Expat Life: New Zealand: Mackenzie Country, Wanaka & traveling souls

Robert Louis Stevenson once said "For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move."

We were headed to Lake Wanaka this past weekend to visit some of Josh's family, but really I think we were trying to find an excuse to get on the road. It seems to me that it never matters where we're actually heading when embarking on a trip, a destination is a simple excuse for the promise of adventure. We saw lupins, my favourite wildflower, all along the road in Mackenzie country, through Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki. It had been thirteen years since I had seen these wild flowers bloom in New Zealand and it was a sort of magic that brought me back to my childhood, when traveling was life as I knew it and any stationary moments were merely interruptions.

Lake Pukaki is slowly becoming one of my favourite places in New Zealand, if just for being a beautiful, solitary rest stop along the road. It is comforting to leave the car long enough to sit on perfectly shaped rocks and lock eyes across the lake with the tallest mountain in New Zealand, Mt. Cook, if only to have a quiet, grateful moment with the mountains and glaciers themselves.

That weekend it was summertime in New Zealand like it is winter in Florida, with a chill in the air but sun shining down, trying very hard to sneak warmth through its rays. Warm enough to skinny dip in the turquoise Clutha River beneath an old, iron bridge but cold enough to spend a maximum of ten seconds in the freezing, glacier-fed water.

Our time in Wanaka was short, we had been there before, but our campsite was memorable as were the amazing people we met sitting in the campsite's kitchen over looking the lake and mountains. A twenty one year old from Germany and a couple from Boston both backpacking their way through New Zealand and carrying on through to Asia inspired us. We exchanged numbers hoping if they needed a bed to sleep in and a home cooked meal with friends along their journeys, that they would find us off the Hilton Highway. We picked up a hitch hiker in Twizel, a woman from Beijing working at the Earth and Sky tours at Lake Tekapo. Asher found a new friend in her and we wished her well on her travels. If we never see these people again, they will be wrapped up into little bundles of inspiration and tucked into our wanderlusting souls. These are the kind of people that there should be more of in the world. People who aren't afraid to travel alone, or sell everything they own for a chance to experience another part of the world. I almost wish I had taken photographs of them all, but that will be for when we meet again down the road of life.