New Year, Old Zealand (lots of pictures)

Timeline: Very end of December

After a layover in China gone awry (due to the budget flight and midnight being a difficult time of day to figure out), I felt like I’d experienced China. And while I didn’t leave the airport – I feel as though this trip gets an honorable mention.

December 30th:
Once again, Rachel and I landed in New Zealand. Where we, once again rented a car from Scotty’s.

In the morning, when we were still being healthy, we used booty bands and then criss crossed all across the northern island in our Tilda (that’s a car brand) when, exactly when we wanted to, on December 31st, we ended up in Gisborne, at the Rhythm and Vines festival.

New phone camera making all the difference.

After a memorable walk from our campground to the EDM event, we couldn’t help but notice…Christian rock on the main stage.

She’s not born again.

Here for it.

Rockin’ out.

All too soon the sun starting going down and during our final sunset of 2019 celebrations, we met Carla and her husband.

My last sunset of the decade.

Girls will be girls

…and eventually found the wellness tent. Which was my favorite thing because, duh, I like wellness.

They had a life sized chess board inside!

Meet Nico, a formidable opponent.

Nico is from Chile and goes heavy on the playful, challenging banter with gems such as “I’ll burn you with my coolness.” We played for a joyful hour. It was my favorite thing we did all night; a great match but in the end, I did get burned with his coolness; I lost. The 2019 chess champ was Nico. There, I said it in writing.