A Travellers Life

Travelling is never just about where you go,

it's about the journey on the way.

That is what this blog post is about.

When we were in New Zealand our bus driver would

start the day reminding us "if you want to have a good day,

have a good day, it you want to have an amazing day, have an 

amazing day, and if you want to have the best day of your life

you go out there and make it the best day of your life"

 After travelling for 2 months, we've learnt that to have an

amazing day it's not necessarily what you do but who 

you meet and your attitude towards the day. 

 

After staying in hostels for the last month we've learnt

it's very easy to meet other travellers, you start with small talk

"where have you been? where are you travelling too?

how long have you been away?" and once

you've passed that you end up realising you've met

some of the most amazing people from countries

you've never even heard of. 

In general it's quite rare to see 3 people travelling

together, normally you travel by yourself or as a duo, but 

because of this everyone is willing to make conversation

 and before you know it you're sitting in a room with a guitar and a

 harmonica singing coldplay.

A travellers life is fascinating, people come into your life,

 you spend days with them and act like you've been

friends for life and then you go your seperate ways,

they go north, you go south and you move on to the next place.

 

If you plan to ever go travelling we strongly

recommend staying in hostels, every time you arrive

at a new hostel it's like being welcomed into a new

family, you cook together, watch TV, go on bar crawls,

even shower together (not literally).

 And trust me, your idea of a hostel will not be accurate,

you get large rooms (with a house cleaner), a chill out room,

TV room, a bar and you're surrounded by people who are all

so welcoming, the only downfall is the wifi.

Stick 100 teenagers in a house, all internet dependent,

ready to check social media every evening and all on the same

WiFi, you can imagine the chaos.

 Food.

I'm sure you can all imagine what food we've been eating, 

I think recently we've living off spaghetti hoops on toast 

or peanut butter sandwiches. I wouldn't call it 5 star meals

but occasionally we treat ourselves to a Max Brenners or a cake

from the local bakery. We say occasionally if we go longer

than 4 days without a bakery sweet treat we tend to have

withdrawal symptoms, those custard slices just call our name.

 We've been lucky enough to stay with family in parts of

New Zealand and Australia which is heaven getting a cooked

dinner every evening. (Big thanks to Anita

and her delicious dinners in NZ)

One other thing, if anyone is unsure whether or not

to go travelling, just go.

Travelling gives you the freedom to completely own your

own life, you aren’t committed or tied down to anyone

or anything and that is a feeling you will rarely feel.

We know this blog post is a bit different to what we normally

write, but you don't normally get to talk about this when you're

so busy discussing all the adventures you've been on,

and this side of travelling is all part of the adventure.

Lots of love

Megan, Robyn and Erin

xxx

 

the southern round up

Sorry it's been a while, we've had a hectic two weeks.

We have a tendency to turn up to a country with a

"make it up as you go along" mindset and so after spending

a week in Christchurch we decided to book a southern island

road trip with kiwi experience.

It's fair to say we didn't get off to a good start, 

the bus driver failed to spot us which resulted in a Usain Bolt 

sprint to chase down the bus.

However, from the point in which we boarded the kiwi bus

we had the time of our lives. It's hard to talk about

everything we did in just one blog post so 

we're just going to show you.

Kaikora

  

 

Franz Josef

(There is a beautiful glacier in Franz Josef,

however it rained like we've never seen rain before

so we couldn't see much)

Nelson Lakes

Queenstown

King Julian represent

(taken during a 6am drunken stroll)

 Lake Tekapo

so bloody cold

 This is only 50% of what we've done throughout this trip
but there is only so much you can put on one blog post.
These photo's don't do justice the beauty of New Zealand,
to put it in modern day terms, wherever you look you could take a
photo and it would be instagram worthy.
(This proved a challenge for Robyn and Megan as they were spoilt for choice).
We've met some amazing people from all over the world,
who made our trip so much more memorable,
some of the best memories were just nights sitting
 by the beach with a guitar, having a BBQ followed by a pub crawl,
dressing up (in Erins case as a shower) for a party in the middle
of nowhere, or even just evenings in with a duvet and a movie
surrounded by people from every country imaginable "who are all here
for the same reason, to enjoy life."
 We even had a few wild nights where Megan and Erin went
skinny dipping and Robyn spent the early hours of the morning taking
lakeside strolls, making friends with the hostel staff and finally waking up at 7:30am in the middle of reception!

Cheers to Dylan and Dave (cuddles) for making this experience
so amazing with your witty comments and inspirational quotes.
New Zealand has been incredible and we're
so grateful everything we've done so far.

haere rā,

Megan Popeel, Robyn and Erin
xxx