Week 50 - Ka kite Aotearoa

Even in our last week on New Zealand soil, we worked. Julian completed his hours by Friday, while Franzi bravely held on until Saturday.

At least she was surprised by her colleague on Friday with a homemade cake. There was a feijoa cake, a small fruit that is native to New Zealand and is currently in season. The fruit is sweet and sour and has quite a peculiar taste, so the cake was generously sweetened with sugar ;-)

On Saturday, the boss treated everyone to Subway.

Our farm manager Sacha and her family flew to Wellington to visit their family on Friday, so we had to say goodbye to them on Thursday evening.

Of course, we couldn't miss a nice memory photo of us.

After folding and preparing the last box on Friday, we cleaned up and left everything tidy. Overall, we made about 450 boxes during our time, trimmed several plants, and removed countless branches from the hedge.

Fortunately, our flight is not until Sunday evening. We could thus use all of Sunday for packing and cleaning up.

We finally made our way to the airport by bus. Franzi knows the route by heart now ;-)

After a short stop for dinner at our trusted sushi spot, the journey was smooth.

At the airport, we weighed our backpacks because we were curious about how heavy they had become compared to the beginning of our journey. Franzi's backpack now weighs 17.2 kg and Julian's 15.1 kg. That's noticeably heavier than at the start (when we both had 14 kg), but still within limits. Before the next big flights, we fairly need to redistribute a bit.

From a financial perspective, we can give a small summary: With the money we earned in New Zealand, we can show a small surplus compared to our expenses here!

Now we make our way to security check and wait for our flight to Auckland. There we will spend the night at the airport, we'll see if we can at least get some sleep.

So today marks the end of our last week in New Zealand. Tomorrow morning at 08:30, we continue with the next flight to Port Vila.

After 11 months, we are now leaving New Zealand. We had an incredibly wonderful time, and we are endlessly grateful for everything we've experienced and for the people we've met. Our courage to set off was definitely rewarded!

We look forward to our time in the South Seas and many new adventures!