I feel like I’ve had a lot of adventures in the last year, but our latest adventure is going to be a whirlwind 5-week trip around New Zealand for our honeymoon!

New Zealand has been on my bucket list for a long time (pretty much since the first time I watched Fellowship of the Ring), but it’s never been the right time to go – either too far or too expensive. But the stars have aligned and we decided to embrace doing something new together over the holidays this year (although my Mom wasn’t too impressed about it). It’ll be our first time ever not going home to Newfoundland for Christmas, but we’re excited to have so much time to travel around New Zealand and create our own memories for our first Christmas married.

As usual, I’m planning to blog the whole trip! It’s definitely a commitment to write when you’re on the go, but I always get a lot of enjoyment out of it, so I’ll do my best. We have a big itinerary planned, so I’ll just give you a quick overview of our plans!

We’re flying into Auckland and then almost immediately taking a second domestic flight to Great Barrier Island. It’s a small island off the coast of Auckland that is known for its wildness. There’s no electricity on the island and everything is powered by solar and generators, so we’re looking forward to kicking back and relaxing for a few days and hopefully doing a bit of stargazing, since the entire island is a dark sky reserve.

After that we’re taking our second, and last, domestic flight down to Queenstown on the South Island. From there we’re planning to rent a car for the rest of the trip and slowly make our way back to Auckland over the span of the next month. We’re starting with a little road trip around the south part of the island, doing some day hiking near Mount Cook (the tallest mountain in New Zealand) and then road tripping down along the east coast to hopefully see some cool wildlife. We’re taking a ferry at the very bottom of New Zealand to another island called Stewart Island, which is known for it’s birdlife. I expect this may be the highlight of the trip for Seth and we’re hoping to see a Kiwi.

From there we’ll start back up the west side of the island to Te Anau, where we’ll drive the world famous Milford Road to do a boat cruise of Milford Sound. We’ve decided to take it one step further though and we will actually be hiking the Milford Track, a 55km trail through Fiordland National Park, which might be the highlight for me. The Milford Track is one of the Great Walks of New Zealand and is insanely popular. Only 40 people can hike the trail a day, so we feel really lucky to have nabbed 2 spots! We decided to do the hike over Christmas since nothing will likely be open during that time.

We’ll have a well deserved break in Queenstown for a few days after the hike and then we’re back on the road to explore Wanaka and Fox Glacier. This was one of the more self indulgent parts of the trip and we have decided to splurge and heli-hike Fox Glacier. But nothing’s a sure thing and who knows what the weather might do, so cross your fingers we get to do it!

After that we have a few days in Abel Tasman National Park. We were planning to just hang out on the golden sand beaches for a few days, but when we discovered there are no roads in the park, we decided to go on a 3-day kayak trip instead. We started kayaking last year and have really been enjoying it, so we’re looking forward to the trip. We purposely set a pretty slow itinerary for the park though so that we can still relax and enjoy the beaches.

That pretty much ends our time on the South Island and we’re planning to take the ferry to Wellington in early January. We’ll spend a little bit of time in Wellington, but we’re planning to head out to Tongariro National Park pretty quickly so that we can do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, another super popular hike. This is a 20km hike, but it’s usually done as a day hike, so no big backpacks for this one. It circles around Mount Ngauruhoe, which is more popularly known as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings trilogy!

We’re planning for one last adventure activity in Taupo – white water rafting – and then we’re planning to slow it down for the rest of the trip. We have a few days in Rotorua to explore some of New Zealand’s culture and geothermal wonders, as well as some of the hot springs. The other highlight of the trip will come after Rotorua when we visit the Shire and Hobbiton and finally achieve my childhood dream!

Hobbiton will just be a brief stop on our way to the Coromandel Peninsula where we’re planning to visit the beautiful Cathedral Cove and maybe do some snorkeling. After that we’ll drive back to Auckland for a day on Waiheke, a small island next to Auckland that is known for its wines! Then we’ll finish the trip with one more drive north of Auckland to check out a few of the attractions just outside the city.

So it’s going to be a pretty packed itinerary. It’s hard to believe it, but even with 5 weeks, we still couldn’t fit in everything we wanted to do. New Zealand is so rugged and wild – it was so hard to settle on only doing one of the Great Walks. I have a feeling I am really going to love New Zealand and can’t wait to start exploring!