"Totally AMAZING! No words can describe it."
How I did it: Spontaneously!!! Sale airfares came up... and within a hr i had a 1 way ticket booked. Then i had 6 months to save.... we travelled for 2 weeks on arrival, organised our snowboarding passes in this time.. and i had arranged a transfer through my current employment with mcdonalds, who i was working for at the time in australia. When we got to Queenstown, we stayed in a backpackers for the first week, but had no luck finding a house or a car... in the end we brought the first car we looked at simply because we could only stay in the backpackers a week and we had to move on. We looked a numerous houses! but could only put in one application at a time. It took a few days for us to find out we had the house (We were very lucky!!! to get the first house we applied for, as it doesn't happen that often in Queenstown, or to a couple sooo young!) During the waiting time we decided to take a drive and explore for a few days. We had previously arranged a start date for work and had a few days to spare. Still no contact from the real estate agent after a few days made me panicy! And we were lucky enough to have a really good manager who invited us to stay with him until we found a house of our own. Luckily we only had to stay with him for 2 nights before being told our application was successful. My BF and I lived in a 2 bedroom house by ourselves, and we had the aussie dollar on our side so we lived a pretty well off life (wireless net, good food, gas, electricity, heating etc etc)... and we had amazing views which was a bonus!!! Basically we worked a hell of alot... but the days we had off were spent snowboarding, travelling or relaxing. We made awesome friends, the majority of which were brazillian, and now i am home we still keep in close contact!. With no real plans we decided we would come home when cheap airfares came up again... and it happened to be in october. Let me tell you.... there is nothing like going to bed one night and everything is normal... then waking up the next morning to a foot of snow covering everywhere you look!!! MAGICAL! We travelled around the south island a bit in our time living in Queenstown, mostly to Christchurch, Invercargill and Dunedin, but before (down the west coast) and after (up the east, accross the top, and then up the east of the nth island and accross to auckland) we travelled extensively. I can now say i have seen approx 95% of NZ... it is beautiful every inch! I am moving back.. and that is when I will do the top end (The bay of islands etc....) my new goal is to make sure i see every bit of nz!
Lessons & tips: Don't stress, go with the flow! don't work too hard because time flies soo quickly that it detracts from the experience if you cant experience it... if that makes sense!
Resources: www.backpackerboard.co.nz
Jan 01, 2009, 05:59AM PST
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