I Was 19 and Going to New Zealand
How my first international trip to New Zealand set me on a path toward a life and career built around travel.
by Lindsay Eldridge · Sun 6 Sep 2026
New Zealand was the first country I ever traveled to. Looking back 23 years later, it was also the trip that set the course for so much of my life and career.
I found the experience on a flier hanging on the wall of the study abroad office at Appalachian State University, where I went to school in the mountains of North Carolina. Yes, remember fliers?!
I’d seen other fliers in high school hallways, but this was the first time I felt like I could easily make a case for the trip (to my parents).
This 25-day trip to New Zealand promised six hours of college credit in Recreation & Tourism Management. So, just like that, my area of study was decided.
I was still in my first semester of college and hadn’t realized Recreation Management was a thing. Of course this would be my major. I’d been creating made-up jobs in my head that involved traveling since I was a teenager. Now I could actually study this. Hooray!
Below I've included photos I've taken of printed photos. You know, since this was in 2002.
Finding My People
The trip would be that summer, which is winter in New Zealand. In preparation, we had several meetings, and I took my first class dedicated to Recreation Management: Intro to Recreation & Leisure.
I’ll never forget it. Partly because my older brother made such a mockery of my choice. “So what do you do, sit around in lounge chairs and make macaroni necklaces all day?” But mostly because I had found my people.
The class was full of outdoor adventurers, people who’d taken gap years to travel and, ultimately, curious minds.
We talked about why people recreate, what draws us to certain activities, what leisure means and why it matters. To be honest, at the time I thought it was all the most obvious thing I’d ever heard.
It’s now 23 years later, and I realize these are such valid questions.
Why do we choose to spend our time the way we do? What do we choose to spend it doing? What exactly does leisure mean to you? And do you think recreation is important?
Going to the Other Side of the World
It was during that semester that I tore my ACL. I had the type of tear that didn’t necessarily need to be repaired, provided I never planned on shifting my knee laterally again. Think tennis, skiing, anything that involved pivoting.
The New Zealand trip was primarily backpacking, sea kayaking and white-water rafting. I decided I would wait and have surgery after the trip because my heart was absolutely set on going to the other side of the world. And it was everything I could never have imagined; it opened my 19-year-old mind right up.
I remember the customs line checking the bottoms of our hiking boots to make sure we weren’t bringing outside soil into the country. I remember how clean the cities and roads seemed. I remember how everyone we talked to seemed so happy. Then there were the activities themselves.
It turns out hiking miles and miles with a torn ACL is a recipe for PAIN, and I pushed myself in ways I never had before. My trip mates each took something out of my backpack to lighten my load. I was forced to accept their help. And I had to finish the hike to the hut. There was no other option. So I did. At 19, that felt like a very big deal.
The plan was to hike to the hut and then white-water raft down the Karamea River. Only 1,000 people had done this before our group, at the time (that's not very many). For reference, about 175,000 people raft the Upper Arkansas River in Colorado, every single year. This was an epic opportunity.
Anyway, if you’ve ever spent much time traveling or in the wilderness, you know that sometimes things don’t go according to plan. It rained. A LOT. So much that we stayed at the hut for two extra days waiting for the rain to stop and the river conditions to change.
Eventually, our guides made a new plan. A helicopter would pick us up and take us farther downriver because the water was so high that we couldn’t safely raft from where we were.
Yes, you read that correctly. We got an unexpected helicopter ride.
There were about 10 participants and three instructors, so the helicopter spent quite a while shuttling everyone downstream to a wider section of the river.
Thinking about this now, I have about a hundred questions for those trip leaders that never would have occurred to me at 19. But at the time? We were getting an unexpected helicopter ride!
What followed was the coolest rafting experience of my life.
The rapids were HUGE. We scouted rapid after rapid, figuring out how we were going to get everyone through. There was so much teamwork happening because there really wasn’t any other option.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of everyone simply helping each other because that’s what needs to be done. One raft was carrying all of our backpacks, and at some point it wrapped around a rock. I remember one of our instructors scrambling around for what felt like forever trying to free it.
Then backpacks started floating down the river. Suddenly, we were all paddling around frantically trying to gather them without flipping our own boats. When I returned to the States, a Customs agent looked at my water-damaged passport and asked, “What happened to your passport?”
“Oh,” I replied nonchalantly. “It went in the river while I was white-water rafting.”
Our entire group had been nervous about Customs because so many of our passports had water damage. For us, it simply added to the adventure of it all.
The Trip That Started Everything
My first time out of the country was epic. I was absolutely hooked!
I knew that someday I would lead trips like that myself. What I didn’t know was that just two summers later, I’d be leading groups of 14 students on 25-day long adventures in the California wilderness, and that the next summer I'd be doing the same thing in Ecuador & the Galapagos.
I didn’t know that every time I visited a new country, instead of crossing it off my bucket list, I would add it right back on because now I wanted to return and experience more.
I definitely did not know that I would enjoy planning trips just as much as leading them.
And I most certainly didn’t know then, that one day I would build Away Retreats, a small-group travel retreat company, from the ground up.
When I look back now, I can see the beginning of it all in that first trip to New Zealand.
Since then, travel has always been about more than seeing a new place. It’s about connecting with people, following my curiosity, pushing my own limits and discovering what happens when I step outside the routines of everyday life.
Twenty-three years later, I’m still asking some version of the questions we talked about in that first Recreation & Leisure class:
How do we want to spend our time?
What experiences matter to us?
What happens when we make room for them?
Stepping away from everyday life is such a gift, and getting to create those opportunities now through Away Retreats, alongside other curious minds, feels like coming full circle.
About Lindsay Eldridge
Lindsay Eldridge is the founder of Away Retreats, a small-group travel retreat company creating experiences centered around connection, curiosity and meaningful time away. She studied Recreation Management at Appalachian State University and has spent more than two decades planning and leading group travel experiences.
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