It was set to be the trip of a lifetime…a month in New Zealand. The plan included several weeks poking around the natural treasures of both the North and South Islands via campervan, then hiring a light airplane and flight instructor for an aerial exploration of the rugged Southern Alps. Having recently returned to humdrum, workaday life after three glorious years of sailing the Caribbean, my wife, Dawn, and I were eager to resume our previous practice of taking several big international trips per year. New Zealand was to be our most ambitious adventure of a jampacked 2020.
Well, that obviously didn’t happen. The pandemic blew up everyone’s plans, and given the obvious jeopardy to my livelihood, the loss of our adventure barely registered. And then, as the world began to open back up, New Zealand stayed locked down longer than most. It wasn’t until Oshkosh 2022, when Dawn and I ran into Matt and Jo McCaughan at the FlyInn booth, that we dusted off our travel plans.
