I can’t believe the time has come to say goodbye to New Zealand. An entire year spent living here and now it’s come to an end.
I remember when we first arrived and we spoke to a couple who were leaving that week. They just couldn’t stop talking about how quickly it all went but to us that felt like a life time away.
I won’t lie, it hasn’t been sunshine and daisies the entire time. The difficulty with social media is how we are so caught up with showing the highlight reel to our lives and it’s so easy to forget that a working holiday is just that... work.
When we decided to go to New Zealand for a working holiday visa, like everything before you get down and dirty with the nitty gritty, our rose tinted glasses where on pretty strong.
But I can truly say that we’ve learnt so much about ourselves and our love for exploring just keeps growing stronger.
Whether it’s living in a van in freezing temperatures just to save a little bit of extra money for food, elbow deep in a hostel toilet scrubbing poo stains for accomodation, serving bacon rolls on a food stall to literally thousands of people a day (great fun when you’re veggie, right?), hiking to Roy’s Peak at 4am just to race back 2 hours to Queenstown to make it to work that same day, crouching over all day on a vineyard in the blaring hot sun needing plenty of paracetamol to see us through the day, or a personal favourite: waking up at 4am every morning to work in a mussel factory.
Honestly, writing it down makes it sound even more ridiculous than it was but I’m so grateful for the opportunity to do this and to all the wonderful people we’ve met who do these jobs for their entire lives. I have a true appreciation for the seriously hard work that goes into the products we use and abuse in daily life and I will never drink a bottle of wine again without thinking about the many people who have contributed to putting it there.
What an insane year it’s been and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
All these ridiculous memories we will never ever forget... New Zealand, you will always have a piece of my heart & I can wholeheartedly say, we will see you again ♥️
