In December 2018 I took a month off for a long trip with my wife. Over the past year, we had limited ourselves to smaller weekend holidays, so we were both very excited to be on the road. The most significant part of the trip involved New Zealand, a place both of us had wanted to visit for quite some time (damn you, Peter Jackson!) We started in Auckland, in the North Island, traveled a bit around that area and then progressively moved down to the South Island. On December 25th we were in a place called Queenstown, the biggest city on that side of New Zealand. Since everything was closed for the festivities, and the weather was incredibly good, we decided to spend the day hiking on a popular track: Roy’s Peak. You might have seen it in some pictures because of the iconic view from the top.
The hike was tiring (it’s much longer than it looks from the bottom), the sun scorching (that’s the reason for how we’re dressed, as you’ll see in a moment) but the whole experience was definitely worth the effort. I digress.
That picture is Instagram gold. It screams “wilderness,” “finding yourself,” “crazy holiday.” You can almost see a cheesy motivational caption under it, probably along the lines of “to be…
