summertime in the southern hemisphere!
traveling to Australia and New Zealand, meeting my favorite author, lessons on traveling
In Australia I stayed with my childhood friend in Newcastle (2 hours away from Sydney), it was super relaxed and chill. We visited Sydney a couple of times and I fell in love with the city, it’s clean, convenient, and lively! One special thing about staying with a childhood friend is that he’s seen how you’ve grown and changed over the years. I learned about myself, especially through the lens of Australian culture.
The main goal of the trip was to attend this meditation retreat in New Zealand. However, my friend and I left early after realizing we were not ready for it (it was way more spiritually/religiously advanced than we expected). We thought it’d be a shame if we were all the way here but didn’t do any traveling, especially checking out NZ's nature. We ended up flying to South Island and drove around for a week.
New Zealand is full of nature: mountains, lakes, birds, ferns, sheep, and cows …everywhere. Because it's been separated from the world, the plant species are different than what we are used to. They are so full of ferns (my current favorite plant). A typical day: drive, stop for a scenic lookout spot, eat at a small town, hike, throw rocks at some lake, and enjoy the sunset at 10 pm. Driving in the middle of nowhere but nature, just shows how out of place humans and our creations are in all this.
Another highlight of my New Zealand trip is meeting one of my favorite authors Derek Sivers. People said don’t meet your heroes because they’d disappoint, but it wasn’t the case here. Derek is the most present person I’ve ever talked to and he was kind enough to pick me up from the airport and showed me around! He also happened to know the friend I was going to crash at that day in Wellington, what a small world!
traveling lets you get to know your friends on another level… and yourself
Everyone travels differently, there’s a spectrum of planned to spontaneous. Navigating that with your travel buddies is a great way to see their personality manifest through the journey. Making memories in a new context allows you to get to know them from another dimension.
When differences occur, it’s a good time to reflect. You also learn a lot from others’ feedback. For example, I learned that sometimes I overoptimize things and ended up spending too much time deciding between little things that don’t matter.
traveling lets you know what kind of lifestyle you want
Throughout the trip, I kept on asking myself if I wanted to live in a place like this. Even though traveling isn’t the same as living there long term, getting a glimpse of a potential lifestyle and observing how I feel is a great way to know what I want in the future!
Wow, this is amazing Andy! Traveling does really open our horizons and help us understand life better as well as people.
That's why I really love traveling. Thanks for the awesome read🤝🏾🥳
Oh my god these photos ❤🤍💙