Falling with style

What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done? Did you move to a new country? Go on a blind date? Quit your job? Jump out of a plane? As of last month, I can say I’ve done all of the above, thanks to my experience skydiving over the Remarkables mountain range in Queenstown. 

I’ve always considered myself a relatively adventurous person. My living-in-four-countries-in-four-years (soon to be five-in-five) lifestyle bears that out, and I’ve never hesitated to try new things. Skydiving is something I’ve always wanted to try, and after hearing from so many people that Queenstown jumps have some of the best views in the world, it was firmly in my mind that when I went to Queenstown, I would skydive. 

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Steve and me on the way up

What I didn’t expect was that I wouldn’t be skydiving alone. I’m not referring to the tandem master, the skydiving pro who actually does most of the work—obviously I wouldn’t be jumping by myself—and I was pretty sure that I could convince Steve to give it a go. No, I was surprised that skydiving in Queenstown became a family event.

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One for next time

In less than a month, my time in New Zealand is coming to an end. My Australia visa is approved, my flight is booked, and on 27 November Steve and I will be heading off for our next chapter in Melbourne. We’ve done so many incredible things in New Zealand, stretching from our first overnight tramping trip in the Tararuas to our upcoming final trip next week to hike the Milford Track (known as one of the best walks in the world). We’ve seen a lot of what we’ve wanted to see in this beautiful country, especially now that we’ve been down to Queenstown and the surrounding area with my family (more on our family trip soon!).

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The Gang Cleans the Beach

Yesterday, a group from the r/Wellington subreddit got together to clean up trash on Petone beach, on the Lower Hutt side of Wellington harbour. We spent an hour and a half (some intrepid redditors spent closer to two hours!) picking up small bits of plastic, cigarette butts, and what might have been a Pepsi bottle full of pee—ew. 

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I organised the event, which was amazingly simple thanks to the great community in Wellington and particularly r/Wellington. There’s always someone keen to meet up to do anything that someone else is interested in, so all it took was a quick post to the page and 20+ people expressed their interest (we didn’t end up having quite that many people on the day, because life gets in the way, but there was still a group of about 12 of us ready to do our part).

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Tourist at Home

Think of the main tourist attraction in your city or town. When was the last time you visited it? Maybe you actively avoid it (cough, Times Square), maybe you checked it out when you first moved but you have’t been back, maybe it’s “on your list” but you haven’t quite gotten around to it.

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Sometimes its nice to play tourist in your own town and hit all of those sites that “locals never bother with,” but one of the great things about Wellington is that the main tourist attraction also happens to be a lovely nature walk with the best views of the city. Hiking up Mount Vic was one of the first things we did when we first moved here, and I’ve been up four or five times since then.

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Worldwide friends, again and again

I’ve been lucky in my life to make some amazing, close friends. I’ve never been someone with a big social circle, and being terrible at keeping in touch means that I don’t stay connected to many acquaintances, but I have a few friends from every place that I’ve lived who I know I will always be close to even if sometimes we don’t see each other (or even talk!) for years on end. I’ve also been lucky enough to have seen two of those close, best friends (two of my flatmates from Ireland) here in New Zealand (their partners are kiwis) and my very best friend and her husband came for a visit last month.

Still, even if I know I have these amazing friends I can count on to be there for me across thousands of miles and months or years apart, moving the number of times I have in the last few years means that I am in a constant state of making new acquaintances and hopefully new friends. For an introvert who has struggled with shyness all her life, this can be tough, especially in places notorious for their difficulty in creating non-superficial relationships (see also: the “Seattle freeze“).

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A whirlwind North Island road trip with the best company I could imagine

What do you do when two of your favourite people fly to the other side of the world to see you? Go to some of the north island’s most amazing sites of course! My bestie Erin and her husband Jason came to visit Steve and me last week, breaking up their Australian holiday with a few whirlwind days in New Zealand. Because they only had two weeks total, their time in NZ was brief—only four full days—but I think we managed to squeeze a whole lot into that quick trip.

They arrived in Wellington late Sunday night and we immediately got down to business with a long-overdue catch-up (and some of our favourite local wine and beer). I hadn’t seen Erin and Jason since the end of last summer, and the four of us hadn’t been in the same place since their gorgeous wedding last May.

Despite staying up until nearly 3am (an especially impressive feat for me since I’d run a half-marathon earlier on), we got up early the next morning—so much to do, so little time! Because Wellington weather is unpredictable, we took advantage of the decent if a bit overcast day and as soon as we picked up the rental car we drove up to the Mount Vic lookout for a view over the harbour.

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