The Making of an Adventure

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11 more days to go! Our backpacks are packed, we've said some of our goodbyes, still a few last minute details to iron out - but we're almost there. After years of planning, it almost seems surreal - I don't think it will set in that we're really going, we're really doing this until we are half-way across the country.

Initially, our plan was to go to Australia and travel around for a year on a Working Holiday Visa. Once we started looking into this, we heard more and more about how interesting New Zealand is, and decided we wanted to go there as well. At first, we thought we could go for only a few weeks, but there seems to be so much to do that we wanted a lot of time to explore and perhaps some time to make some money while we're there to fund some of the more adventurous activities. From there we learned that it's easy to add in a stop-over in the South Pacific, and decided on the Cook Islands - a little bit less touched by tourism than some of the other islands in the French Polynesia, naturally beautiful, laid-back, yet fun.

During our tedious research for airline tickets, we found it was significantly cheaper to fly out of LA, and we had been wanting to travel to California anyway, so we purchased our round-trip tickets in and out of LAX. Originally, we thought we would fly into San Francisco and make our way down to LA from there. We started thinking that before we go out and explore other countries of the world, that we should see as much of our own beautiful country as possible first. And thus, the roadtrip across Canada was planned.

We took a week in the summer to visit Quebec, and soon we will be leaving to drive the long way around to Vancouver. We'll head up through Thunder Bay, across the prairies, up through Banff and Jasper, then across to Vancouver Island. From Vancouver, we have a thirty hour train ride to San Francisco, where we'll spend a few days, and then continue to LA, where we'll have a few days before we fly into Sydney. From there, we have an idea of which hostel to stay in the first night, and as for the rest, I guess we'll go where ever the wind takes us! We'll probably head South for starters as it is the Aussie summer.

We'll do our best to keep the blog updated often with pictures, videos, and whatever we think you'll find interesting!

Signing off for now,

Cass & Andrew

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Photos

Whale Watching!
Humpback Whale Diving

Comments

[George]

Have Fun
If travel where a book , we would indeed like every chapter. Thanks

[Lindsey and Dave]

Good Luck
Have a wonderful time guys...what an awesome adventure. All the best. Be careful. We will be thinking about you!! Have Fun!!