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We arrived in Auckland the Friday evening and took Pim up on his offer and stayed in his garden. We went out with Pim for an awesome Chinese dinner down the road from his house. We sold the surfboard to Pim for the amount that he offered in Raglan as even though it was less than we wanted he was so generous in letting us stay and he saved our bacon by towing us in Raglan. We said goodbye to him that night as we had to be up early in the morning to go to the carpark car market and try to sell the van! We were warned that it could ale a while to sell and not to get our hopes up. We sat outside the van next to all the other people trying to sell and prepared ourselves for the long haul! At first no one really seemed that keen on our van as they were looking for smaller cheaper vehicles. Then after about an hour and a half a couple came over and explained that they were going to be travelling for a year and didn't really know what they wanted. James and I went into sales mode and persuaded them to take her for a test drive! They loved it and gave us an offer straight away! It was a tiny bit less than we wanted but they were a lovely couple and it was still a good price and saving us from the hassle of trying to sell for the next few days. 2 hours and sold! It was also perfect as they did not want the van until Tuesday so we could head out of Auckland, see the countryside and say goodbye to GEN!
We spent that night at Whatipu which funnily enough was the first place that we drove to in the van when we got her. It was a Greg campsite and we spent the next couple of days chilling out and looking round the caves! We met a nice couple who camped next to us and we had a good chat with them sitting under the stars!
The next evening we went round to Lucy's house. It was really great to see her again and tell her all about the trip! It was a lovely evening and Lucy cooked us a really tasty dinner. We stayed the night and Lucy and her neighbour Rob were kind enough to let us borrow their kayaks the next day and go for a paddle out to sea and round the coast a little to a place where we could stop and have a swim and some ice-creams! It was a really lovely day. We stayed one more night with Lucy and had a good night chatting to her and Rob from next door. We said our goodbyes in the morning an drove back into town to met up with Aleina and Alan and hand over the keys to the van. It was really sad to see GEN go but happy that she was with a lovely couple and that we had managed to sell her with such little hassle! Te next days consisted of sorting out money, bank transfers, malaria tablets and exploring Auckland. We really enjoyed our trip to the art gallery there. Our flight out of Auckland to Sydney was at 6am so it was a 2:30am start!! We were not impressed to hear the alarm! We got a taxi to the airport fine. It was really sad to leave New Zealand as we had such an amazing trip. The four months had really flown by. But we know that we can always go back and we still had the rest of our trip to look forward to!
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