Goodbye in Auckland

Hello dear ones,

Here I am again and I'm sorry that I'm only getting back to you now, but it's been really busy here in the last few days. As most of you know, Lina and I spent our last few days together in Auckland and I want to tell you what we did in this post.

On Monday (October 23rd), we drove from our campsite directly to the hostel in the morning. We enjoyed the most beautiful view of Auckland's skyline, but unfortunately we couldn't stop and take a photo because we were driving on a highway... well, we arrived at the hostel and checked in, and had a little look around. The hostel wasn't the fanciest or newest or cleanest, but it was alright. After our first sniffing round, we ate our peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the car on the hostel parking lot and then walked through the rain to the city center. There, we strolled through the shops on Queen Street and looked for bargains. Since Monday was a public holiday, there were many offers. But since we were unfortunately on the most expensive street in Auckland, we couldn't treat ourselves despite the offers. Or rather, we didn't want to because of the limited space in our luggage... since the rain still hadn't stopped, we decided to spend a little money and go out for a delicious meal. A second lunch is always a good idea. And what can I say, it was simply the best idea. In a side street in a shopping center, there was a food court with an Indian stall. Since everything looked so delicious, we had some trouble deciding, at which point the nice lady behind the counter let us try a few things. A very clever idea on her part because we decided to go for the slightly more expensive menu where you could eat rice and two curries. Since we seemed so happy, she also put the sauces from two other curries on our rice. It was a feast! So tasty and so much that I can already tell you that I was full until the next morning and didn't eat anything else. Unbelievable, right? After we sat there for a while and digested the food, we eventually managed to move again and walked back to the hostel so that we could bring our things to the room and Lina could wash up. When we came out, we couldn't believe our eyes, we could see blue sky. Overjoyed, we took a longer walk through a park back to the hostel. When we arrived, we unpacked the car, got our room and washed our clothes. We didn't do much else in the evening except digesting the Indian food.

The next morning (October 24th), I got up early to Skype and then we had a leisurely breakfast and got ready. I also had to make some phone calls to take care of various things. One of them was to make an appointment at a workshop for a car service, where they do an oil change and such. When all of that was done, we walked to the library, where we wanted to take care of the photos and my applications. Unfortunately, neither Lina's nor my computer recognized my camera, so this mission wasn't very successful. When we left the library, the sun was shining, so we strolled through the city a bit and let the sun shine on our faces at the harbor. In the afternoon, we went shopping for Lina's farewell dinner. It was supposed to be rice, vegetables, and chicken, and we also treated ourselves to a bottle of cider. When we arrived at the hostel, Lina packed her backpack and I cooked. Fortunately, there were computers in the hostel, so we were able to transfer the photos from the camera after all. However, this computer was so old and slow that we only copied all the photos onto the hard drives and didn't do anything else with them. After a cozy evening with some other people from the hostel, we went to bed really late, after midnight, which is late for us.

On our last day in Auckland (October 25th), it was time to say goodbye. However, Lina's flight wasn't until the evening, so we could still spend the day together. And that's what we did. Together, we went to the workshop to have the car checked, and in the meantime we walked through the industrial area and looked at some car dealerships. After the car was ready, we drove to Mt Eden, an extinct volcano in the middle of Auckland. There we ate our last peanut butter and jelly sandwich together and enjoyed the view. Then we went to the botanical garden, where we strolled around for almost 2 hours. It was very interesting because they had planted different vegetables in the garden and explained why and when certain vegetables should be planted. It's not just about the season, but also about the preference for warmth and direct sunlight. Then it was time to say goodbye slowly and take Lina to the airport. I dropped her off at 5 p.m. and immediately picked up my fellow traveler for today. Because I was heading towards Rotorua. Luckily, Thommy also wanted to go in that direction, so I didn't have to drive alone and had pleasant company for the three-hour drive. When we arrived in Rotorua, he even paid for all the gasoline for this stretch, so I basically got to Rotorua for free.

I'll tell you what happened next for me in the next post. Until then,

Your Jessi