NZ 2010: We Love Bureaucracy (Major Update)

Dave has the worst luck with bureaucracy out of everyone I know.  To provide an incredibly condensed summary:  in order to get the visa he wanted, he needed to prove that he is leaving the country.  The visa would be issued according to the date on his onward travel ticket.  (Fortunately for me, I already have both a working holiday visa and a work permit valid until February 2011.)  So, we needed to decide when we would leave New Zealand.

Now, most of the following post is total conjecture that we cooked up just a few days ago, and I expect the plans will change a million times, so I've put in bold the parts that are certain.

Here goes...

...we'll be in New Zealand until December 31, 2010 (!), when we fly to Sydney to watch the New Year's Eve fireworks and stay up all night partying.  We're thinking of immediately hopping on another plane (like, New Year's morning) to go straight to Brisbane to tend to our injured livers and go snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef.  Then probably to Singapore, because it looks like tickets are cheap, and immediately to Bangkok.  Maybe.  Or Manila.  Maybe not.

But yeah, shoot, that's basically a whole year in New Zealand.  Three times longer than I thought I'd stay.  Huh.  That's hilarious!  How did that happen?

What will we do for the rest of the year?


For the months of April and May, Dave and I will drive all over the North and South Islands, living in a van when we're not hiking and camping (Milford Track, here I come!).  In exchange for using a program van, we've committed to coming back to Tuateawa for the month of June to work our asses off planting lots and lots and lots of trees.

For the months of July and August, the New Zealand winter months, we may go back to the South Island to look for work in a ski resort.  Dave is an avid and a strong skier and a novice outdoor educator to boot, and I could easily work in the hospitality industry.  We have the option to come back to Tuateawa for the spring program from September through December, if all goes well in June.  Alternatively, we may WWOOF (willingly work on an organic farm(s)) for our room and board and to gain more experience with organic/ biodynamic food production and/or permaculture.  The goal is to more-or-less break even financially when we leave NZ.

This post has a lot of text, so I'll end with a happy image of Dave and I in the spa bath.  We built this, from the hearth to support the vat as the water heats to the deck around the pool.