. The more I thought about it the more I wanted a much smaller camera. The other…
Accommodation
In some ways this was the funnest part. By booking so far out (9 months out) we’re guaranteed to get first pick of any place we wanted. By and large I was after places with history and character, rather than places that were either cheap or luxurious. . Coming from New Zealand, where the oldest…
Dates Set
In late August 2018, with about half our budget saved, Cathay Pacific had specials on for around the time we wanted to travel. Unfortunately their algorithmic pricing means if you put in an itinerary and back out then the next time it’s more expensive. I tried clearing cookies, private browser settings and VPNing from other…
The Itinerary
The Plan and the Budget are very speculative without an Itinerary. First, make a list of places you’d like to visit. Manila and Hong Kong were a given. My itinerary 20 years ago was Rome -> Naples -> Florence -> Padua -> Milan -> Rome. My biggest regret was not going to the Amalfi Coast,…
The Budget
Travelling so far it’s easy to look at the headline cost of flights, add on a couple of thousand for accommodation and think that’ll be a rough estimate. Estimating the budget is hard! How cheap can you do it for, and then do you really want to do it that cheap? Optimistic Budget With potentially…
The Plan
Ten months ago we decided to start saving for a trip to Philippines to visit family, and since we would be halfway around the world already, to tack on a trip to Italy, one of my favourite countries. I’ve been to Italy as a very young child, and for skiing in the Alps, but my…
Muriwai
We took at Waitangi Day trip to Muriwai which was a good opportunity to test the GoPro and Rx100 cameras. Maori Bay, next to Muriwai, is a spot I used to go boogie-boarding a lot. There’s a cave at one end of the beach you can walk through when the tide is low. Above the…