So we’re back in UK land, and we’re working on sorting through the photos to share with you all, but in the mean time here’s a quick taster of what’s to come, which we started working on during the flight home!
In five hours time we’ll be touching back down in London after three weeks visiting my childhood home, New Zealand. It has been a very special trip for both of us on several fronts. For me, a chance to revisit long treasured memories, to eat junk foods that fifteen years of deprivation have turned into eternal fruit, to reacquaint myself with rarely seen family and friends and look on the playground of my youth with adult eyes to see if my dreamy perception of it had some grounding in reality. For Manijeh, it was the fulfilment of a lifelong desire, the chance to explore an environment abundant with natural history, to put faces to names of aunts, uncles and cousins she’d heard about as though part of some ancient myth and to acquire a greater sense of her Kiwiness.
Three weeks is of course a generous holiday by anyone’s standards when engaged in full time employment, but it is only sufficient to scratch the surface of what the two-isled country of Aoteoroa has to offer. Nevertheless we achieved everything mentioned and more in a jam-packed schedule and yes it was every bit the utopia I left behind in my early teens, even through the less naïve eyes of an almost thirty-something. However, I am beating about the gorse bush. I’m here to tell you what happened, to recount our adventures and to add some meaning to the many hundreds of pictures we took, a sampling of which will be shared with you here.
So here’s how it’s going to go down. I will write one post of each week of the trip, giving dates and locations of each day, (I might skip some to prevent total mind numbing boredom) a short summary thereof and a concluding shortlist of the Kiwi delights sampled or re-sampled as the case may be.
Week One will be on its way soon, but in the mean time here’s a quick pic just to make you all wish you were there too and make us wish we were still there!
well said V. I wish I was still there too.
Happy for you that you had a good time. Look forward to the piccies (as I am trapped somewhat in Swansea and rarely get to even England I enjoy photos of friends who travel!)xx
thanks for stopping by Leila! Hope you’re all well and maybe when we are in Wales seeing Fleur and Ramin we can catch up with you too!
Hey! So you don’t really know me but you remember my sister Sarah! I was in NZ too! I’m the little Enslow, and can I say that your pictures have been such a blessing to see! What a sight for sore eyes! I can’t stop using the exclamation marks because I am so excited to see real NZ images that confirm my dreams and what I remember of NZ as well.
Thanks so much!