Having done nothing of the sort before, I teetered shamelessly on the edge of my trip, ready to dive headlong into various misadventures. My entire preparation for visiting New Zealand's South Island was hasty Internet research coupled with an extended library checkout of an excellent guide book. With two days to go, I began running over my preparations.

List of hostels in various locations – check

Backpack, sleeping bag, essentials – begged, borrowed, stolen

Round trip plane tickets - $$ check $$

Ramen noodles – yum – check

Friendly advice – excess!

Itinerary – a blast

I confirmed my three and a half weeks of leave with my Air Force supervisor the next day, and spent the afternoon finalizing the driving arrangements, since my friend could no longer deliver me to the airport (maybe it had something to do with the 0300 departure?). That evening, I sat with three piles of clothes trying to cram it into two bags. My indispensable roommate Tammy quickly converted it to one bag ingeniously stuffed with about 1/3 of the clothes I'd brought.

At 3 AM the next morning, I quietly rolled away from my house in Solomons, Maryland and headed north. I dropped my car off at work and caught a taxi to Reagan National to catch my 0630 flight. Everything was going smooth until the ticket agent informed me that my ticket was for the previous morning’s 0630 flight...

No worries. Two days and one hundred extra bucks later, my Qantas 737 banked into Christchurch, cutting through the early morning sky like scissors through gift wrap. My present was the South Island of New Zealand.