I’m on my way.... And what a joke it is! How did I ended up flying all the way to Auckland!??!
The nice thing about working on projects is that projects always consists of phases. The individual phases are often very busy and don’t leave much space for taking a holiday. Because during these phases all the actual work gets done.
It’s the spaces in between or at the end of the phases that are interesting. During these interim phases of the project, all work has been handed over for review to the client and the ones who did all the work will shift to work on the financial proposal for the next phase. Sometime’s i’m involved in that and sometimes i’m not.
This year our project would end on the 23rd of January, and after that the project would go out for public statutory consultation. This consultation round would not have too much to do with the role I fulfilled, so I discussed this with the project director and asked if It would be ok for me to be gone during this first month of statcon. An it was :-)
The only problem with project schedules is that they frequently tend to change. So i’m alway anticipating changes to my plans and I always keep in mind that I could be asked to change my plans last minute, if the project would require it.
Not this year though. It is exactly going as planned. On my way to Auckland New Zealand now, together with my bicycle.
So once I knew I potentially could get 5 weeks of holiday in February, the next step was to determine where to go. One of the Canadians I met in Afrika invited me over to her place in Ottowa. However, as I felt that Ottowa would be pretty cold in February, i contacted some of the other Canadians and they all said that it would be too cold and that most of hem would be out chasing the sun (that was the main reason for all of them being in Africa last year).
So no Canada. no Africa either, because for my feeling I just returned from Africa. So what remained were South Amerika, Australia and New Zealand. This made de decision quite clear, because I want to do South Africa and Australia properly by bike! So New Zealand it is....
My brother lived in New Zealand for a while and was very enthusiastic about it. And so were my parents who went to visit him while he was there. And so was Frodo, although i’m sur he liked certain bits better than other bits.
I never imagined myself going to New Zealand. I never imagined myself taking another 5 week holiday, just 8 months after returning from a four month holiday. I’m just incredibly spoiled! So spoiled that it feels quite unreal...
All this also means that preparations for this trip are at an all time low.I prepared Africa with military precision. For this trip I just grabbed together some stuff. The panniers I have with me are quite different from the two 89liter duffle bags last year. I just carry a very limited amount of stuff, meaning that at some point I even might have to do my own laundry
It’s also going to be weird to just ride by myself. If i trust my maps i’m going to be riding through sections which won’t have any facilities for up to 4 days at an end!
We’ll i’ll just start riding and see what happens. Told my mum that if this blog shows no life for 5 consecutive days, it might become interesting to start asking around for some help:-) I’m sure me and the Corona’s I got on my China Southern flight are going to be well!
And here we go!
