Adventures begin everywhere, anytime....

It was over dinner one night, Dave and I trying to decide where to live and what crazy adventures we could come up with . I had no interest in Pemberton while he had no interest in Squamish, and Whistler...been there done that. What a predicament. How could two active people who thrive, on the outdoors be so adamant about not living in either one of those beautiful places?! This was when I piped up about always having wanted to take some physio courses in NZ/Australia and Dave spoke up about a longing to one day compete in The "Speights Coast to Coast". Alas it was decided....New Zealand it was. But no sense in waiting the socially expected length of time for our new relationship to evolve... lets leave in 2 months! Wicked as. All we have to do is sell all our shit. Now that was an adventure in its self.

And so the planning began around a NZ summer of trail running,

mountain biking, multi day hiking and of course our new found love for expedition adventure racing! So we entered some races and it's time to giver.

Here's the start of our CanaKiwi adventure...

December 24th.... most are preparing for a family and friends dinner while we were racing around the airport playing around with the weight scales to ensure we are not beyond the maximum weight requirement for our 4 oversized excess baggage.

Needless to say the Air NZ attendant did not look to impressed when we pulled up with our 2 overflowing carts. Other travellers giving us strange looks until Dave smiled at them. Calculated at about + $600 we were surprised and pleased to only pay $330...so stoked they never looked at our cabin luggage hehehe. Merry Christmas to us!

We navigated our way onto the plane, were thrown around through turbulence towards the "Land of the Long White Cloud" and touched down safely. Wear your seat belts on board people since we nearly hit the roof at one point. But I have to say the most memorable moment of the flight was watching Richards Simmons 1980's pre-flight safety protocol video with other kiwi celebs! Absolutely hilarious. We made the best of Christmas in the air skipping the 25th all together with the time change but remembered to still exchange pressies!

We (Cathy) nervously, and (Dave) with typical kiwi sweet as attitude, approached NZ immigration worried about not having been approved for a Working Holiday Visa and having a return flight dated 5 months from now, yikes! since normally only 3 month tourist visa's are issued without an approved working visa. Luckily we breezed through with drift wood and squashed orange and only a few questions asked remembering that less is more (admittedly a concept Cathy struggles with sometimes :) ) and were pleasantly greeted by hungry NZ customs officers that hurried us through so they could grab breakie, choice as bro! KIA ORA and welcome home. AWESOME.

Here we are now in small town Kawerau, NZ at Timo and Carol's (Dave's parents). We're catching up on sleep, taking in the 100-200mm of rain we thought we left behind although not without one day of sun to test the true strength of the sun considering the big hole in the ozone layer, we're searching for some wheels in Tauranga and Whakatane (pronounced Fuckatane) and of course stretching out the legs with some long overdue trail runs around Kawerau.

So follow along on our adventures. We will be trying to keep the blog short and sweet sharing events, stories and photos. Until next time.

Kia Kaha,

Cathy and Dave