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We booked the tickets, so it’s official: we’re going to Fiji and New Zealand!

So how did we come up with these destinations? For New Zealand, it seems like the country has been popping up a lot more as a popular tourist destination the last few years, with the Lord of the Rings craze and all. Also, a distant relative had their destination wedding/honeymoon there, so it’s a place I’ve kept in mind for a while. I don’t know if I was talking to Kelvin about honeymoon destinations, but he told me about wanting to go to caves in New Zealand to “go look at fossils of giant birds”. Something about seeing a TV show talk about prehistoric birds falling into underground caves and getting stuck there… I’m not really sure what he was talking about. I don’t know if he was serious or not, but I actually looked this up, and the closest thing I could find was the Waitomo Caves. Then I discovered the black water rafting there, and we found that super goofy-looking picture from the New Zealand tourism site… and we were sold.

Upon further research, I discovered that New Zealand, aside from being an incredibly beautiful country, is also a haven for adventurers and extreme sports. Okay, I’m neither an adventurer or into anything EXTREME, but they’ve got some fun-looking activities there. Did you know the Kiwis invented “Zorbing“? It’s also called sphering, and it’s where they stick you in a ball and roll you down a hill. I don’t think sphering was invented in New Zealand, but New Zealand made it commercially popular through the Zorb brand. If this sounds familiar, you might have seen it somewhere before…

Unfortunately, it’s not as cool in real life; they strap you in and you can’t run it like a giant hamster ball. Damn the frailty of the human body.

Anyway, that’s just two totally random and weird activities you can do in New Zealand and further sold me on the place. For Fiji, well, I always imagined honeymoons being about exotic tropical places and sandy beaches, so I wanted a taste of that, too. Fiji is one of the closest neighbors of New Zealand, and it’s sorta on the way from here to there. It’s also relatively inexpensive to other tropical island places. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still hella $$$$$$, just not in comparison to Tahiti and the rest of the French Polynesia. Kelvin originally told me no beaches for the honeymoon:

I don’t like sand everywhere!

But when I insisted on going to a tropical place for just a few days, and then he said:

It has to be a hut next to the beach. Like, you walk out the door, and there’s sand.

Huh? Okay, whatever. So we’re going to Fiji first, experience 5 days/4 nights of laziness on the beach, head over to New Zealand after getting bored of doing nothing, and explore the northern part of the North Island (that’s all we can do… New Zealand is huge!) for 10 days/9 nights before flying back. We’ve booked our tickets, so this schedule is pretty definite. Tickets from San Jose to Los Angeles to Fiji to Auckland and the exact same stops back cost us ~$2850. Ouch. Another option was to pay another $600 and get a direct flight back from Auckland to San Francisco (the only way to Fiji is through LA so no direct flights getting there), but flying sucks regardless, so might as well use it towards another night in Fiji. The price includes the $340 I spent on my SJC to LAX tickets. Since we depart to Fiji on a Sunday, I booked my San Jose to LA tickets to arrive a day early so I can hang out with Sandra for a couple days before we leave on our honeymoon. Yay to more vacation! Much thanks to Ted for helping me find the international ticket price through the AAA website. For reference, I also found Vayama to be a very good airfare search engine for international plane tickets, with prices only a couple bucks more than the AAA quote and easy user interface. The SJC to LAX flight I got off the Southwest website.

I’m working on booking all the accommodations, so I’m doing lots of research on hotels and activities in Fiji and New Zealand. I’m really enjoying the travel planning so far. Everything sounds so nice and interesting, though I’m sure it’s just because I’m easily sold by advertising. Regardless, I’m very excited about this trip. (Probably more excited than my wedding.) If I had known I’d like this so much more than the rest of the wedding planning, I probably could have avoided the whole travel agent drama.

New thing I learned today: Bungee/bungy jumping, at least in its modern, commercial extreme-sport form, was invented in New Zealand by Kiwi AJ Hackett.

I am absolutely not going to do any bungee jumping in New Zealand. I just found the trivia tidbit interesting and further proof that New Zealanders get bored really easily.