Don't Tell the Guests; Our Honeymoon

I feel somewhat jipped out of the honeymoon phase.

You see,  we had our honeymoon 4 months after our wedding.

In that time,  I'd changed jobs, my husband had taken on extra projects for friends and the only time I really saw Mick was when we flopped into bed totally exhausted at the end of the day.

It wasn't the marriage that took the shine off of the wedding and the just married glow... it was just this busy little thing that we call life!

But let me tell you,  by the time the honeymoon did come around we were superly dooperly excited to escape reality to create our own little piece of loved up coupley shupley down time together discovering hidden treasures and adventures in New Zealand.

So in February we set off for the long white cloud that just so happened to be a quick flight over the Tasman to our destination. 

As with all overseas holidays it started with my husband watching some hilarious manly comedy while I bawled my eyes out to yet another Julia Roberts thriller on the airplane while sobbing and giggling into beers and beverages.

We landed in Auckland all pumped to pick up our motor home,  quickly referred to as Kiwi, for our 3 week meandering around the country side.

We headed straight up North through the heart of the North Island to the Bay of Islands;  a tropical hideaway nestled between the crevices of the mountainous country and right on the fringes of the gorgeous lapping ocean.

In every country that we visit we go in search of some kind of big fish that Mick has firmly ingrained on his bucket list and New Zealand was no different;  we were to land a King Fish.

Needless to say,  I managed to snag the biggest catch of the day but just so that my husband didn't turn completely green with envy I "let him" slip off the line and back into the safety of his precious reef.

We then road tripped it down the east coast in search for the scenic route, eager to catch a glimpse of their beaches and to sink our toes in the sand and bodies in the sea.

Along the way we discovered many little treasures and were quite surprised by the beauty right before us.

Our next stop after was the Waitomo Caves where we maneuvered clad in a very tight wetsuit up a valley with giant white gum boots....In summer, towards the hidden entrance to an underworld experience light up by the illuminating green bums of glow worms.  Inside the roof sparkled like a calm summers night sky and we paddled through water,  launched ourselves into Tyre tubes and drifted through the wonderland that left us in awe of the Stalelectights and Stalectmites that had formed over many years.

As if that adventure wasn't enough,  I then dragged,  I mean happily waltzed hand in hand with my husband to Hobbiton!  So I'm not a die hard Lord of the Rings fan but I certainly took every possible photographic opportunity to capture myself in the miniature directors super creative yet slightly overly pedantic mini Hobbit village. Mick was happy that there was a pub that served chilled beers but I just soaked up every minute!

Next we were off to Reakoroua I mean,  Rotorua for some hot spring action.  It didn't take us long to coat ourselves in mud and convince ourselves that it was infact, good for our pores and youthfulness!

Mick even got to try his hand at the Hukka after he was selected to preform at our cultural dinner full of singing,  dancing,  scarily long tongues and hungeys.

Then we set forth for the South Island,  very excited about what adventures awaited us.

We were firstly drawn to the Marlborough wine region where surprisingly for me after after hating white wines in Australia,  fell in love with the crisp,  fruity flavors famous in that area.

Our journey continued down the East Coast where we stopped into a road side caravan parked on the beach for a feed of freshly caught crayfish and green lipped mussels washed down with our newly found love of NZ whites.

We pottered past Hamner Springs ogling the snow capped mountains and the exaggerated land scape that constantly kept you guessing what you were going to find around the next corner.

We then made our way down the west coast, with the Fox Glacier in our sights but stopping for a pitstop at the Monteith brewery in Greymouth.

What awaited us in the Fox Glacier blew our mind;  we took a helicopter ride up to the Glacier and trekked around the jagged ice,  searching for hidey holes and caves while straddling crevices and avoiding brittle ground.

My highlight would definitely be slip and sliding through the ice caves that reflected a beautiful blue from the sun.

Next up was the gorgeous Lake Wanaka where we indulged in wedges,  beverages and reading on the banks out soaking in the sun.

We then took the scenic route down into Queenstown, potentially the most beautiful city that I've even laid eyes upon (except Paris, Paris is just well Paris!) Everywhere you looked there was natural beauty in abundance from the yellow blanket of flowers over the mountains to the White powder lazing about on the peaks, to the glittering diamonds on the lake and greenery of NZ in Summer.

We tried our hand at White water rafting,  that really ended up being like floating down a river in a giant inflatable raft because silly me failed to realise that it probably wouldn't be a grade 5 after Summer!

But we loved every minute.

Our final destination was cruising down Mitford Sound on a nature cruise before making tracks on our massive mission back up to Christchurch where I managed to convince Mick to pick up hitch hikers along the way (it's illegal in Australia so was abit of a novelty!)

All in all the 21 days of technology free,  grey nomad living in a white maggot (really slow,  road hogging can as local New Zealanders called them) was utter paradise.... except if my husband farted one more time in that confined space he might have been one of the back packers!

We loved every minute of our adventure and spending 3 weeks of quality time together.

My biggest tip would be to try and have your honeymoon closer to your wedding if you can afford to.

After the hype of the wedding it would've been lovely to continue being wrapped up in the bubble for awhile longer and zipping off for some romantic time straight after instead of running right back into reality.

But it was what worked at the time!

Where did you go on your honeymoon?

Did you go straight away?

Look after yourself and those around you,

Kirsty xxx