Wednesday, October 7, 2009

NZ Prep Time

A friend asked that I blog more about my trip to New Zealand, so here it is, not to entice jealousy, but to share my excitement.

The 25-day trip itinerary is very full, with 13 days of hiking, 3 days of canoe/sea kayaking, 3 ferry rides, and over 35 hours of driving. Much of the hiking is over steep and rough terrain. Tom and I have been hiking almost every weekend for the last several months to prepare for this aspect of the trip. It seems that since my back injury my feet became soft and my legs complacent. My goal is to be able to hike 12 miles with an elevation change of 3000' in less than 8 hours with a 20 pound pack. Tom is a very good hiker and I have no worries about him being able to complete all of the NZ hikes, and I am about half way to my conditioning goal. My other goal to make NZ more enjoyable is to drop another 15 pounds. I will keep you updated on my hiking and weight goals. To see the hikes completed so far, see my web album.

We will have three free days in Queenstown, the adventure capital of the world, so I will be blogging about what to do here.

Another aspect of trip preparation is shopping. We won't have much room for our stuff, but the urge to go wild is overwhelming. "But it's a once in a life-time trip, and I need it." Well, luckily (or not), my wonderful husband has great restraint. My biggest shopping element is hiking boots, which I will talk more about later.

Stay tuned.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the update! As a huge believer in comfortable footwear, I look forward to hearing about the new hiking boots.

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