Kiwi Road Trip Part II: Kaikoura, Motueka, Nelson & Picton

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Kiwi Road Trip Part II: Kaikoura, Motueka, Nelson & Picton

We split our remaining time on the South Island between Kaikoura, Motueka, Nelson & Picton; a packed schedule considering we visited them all in just 8 days. But the long week included the most memorable wildlife encounter of our entire trip until then and still to this day: swimming with dolphins in Kaikoura. I remember finding out about the opportunity during one of the many weekends we spent researching our trip instead of enjoying the nice Los Angeles weather. “That's it, we're going to New Zealand”, I told Tyler as I jumped out of my seat and showed him my finding. Of course, there was more to the decision than that but I have to admit that my desire to visit NZ grew tenfold that day.

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Start of our Kiwi Road Trip: Mount Cook, Queenstown, and Milford Sound

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Start of our Kiwi Road Trip: Mount Cook, Queenstown, and Milford Sound

New Zealand was somewhere both of us were extremely excited to visit. Anaïs had never been and, while I spent a semester in college studying at Otago University in Dunedin, I didn't explore the north island at all. We were excited to return to a few places I had been and to venture on to places new to us both. Given how expensive travel can be there, we planned to spend only about a month traveling across the country and we needed to make our time count.

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Our Favorite Things in French Polynesia

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Our Favorite Things in French Polynesia

To reach New Zealand from South America, Tyler first planned to have us fly from Santiago straight to Christchurch. “What about Tahiti?”, I asked. My grandmother had just returned from a New Zealand + Tahiti trip so the idea was fresh in my mind. How could we pass up an opportunity to visit the islands of French Polynesia when we were so close to them? Although ridiculously expensive to get there, the flight master managed to find a way using frequent flyer miles, once again.

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