1 Day To Go: "Why are you cutting the money?!"

Sooo, this time tomorrow, we will (hopefully) be on the plane to New Zealand. Please ignore the following madness.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!

Right. Anyways. The packing is done. My poor old bear is stuffed uncomfortably into the top of my rucksack. He is not impressed. Amy had a stupid moment and struggled to sort her packing until she realised that her bag is expandable. Div.

I managed to mislay my dollars for a while despite Amy having thrown the packet almost at my face. In my defence, I was busy sorting out my new (massive) memory card for my camera and didn't actually notice that she'd thrown it at my face.

In cutting into the packaging for said memory card, Amy had another silly moment and thought I was cutting up my dollars. Oops.

Even given that mine and Amy's rucksacks are almost full, they're still both massively under the weight limit for the flight. We are the queens of packing. I'm assuming Claire is in a similar situation. Hurray for efficient packing (apart from grumpy teddy bear).

Things left to do: find my flight socks. I forgot to put them on my list of things, so no doubt I'll end up having to buy some in the airport. Ugh. I also need to leave my dad a nice long list of things that need looking after in the garden so that I can come back to a bountiful harvest. Oh yeah. Priorities.

One more sleep till flight. Given my past experiences on long haul flights, probably one more sleep till New Zealand. Ahhh, flight-induced insomnia.

Right. I think that's enough babbling. Prepare for the ridiculous amount of photos which will no doubt be incoming over the next 3 weeks. HELL YES.

In the meantime, have a little slice of silliness in the form of Aussies taking the (gentle) piss out of the Kiwis.

2 Days To Go: Packing? What packing?

2 days to go. Lots of printing has been done and now the useful information folder is sort of bulging and in danger of bursting. I have a functional iPod again, which is wonderful because it means I won't go absolutely insane on the flight from lack of sleep. I am currently much more interested in this than sorting out my packing. Obviously.

So, for 2 days to go... let's have pictures of possibly the two best birds in New Zealand. Because they're cute and fuzzy and generally awesome and I want to see them.

Kiwi

Kakapo

And in case you haven't seen it, here's a video of Sirocco the Kakapo. He's famous.

If I get to see either of these I will be so ridiculously happy. ARGH 2 DAYS.

3 Days To Go: "So Evil They Named It Twice"

What the title says.

ARGH! After so long in the planning, take off is just 3 days away. This time on Saturday we'll be at the airport. I will be having my usual worry about getting earache when we land. Believe me, I will start worrying about this before I even get on the plane - landing earache is painful. I will also be strongly resisting the urge to make highly inappropriate remarks about what might be in Amy's luggage within range of Security.

A soundtrack is also in progress. Mostly consisting of musicals and Howard Shore and Disney and general ridiculousness.

So, 3 days to go. Let us attempt to get Amy and Claire involved in the blog. 3 things we're most looking forward to?

Zoe:

• Hobbits
• Kiwis (the birds and the people and possibly the fruit)
• Catching up with an old friend from uni

Claire:

• Kayaking
• Whale watching
•  Sand boarding

Amy:

•  SNOW!
•  MOUNTAINS!
•  MORDOR! MORDOR! (so evil they named it twice)

Note that Claire has the only serious answers. Coming up in the ever-awesome world of this ridiculous blog: 2 days to go. Also, Beak is excited to be jetting off. Obviously.

"You may as well just take the chemist with you..."

We're approaching the one week countdown for take off. For me at least, it's not quite sinking in. There's just a few little things left to get sorted, cash currently being the most pressing one. And travel insurance, which I thought might have been fixed by now...

We also have the issue of packing. Well, I say we. Claire and Amy seem to have more concerns about this. I was just going to sling everything I need into a bag and be done with it. Y'know, clothes, toiletries, my old bear Marmalade who goes on every holiday even though I'm almost (oh god) in my mid-twenties... Apparently it's not that simple, because there's an assortment of other things that we might need and we need to work out who's taking what.

First aid kit and various medications would be one. Anyone would think New Zealand didn't have plasters and paracetamol. I am told we should take these with us. Plasters, fair enough - I always take them with me because I'm an idiot and I injure myself on stupid things like dead trees (see this post from Australia). But apparently we also need to take paracetamol and imodium and all sorts of other little things. Seriously, we might as well just take the pharmacists with us.

Anyways, that rant aside... what else is happening? Much route mapping. I don't trust sat-navs, so I've let Google work out all the possible directions we could need and printed them off so I can laugh when the sat-nav goes wrong. Which it probably won't but after that time a friend's tried to send us through a very deep ford... yeah.

I need to start making a New Zealand playlist in preparation for the flight. Well, I need something to keep me sane. It will involve lots of Lord of the Rings soundtrack and probably some Crowded House because we discovered they're pretty much the only New Zealand band we've heard of.

"Can you take your really warm face off my knee, please?"

Last few bits of booking completed yesterday evening. Last hostel, buses for the last few days, the last couple of trips. Oh my.

Sooo... only... just over 3 weeks left until we fly out. Hurray! Pretty much everything booked apart from a couple of things we're going to look at doing when we get there. Dependent on weather and such like.

Speaking of weather, I was overly amused to discover that the New Zealand Met Service tells you how many layers of clothing you should be wearing depending on the temperature. Yay. Currently it says 4 layers for Queenstown, so I need to stock up on more t-shirts.

The itinerary now includes the following:

• Planes, trains and automobiles. And a ferry. And some other boats. And a few buses.
• Whales, dolphins and glowworms
• A variety of oddly named hostels, including The Lazy Shag.
• Kayaking
• Glaciers, mountains, stupidly long beaches
• All the geology
• All the Middle-earth references

It may also include:

• Jetlag
• Loud, out of tune singing in the car
• Navigation errors
• Claire and Amy threatening to leave me by the side of the road
• Sore feet
• Sore arms
• Not enough sleep
• Long days
• Late nights
• Seasickness
• Random injuries
• Snow chains
• Cider
• Taking photos of ALL THE THINGS
• Cheesy MySpace photos
• Not wanting to come home

Most importantly, it includes three weeks of amazing views, amazing experiences and amazing memories. Obviously.

3 weeks to go.

"Are we going the right way?"

We went to Whitby today. Look how happy Amy was:

As you can see, it was gorgeously sunny and nicely warm. Managed to find our way there OK - didn't really need the sat-nav until we got into Whitby proper, so we're figuring it's going to be at its most useful when we have to drive in places like Wellington and Auckland.

We had fish and chips for lunch. Extortionately expensive fish and chips - think we get a bit complacent living in Grimsby where it's relatively cheap. Claire almost lost hers to a seagull which divebombed her head and then clobbered her with its wing when it flew away. It had the same sort of evil look as this one:

Had a nice little walk down the harbour wall. Snapped a picture of Beak the Kiwi:

It was supposed to be attacking the abbey on the clifftop, but I kinda failed with taking the photo. Ah well. Look how happy Amy is still. Then we did what we'd actually planned to do and found a Whitby sign to take a photo of. We're so myspace.

Selfie fail. Went a bit wrong on the way home, but managed to find our way - damn sat-nav got me confused. Note to self: trying to pay attention to the map and the sat-nav at the same time is not a good idea. Also almost got stuck going up a massively steep hill and we could just tell the guy in the van behind us was going "bloody women drivers".

So now we just need to get to Whitby, NZ and grab a photo of their Whitby sign. Because obviously.

"Unless one of you particularly wants to get into bed with me..."

Two part booking/planning session today. Looks like we've got the car hire booked, which also covers the ferry crossing between North and South Island. Hurray! Claire decided we need a sat-nav. Anyone would think she didn't trust my navigation skills...

On the subject of navigation, my New Zealand road atlas has also arrived, so obviously instead of helping Claire and Amy to find suitable hostels, I spent the first part of the booking session sticking tabs in the atlas at all the pages we could possibly need. I like maps - it had to be done.

In the later booking session, we got a few more hostels booked, plus "The Trilogy Experience" - which basically means we get to go to Hobbiton, the Maori experience of Te Puia and Te Po and the Waitomo Glowworm Caves. So now we've got most of the major expensive things booked. All the fun.

We seem to have mastered the art of finding hostels with 3 bed rooms so we can get a room to ourselves. Hurray. Of course, this might still mean bunk beds, sofa beds and possible sharing of double beds, but who cares? Extra privacy!

Tomorrow, we're heading up to Whitby to test our navigating skills. Or rather, how well I can explain to Claire which way she needs to go. Should be interesting. We also want to find a "Welcome to Whitby" type sign so we can grab a photo of it. There's a Whitby just outside Wellington in New Zealand and well, it kind of has to be done.

And of course, I only remember as I'm about to post this that Beak the mascot failed to make an appearance. Oh dear. She'll just have to come to Whitby with us tomorrow.