April 2

Today is the day I part ways with the campervan. It has treated me well. I spent the night about an hour away from Auckland and took my time cleaning up the van and finding a hostel in the city this morning. Oh, I also found a plug in heater deep inside the mini closet while I was cleaning up. That would have been nice to know; the company rep told me it didn’t have a heater. Oh well. All in all, the total distance on the odometer showed 5,080 km accumulated. I reset it a bit late so it was probably closer to 5,100 km. For all you imperial folks, it is roughly 3,168 miles driven over the last two weeks; roughly the equivalent of driving across the US. It was a neat experience, I’m glad I did it. The flexibility was great and the fuel economy was actually decent as well. Which reminds me, if you have the option, look up fuel costs before you decide on gas or diesel. In my case, diesel fuel was much cheaper than the gas alternative. $1.19/liter vs. $1.92/liter respectively; $4.50/gallon vs. $7.27/gallon; nearly 40%! Anyhow, cleaning and turning in a campervan isn’t an exciting story so let’s cut this short. I turn it in, say my goodbyes and catch a cab into the city.

I end up staying downtown at a decent hostel. It is five stories up and has an outdoor area on the fifth floor as well; pretty cool. I meet a couple more groups who were about to pick up their campervans in the following days and I exchanged a few ideas with them. Later in the evening the party crew shows up which consisted mostly of folks who were considered the “long term” crew. The hostel apparently has a room for about 8-12 people which it allows for extended stays (as in multiple months). Otherwise, your stay can not exceed 2 weeks. Apparently there was a waiting list for this room. Tomorrow was a holiday in Auckland so I ended up going out with this group and it felt like going out in any other city, except with a bunch of accents everywhere. I don’t like to post about nightlife on here, but I must mention that the group did break out singing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air intro in the middle of the street on our way back to the hostel. It was quite entertaining seeing three or four countries worth of accents singing this, and it was quite intense.

All in all NZ was lots of fun. I hit a lot of items on my list but I also missed a lot of items on my list. I could have probably done the entire five weeks here to achieve most of what I wanted. Even then, that might have not been enough. I’ll have to do a return trip at some point. One of my favorite parts of trips like this is meeting new people and getting the different perspectives from different cultures and countries. It really does make you think a bit more about different topics. Aside from the people I met, the highlights of the trip for me were Tongariro, Milford Sound & Lodge, Queenstown, and Roy’s Peak. Thanks to everyone who provided ideas/advice for this trip as it was really helpful.

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Cheers.

Two random notes: 1. I didn’t take the camera out at all today and just got a few iphone pictures which were mostly rushed. 2. I found a crazy kiwi fruit which is shown in the pictures below. I have no idea what it is, but it did not look or smell pleasant. As soon as I pierced it with a knife and started cutting it, the inner fruits spilled out almost as if it’s guts were falling out. I couldn’t eat it after this; I was too disgusted.