minus 10 days and counting

I've been doing a little online research for my trip, trying to find stories from other people traveling to NZ to live it vicariously for the next two weeks. I've managed to pick up tips on cool things to keep me busy in almost every town I go through. It was an awesome moment when I came across a blog by a guy who went through the south island at the same time last year that I'm doing my trip, and to top it all off with the same bus tour I'm using, Stray travel. I'm fully confident of having a fantastic time, even if the weather's tragic like it occasionally is in winter, simply because of the great accounts of cool people traveling on this bus. I've started organising little details (but not big ones) like what songs I'm going to have on my ipod to while away the hours I'll be spending on the bus each day, in fact I should pick up some travel sickness tablets (somehow it didn't occur to me until a week after I'd booked a 2 week bus-trip that I get travel sickness just doing the 4 hour bus-ride home to my parents...*facepalm*). I'm trying to shake off a nasty cold right now, hopefully the long weekend coming up will let me rest enough to get rid of it before I fly out the next weekend or I'm going to spend my three days in Melbourne with my face buried in a hanky. There's a wine and seafood festival on Sunday I'm going to, so the way I'm going I'll probably give myself salmonella as well.
Despite my nerves about not having been on a plane since I was 3 I still have an irrational urge for there to be SNAKES ON A PLANE! (followed by the sequel SHARKS ON A BUS!) I'm actually more worried about finding and boarding the right plane than I am about the actually plane journey strangely enough.
I've been perfecting my ability to take photos from a moving bus window with these shots from northen NSW taken after the easter break, an essential skill for this trip.

-- H in Oz