Today marks the first day in a long-awaited New Zealand road tripping adventure I have been planning with my boyfriend, Kevin, and his sister, Stephanie.

It all started a few months ago when Kevin and I decided to move to Auckland together in January 2017 (which, hello, is now!). It was going to overlap perfectly with the timing of Steph's trip to come visit Kevin down under for most of the month of January.

 Exploring the beautiful Auckland Domain gardens

Since we made our initial decision to explore life as Kiwis, a few bizarre months ensued. My Australian visa wasn't renewed, which meant an impromptu visit home for Thanksgiving to see friends and family, while Kevin pursued endless engineering interviews and dealt with his visa for New Zealand. Time zones are annoying to relationships, and so are visas.

After my trip home for the holidays, I had a rather monumental hurtle (climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania) standing between me and getting to New Zealand, and I can now report that it was a massive success!

 Sunrise at Uhuru Peak, Mount Kilimanjaro, 2016

But enough about that...back to planning our kiwi adventure!

During our road trip planning stages Steph, Kevin, and I did varying amounts of research (girls turn out to be more detail oriented...who knew!?) and eventually set out a travel route for our time in New Zealand.

We would begin when Steph and their parents arrived in Auckland on January 9 and wrap up our fun in Christchurch on January 27. Their parents had their own itinerary for exploring the North and South Islands, which we would be overlapping throughout the month.

Shared emails, endless hostel links, car rental quotes and more blasted our inboxes each day, but we didn't want to risk being out of luck in regards to pre-planning with accommodations or activities since it's summer, which means high season, in New Zealand.

Like any planning process, it was tedious at moments, but hopefully its all been worthwhile. For example, in my excitement, I booked a hostel for the wrong month - who even does that? - so the time and group oversight was definitely necessary to make sure we were all on the same page from the very beginning.

Below I've put our itinerary for now. As we travel along, I'll post pictures and notes and keep track of our favorites and any must-dos for anyone traveling to New Zealand, as well as - per usual - posting daily pictures on Instagram.

So let the grand adventure begin, and thanks for following along!