Sometimes it can be so simple...

Warning: I haven't slept much in the last two nights because we spent them on a bus/plane, so we unintentionally stayed awake (uhh I mean, of course we partied all night like normal teenagers...). This might affect the quality of the blog post... but maybe the sleep deprivation will open up a different perspective for me...

Our journey took us further to Nelson. When we checked our location on the Campermate app, we appeared as a small blue dot in the far north of the South Island. Wait, weren't we just in the bottom left corner of the map (my former geography teacher would probably want to strangle me for saying that)? This showed us that our journey was coming to an end.

But wait, there's more... no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't fit our beloved car into our backpacks (otherwise we wouldn't have been able to bring so many gifts... brown-nose). So we had to look for someone else who loved this car as much as we did (and who also happened to finance our flight by purchasing it). To escape the bad weather (I could pour out water from my shoes the next morning, even though I had placed them safely under the car...), we once again sought refuge in the library and printed out posters to distribute them later in hostels. Since we had done our best to advertise our car on the internet and in the 'real world', and we didn't want to just sit and wait, we made a detour to 'Farewell Spit'. On the map, it looks like a small insignificant point, but in reality, it is a huge sandbar that extends far into the sea. This place is under strict protection by the Department of Conservation because it is an important habitat for many bird species and therefore only limited access is allowed for the public. Unfortunately, aside from this really sad side effect, this 'point' is actually very impressive. From the outside, it resembles a small desert (which raises the question again: IS THERE ANYTHING THAT NEW ZEALAND DOESN'T HAVE TO OFFER?), just with a view of the sea.

When visiting the Nelson region, there is practically no way around the 'Abel Tasman National Park', one of the 'NZ Great Walks', with its turquoise blue water and 'golden' beaches. Then you can decide whether you want to explore this dream landscape on foot or by water. We decided to do both, we took a water taxi to the starting point of our hike and enjoyed the return trip through beautiful NZ bush, which offered us stunning views of the surrounding island and coastal landscape.

But despite the holiday feeling, we always had the sale of our car in the back of our minds, which was starting to make us a little nervous, especially considering the big competition. It seemed like half the (backpacker) world wanted to get rid of their car.

Temporarily pushing the thought aside, we arrived in Picton, New Zealand's port town. It is from here that the ferry between the North and South Island departs. Therefore, the small town with just 2000 inhabitants is of great importance for New Zealand tourism (since everyone traveling by car or train has to pass through here). The atmosphere reminded us of Akaroa - palm trees, tourists, and boats as far as the eye can see. But this time, we were able to truly enjoy the holiday atmosphere without even thinking about work, strolling along the waterfront promenade and browsing through shops.

Feeling completely relaxed, we returned to our car... where a nasty surprise was waiting for us in the form of two little notes tucked behind the windshield wipers. Twelve dollars for parking violation and... 'WHAT??? 200 DOLLARS???'. We hadn't even parked here for that long... But soon it turned out that we had to pay the hefty fine not for parking violation but for the vehicle registration, which according to a small sign on the front windshield had expired since April. Excitedly, we rushed into the library (the responsible office) to clarify the misunderstanding. Because in reality, we had already paid for the registration weeks ago, only the small sign for the front windshield couldn't be sent to us because we didn't have a fixed address as travelers... A very nice and understanding librarian assured us (after we had explained our problem in great detail) that it was not a problem at all and helped us fill out a form to be forwarded to the traffic department. We also immediately got a new sign from the post office, this time with the correct registration date. Phew... that was a close call.

To digest the shock, we sat in our car in front of the library for a while. And we were about to drive off when a woman who had parked her car next to ours a few seconds ago noticed the 'For Sale' sign on our car. She might know someone who is looking for a car. Five minutes later, after a phone call, we had arranged a meeting with Mireia in nearby Blenheim. Sometimes it can be so simple...

The next day, we met with Mireia and it was just a perfect fit. She had just arrived in New Zealand and urgently needed a car, specifically one with manual transmission (they are almost impossible to find here), and we, who wanted to get rid of a car with manual transmission as quickly as possible. She immediately loved the car but wanted to have it checked before buying. Since that took some time, we had plenty of time to take a close look at Blenheim... with the result that there was nothing here, really nothing (even the art gallery consisted of just one room and was a complete disappointment).

But no wonder, because in Blenheim and the surrounding area, the action doesn't take place in the cities, but in the countryside. The Marlborough region is mainly known for its winemaking. The good wine is sometimes offered for free tastings, which regularly attracts hordes of tourists who are then shuttled from station to station, and of course us, because we didn't want to miss out on the fun for anything in the world. So we strolled through the autumnal wine landscape and tasted a total of 19 different types of wine... you can imagine that we had a lot of fun on the way back...

And then it was time to say goodbye to Plumpel, our faithful little car, named after Tom Bombadil's horse from "The Lord of the Rings". Yesss... maybe we shouldn't have given a name to a car that we knew we had to sell in no more than two months, but we handed it over to good hands (seriously now... I don't think there is another person in the world who would be so happy about a manual transmission...). We had been through so much with this car, gravel roads, forest roads, single-track roads on steep mountain slopes, or all at once... Plumpel, you were a great first car and we will miss you...

One penultimate time,

Richi & Maggi, Saturday 27th May 2017, time: every device says something different, from 37,981 feet above somewhere in Turkey