It’s time to say good-bye to New Zealand. We have an early flight, so we’ll be checking out of the City Garden Lodge at 3:45am. We get breakfast on the Qantas flight (which I plan on taking full advantage of, since their meals are huge), but other than that, I’m sure I’ll be passed out for the rest of the ride.
We’ve mailed our wrinkled & marked-up road-map, along with a NZ bill to ourselves back home as a keepsake. So, all we have to do now is wait for our laundry to finish and then return our rental car.
It may be premature to say that I would love to live in New Zealand (considering this is only the first of many countries that we’ll be visiting this year), but from what we’ve seen, the country is very beautiful and the locals are friendly. Granted, we didn’t get a chance to visit the South Island, but we keep telling ourselves that we have an excuse to come back again. The transition from Canada would be fairly straightforward, as we wouldn’t need to learn a new language. Dan and I now understand why we don’t see as many New Zealanders vs. Australians in Canada. There is absolutely no reason to leave New Zealand. You’re always a short drive to the beach for surfing or mountains for skiing, there’s a hiking or cycling opportunity to be had everywhere and for those more interested in city life, Auckland, Wellington and Hamilton have very charming neighborhoods.
I would have to say the most pivotal moment of our trip would be meeting Tim up at the Endless Summer lodge in Ahipara. That one evening where he scribbled all over our map and advised us to stay on the North Island given our 3 week time limit really made our trip. And it was really great to end off New Zealand with him when we met up again with him in Raglan and by pure chance ended up staying at the hostel he owned. Our stay in that surf town was one of our very favorite parts of our trip and we can only hope that we’ll find just as cool a town in Australia.
“Ka kite ano” New Zealand!!!