Anna, Karen and Denise, this one's for you.
I fully intended for my next post to be the answers to some of the questions I received from my Facebook friends regarding what they wanted to know about solo travel, but life and it’s twists and turns have a way of changing courses in a moment’s notice. I promise I’ll get to your questions, soon.
All week my friends and “adopted” family in New Zealand have been on my mind. When I first decided I would move forward with writing this blog I knew it wouldn’t be long before I‘d write about my love of New Zealand and how that started, so it felt only appropriate that I do so now.
When I was much younger, long before email or the Internet was conceived, I loved to write. Not short stories or poems but letters, actual pen and paper letters that were sent via “snail” mail.
I was about 12 or 13 when I started writing letters to my friends from a choir camp I attended each summer to keep in touch throughout the year. I remember arriving home from school each afternoon and immediately asking if I had received any letters in the mail, excited when I had a one to read.
Letters from around the world
Somewhere along the way I linked up with pen pals from around the world. To be honest, I'm not sure how I found my first "pen pal" that I had not met in person. All I remember is that we would write letters, often very long handwritten letters sharing the ups and downs of our daily lives. There was something about the sharing details of your life and your thoughts with someone you’d never met. You didn’t get that instant gratification of a response or reaction we're so used to today with email, texting, etc. Looking back, maybe it's one thing that taught me patience. The anticipation of waiting for a letter to arrive from halfway around the world was one of my best childhood memories. Over the years, my "pen pals" felt like faraway friends. Like most people that you meet “in real life” the bonds created through letter writing are can be just as powerful.
As I grew older and went off to college the number of pen pals I had dwindled. Email was slowly taking over "snail mail" and the Internet was born. I had a pen pal from New Zealand that I would continue to exchange letters regularly. Eventually, in addition to our letters, our communication evolved to chatting via the now defunct yahoo messenger experimenting with the video feature where we could "wave" at each other virtually, often with a delay, and sometimes hear the other person talk. It was 2000, the new millennium, and we could SEE each other through the computer from opposite sides of the world! Bear with me. It WAS pretty darn neat back then. I digress.
Meeting in real life
In 2001, a few years post undergrad not long after I started to travel outside of the United States, I had the opportunity to travel to New Zealand with a college friend. I had always thought I'd go to Australia first, as I had been obsessed with spending our winter (READ: I HATE cold weather) on the other side of the world where it was warm and sunny since I was young enough to know that was possible! Having summer year-round was a dream! But, traveling to New Zealand meant I could meet my pen pal; the person I'd written to for years, whose family and home I‘d learned all about through her letters, and visit a country I'd only dreamed of ever seeing in person.
My pen pal and I messaged back and forth and she helped me plan our trip. She made suggestions of places for us to see as we made our way from Auckland to Wellington, where she lived. We rented a VW bug when we got to the airport in Auckland and made our to Lake Taupo where we'd stay for a few days before we made our way to Wellington to visit for the long weekend with my pen pal and her sister before making our way back up to Auckland a few days later. Much of those first few days was a blur. I remember sailing on Lake Taupo, driving through beautiful countryside and seeing lots of SHEEP!
We made it to Wellington and meeting my pen pal, someone whom I'd written for years, yet never met "IRL" (in real life) was almost surreal. She and her sister showed us around their hometown visiting the tourist sites and exploring their favorite places. I had my first glimpse of the South Island of New Zealand at sunset. I met her mum and brother when her mum hosted a lovely lunch for us at her home. The same home I sent all those letters to for years and years.
To say my pen pal and her family were gracious and welcoming to someone they'd never met but had only heard about in letters was an understatement. That visit set the tone for my first experience in New Zealand and all the subsequent visits to come in the years ahead.
After we left Wellington, we made our way north back to Auckland, stopping along the way in other places my pen pal suggested. From the shop owners, servers in restaurants where we ate, to the random people we met at gas stations (our new VW bug was quite the conversation starter as they were rare in NZ); everywhere we went and everyone we met was relaxed, friendly and welcoming. There wasn't a shop we stopped in where the owner didn't engage us in a conversation about life in the U.S., even in a larger city like Auckland. It felt odd to think that shop owners wanted to take the time to know us when I came from a large metro area in which people rarely so readily engage in conversations with strangers. We felt welcomed everywhere we went, and it became one of the things I noticed first when I traveled elsewhere in the years to come. Those interactions with the locals- were they friendly? Did they want to share a little about their lives and their home?
Who knew UGG boots would become popular?
Of course, there were a few mishaps along the way and things we learned about life in New Zealand. For example, there's no such thing as a "right on red" when driving on the opposite side of the road, and opposite side of the car. Or a "left on red" for that matter. We also learned that there were three times as many sheep in New Zealand as there were people and I'm quite certain we saw half of them as we drove around the North Island. We also discovered that when we tried on those ugly and fuzzy wool lined boots that were so warm but so bulky and big we thought they looked goofy and didn't buy them, we missed the chance to be trend setters. It was only a few months later that a well-known celebrity wore them with a pair of short jean shorts and suddenly everyone would want to buy a pair of UGG boots. For the record, I now have three pairs I live in every winter; including the pair I'm wearing while I write this and still kick myself for not buying a similar pair in New Zealand when the exchange rate was largely in our favor all those years ago.
While I had only traveled very little outside of the U.S. at that point, I somehow knew New Zealand would be a place I would return to someday. It took me exactly 10 years to make it back for what is my most memorable and amazing solo trip to date. I'll share the details of that trip for a future post! But thanks to that first visit in 2001 and the subsequent three additional visits since then, New Zealand has become a place that feels familiar; almost like my far away home. It's a feeling that's hard to describe, but one of comfort and familiarity that comes with returning to a place you love. It's that place I know I'll keep visiting over and over again even after I've explored so many other parts of the world.
Looking back, I have that childhood hobby of writing letters to pen pals around the world to thank for introducing me to someone I have long since considered more than a pen pal, but a friend.
Over the years, I've gotten to know her immediate and extended family, who have graciously welcomed me as a guest in their homes on my subsequent visits where I was treated like a member of the family. My visits since then have included two weddings, a surprise visit to meet new babies and brief visits while on a cruise and many days exploring both islands of New Zealand and Australia, where my pen pal has lived for the past many years. I've been lucky to have visited nearly every corner of both islands of New Zealand; a few places more than once and know I'll continue to return time and time again. I have that hobby to thank for introducing me to a place in this world that I'll always hold near and dear to my heart.
That trip was the beginning of what made me realize travel wasn't just about the adventure, but also about the people you meet along the way.
"I'm in love with cities I've never been to and people I've never met." - Unknown.
