This is us.

Sitting in a strangely quiet Heathrow departures terminal, waiting to board our flight to New Zealand was surreal after years of planning and saving. At times, this trip had seemed like an impossible dream; something we spoke about to sustain us rather than something real. But, we had made it - our lives crammed into four duffel bags about to fly to the other side of the world. 

We are Nick and Sylvie. In the lives we were leaving behind Nick’s time had been spent mainly studying for a PhD and Sylvie’s working as a teacher; we were feeling confined and saw our lives ahead following a line of least resistance. Routine is the enemy of time and we chose to risk routine for adventure. Neither of us can remember exactly when nor how but it was always New Zealand. Photos, videos, stories and guidebooks just affirmed what we already knew. NZ had everything we loved doing: hiking, fly fishing and camping all set amongst unparalleled landscapes and packed neatly into two islands. So, having navigated the visa maze we were each granted 23 month Working Holiday Visas. 6 months disappeared and we were sat on a Heathrow runway with one-way tickets to NZ, contemplating if this really was such a good idea! The seatbelt lights came on and with a refreshing hot towel in hand, we began our 11403-mile journey.

We have created this blog to document our trip. Here you can find our story and follow us on our adventure. We will blog the highlights (and perhaps some lowlights) of our travels, give honest advice, tips and hopefully insight along the way. This is rodsandrucksacks, thanks for reading.