Why not? With an extra two days off work on Thanksgiving before the wedding and lots of parties planned for after the wedding, taking our honeymoon before the wedding seemed like the perfect idea. And it was! We spent a week in New Zealand, a week in Australia and a week in Hawaii. In retrospect, nineteen may have been a few too many flights overall, but you only have one honeymoon!!
Then, we headed to Queenstown for a week full of bungy jumping, white-water rafting, speedboating, helipopter and small plane sigtseeing, and a cruise around a fjord. We also enjoyed exploring the town & just gazing out of our room over the lake and mountains beyond. We also saw a kiwi. He was walking around and going squawk, squawk, thump, thump, thump. Overall, an excellent adventure week!
After New Zealand, it was onto the Land Down Under. In Australia, we stayed in Sydney across from the Opera House. We enjoyed our few days in Sydney: going to the aquarium, taking a cruise, exploring the shopping areas, and swimming on our hotels' rooftop pool.
Then, we went to Hamilton Island. We had our own little bungalow & I couldn't figure out what was going to the bathroom in our yard until one night, I saw lots of kangaroos outside! We saw alot of wildlife on Hamilton Island: bats, brightly colored birds, a Kooka-berra and what I came all the way to Australia to see: koalas! Seth and I even had our pictures taken with a very sleepy young koala. Gumnut was very cute! I didn't want to wake him up - but Seth decided that since we'd travelled for 24 hours to see a koala, I was going to get to hold him!
Finally, we went to Cains to do some diving. The reefs were amazing! Some of the more vivid memories for Seth, I'm sure, are of the sharks. But, for me, seeing the white clam in the distance and the big green fish eating our left over lunch will always be memorable. Since we couldn't dive on our last day before flying out, we decided to go horse-back riding. Seth's hourse wasn't too happy that he'd gotten Seth, but the instructors horse was more willing to carry him. Galloping along the beach was an excellent way to end our "pre-honeymoon".
