New Zealand, Auckland: Farewell to the Kiwi Outdoors

Our month in New Zealand was coming to a close, but we had to get to back to Auckland so we could complete our trip around the two main islands. Auckland was the origin destination in New Zealand where we had picked up a campervan to tour around for the past 3-1/2 weeks, and it was the city where we were expected to return the vehicle, too. Our good friend, Bessie, aka the campervan, had treated us well during our road trip, and we rewarded her by turning her in a day early, hopefully giving her a day off before the next set of tourists paid for her services.

When we woke up on our penultimate morning in the campervan, we were in a picnic area halfway between Rotorua and Hamilton. Our plan had been to drive all the way to Hamilton the night before, but tiredness won out and we gave up halfway. Since the remaining drive to Hamilton was not far, we were there less than an hour after leaving the picnic area, and we stopped off for lunch before continuing our drive to Auckland. We decided to skip spending much time in Hamilton because we wanted to use our remaining time in Auckland.

We swept out the campervan interior and tidied it up so the rental company wouldn't have any means of charging us because the vehicle needed cleaning

After initially picking up Bessie from the Britz Backpacker Campervan rental company in Mangere (near the international airport), we had chosen to stay for a few nights in the North Shore Holiday Park, so we could become adjusted to staying overnight in the campervan, but also spend some time in the city. The holiday park was conveniently located near a bus stop, and buses went to the city every hour, taking around 20 minutes to arrive in the city centre. The holiday park was located in a nice area of Auckland called Northcote, just north of the city centre, and we saw amazing views of downtown during the bus journey. All of this meant that returning to North Shore for our last night in the campervan was an excellent idea.

With sightseeing in Auckland not being a priority, since we had seen the main sights we were interested in during our first time in the city, we just wanted to relax in Auckland by enjoying our time walking around the city and not driving, which made a change from the past several days, where we had driven a lot to make our way back to the northern part of the country. By the time we arrived in Auckland after our drive from Hamilton, it was already the afternoon and we wanted to get to the city centre as quickly as possible, so we caught the first bus we could after setting up Bessie in a campervan power site.

Upon arriving in the city centre, we strolled along Auckland's main shopping street, Queen Street, where Kyle managed to find a couple of gifts to back to his mum and dad when he returned to visit them a few days later for the week of Thanksgiving. "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" was showing at Sky City Cinemas on Queen Street and we decided to take a break from walking by seeing it there. During the film, we ate our dinner, which consisted of tuna wraps with rice inside; Dan thought they were bland and not tasty, most likely because we had prepared them a day or two earlier, and he was right.

There was a nice little bubble tea shop near the cinema and we enjoyed another bubble tea from there. The first time we had tried the bubble tea at that shop was during our first visit to Auckland, so it was a fitting thing to have during our last visit to the city. The cold drink was tasty; we both really enjoyed it, especially eating the jellies that got sucked up into the straw as we drank it. To get back to Northcote, we hopped onto the last bus, eager to get back to Bessie and start packing things up to leave the next morning and return her to the Britz Backpacker place.

Since we were travelling for an entire year and had not planned on working during our time off, we had to carefully plan our travel budget, to ensure that we had enough money to last us a full year. To do that, we set aside a certain amount of money for accommodation, food, travel and other miscellaneous expenses, and we kept track of our spending every day. Since we were due to leave for Australia the day after next, we decided to work out our Australian travel budget in light of how much money we each had left in the bank. You see, the United States, South Pacific islands and New Zealand ended up being more expensive than we had initially thought, and we were running over budget by a fair amount at that point.

For breakfast the next morning, Dan cooked up some kumara (New Zealand sweet potatoes) rostis, which were similar to a type of hash brown, or at least that's what we thought. The things stuck really badly to the frying pan that he used to cook them in, which was unpleasant because we had to clean out the campervan that morning in advance of turning it in later that afternoon, and it took quite awhile to remove the stuck pieces of rosti.

That morning, we washed all of the dishes in our campervan's little kitchen, and we cleaned out the cupboards, giving our leftover food items to a friendly couple from the UK who were just starting up a 4-month campervan trip around New Zealand, and who were really appreciative of our generosity. We swept out the campervan interior and tidied it up so the rental company wouldn't have any means of charging us because the vehicle needed cleaning. The last thing to do before returning Bessie to her rightful owners was to fill up the gas canister and petrol tank, and we did that at a petrol station next to the holiday park after we checked out.

The drive from Northcote to Mangere, which was around 12 miles south of the city centre, should have been simple, but we had mistakenly thrown away the detailed map we used during our first visit to Auckland, and we had trouble finding the campervan rental company again. In the end, we came across some recognisable buildings and roads in Mangere and were able to make our way to Britz Backpacker in plenty of time before they closed at 5:00pm; it was around 1:00pm when we arrived. The place was packed with tourists ready to pick up their campervans, but there were only two people working at the reservations desks.

It didn't take any time to get someone to inspect the vehicle for damage and cleanliness, and we seemed to pass the quality test just fine. However, we then had to wait a long time for the other colleague to process our rental closure, and charge us the necessary evil of a diesel tax. Note to anyone planning to rent a diesel-fuelled vehicle in New Zealand: there is a diesel tax that must be paid on every 100km driven in the country. Since we drove almost 6000km (around 3750 miles), we had to pay the diesel tax 60 times (6000/100 = 60). At $3.20 NZD per 100km, that worked out to cost us an extra $192 NZD (£73, or $146 USD) in tax!

The flight we had previously booked to Brisbane, Australia, was not scheduled to leave Auckland until early the following morning, so we had booked a night's accommodation at Airport Skyway Lodge, the same place we had stayed during the overnight layover we had when we travelled from French Polynesia to Cook Islands. Scott, the friendly owner running the motel, picked us up from the campervan rental company to save us having to book a cab. He still charged us, but only $5 NZD each, which was much cheaper than a taxi would have cost.

When we arrived at the motel to check into our room, Kyle went to grab his credit card to pay for the night's accommodation, but he couldn't find it. After checking with Dan to see if he may have picked it up, we both deduced that it was left behind at Britz Backpacker. Luckily, Scott didn't mind taking us back to pick up the card, at no extra charge, and he even called them to ensure that the card was definitely there and not lost somewhere along the way. For the rest of the day, we hung out at the motel, which was set up for backpackers and had a nice lounge area and free use of kitchen facilities. Even though we had pasta sauce and pasta that we could have used, we decided that we had cooked enough for a while and ordered pizza instead.

Our early flight meant that we had to wake up before the sun rose in order to leave for the airport on time. Scott was half asleep when he drove us to the airport, and so were we, but we were excited, too, about travelling to the last country we would visit before our trip ended six weeks later. Of course, Kyle had to interrupt his trip in Oz with a week back in the US, but since we had spent the summer in the US, that didn't really count as a new country to visit. Our flight with Qantas was uneventful and left on time at 7:10am. With the time zone differences between the two countries, we actually arrived in Brisbane at 7:40am and had the entire day in front of us. By the way, that day was a special one for one of the members of our travelling duo - it was Kyle's birthday.