So, I do want to write a little more soon about the end of the South Pole season and what we’ve been up to in Christchurch (not much, really), but we have both made it back to New Zealand and some of our friends from Pole have rented a house in Wanaka–we’ll be leaving Christchurch tomorrow morning and camping for a night before meeting up with them.

A few things we’ve been working on in the past few days:

Our trip itinerary. We’re leaving New Zealand March 4th-ish for South Africa, and heading later to Victoria Falls, Tanzania and Zanzibar, Mauritius, Turkey and perhaps a bit of overland travel through Eastern Europe, depending on our energy level and ability to be strict about our budget before that point. This trip would have us landing in Minneapolis in early May. I will post our full itinerary with dates as soon as the tickets go through.

Packing. We really want to do a better job packing this year and we’re bringing our tent and a few other odds and ends for camping that we didn’t have last year. We both have a smallish backpack–mine is a 35Litre framepack and Daniel has a normal backpack–and a messenger bag. We’ve managed to fit the tent inside the backpacks and left the sidebags mostly empty for daytrips and food.

Our “tans”. I got in on Monday night, and we went to Sumner beach the next day (amazingly beautiful, by the way) and promptly got incredibly sunburned. It is now Friday and our skin is starting to fall off.

I’ll write more soon. Take care!