Aotearoa — or New Zealand as it’s more commonly known — is a place of limitless adventure that revives every sense with each new landscape explored. It was also, as Cliff Joannou found, the perfect destination for self-reflection and re-discovery
Photography Cliff Joannou
There are certain life-changing events that really knock you to the floor. In this case, it was a breakup with a boyfriend of seven years. We lived in different cities — him in Berlin, me in London — but after a year and a half of uncertainty, I finally pulled the plug on a relationship that wasn’t just broken, but detrimental to my mental wellbeing and sense of self. At the time, I was staying in a friend’s spare bedroom while in between homes, and there were personal family issues going on, too.
The fog in my mind took me back to when I was 21 years old, a time when I was gradually coming out to myself and feeling heavily burdened with worry over whether family and friends would accept me. These two life events were quite different, but the end result was the same: I’d spent so much energy trying to make other people happy that I had completely neglected myself. In short, I felt lost.
Back in my early twenties I knew that what I needed most was to get away. I ventured to the mountains and coastlines of South-East Asia and Australia to embark on a tumultuous, yet ultimately healing, journey of introspection and self-discovery.
Fast-forward to the present and the end of my relationship, and the voice of my 21-year-old self returned to my subconscious, telling me to take flight to a new land for another great reset. As the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In this case, the destination is 11,386 miles away and a 24-hour-plus flight from London to Auckland, New Zealand. It’s a long way to go to get over a broken heart. (Drama queen? Me? Never.)
“Oh, it’s like paradise,” says Cerise, the woman on the check-in desk at Heathrow Airport, after I comment on the flight ahead and how I find long-haul flights more than a little arduous. Privileged problems and all that, I think as I check my ungracious attitude in along with my luggage. She asks if I have visited New Zealand before. I reply that I have not. “It’s far away, but paradise is supposed to be far away,” she adds, a radiant smile illuminating her face. “This much is true,” I tell Cerise as I take that first step to the other side of the world.
AT AUCKLAND AIRPORT, I jump into a cab and head to the port: first stop, Waiheke. A verdant paradise off the coast of the country’s North Island, it was once th
