Activity Summary
Thursday 2nd March - Day 182 (continued)
Drive to Auckland
Check in to Airbnb
Late night car clean
Friday 3rd March - Day 183
Privately sold the camping gear & tent
Chopper sold to Turners (private buyers too painful)
Saturday 4th March - Day 184
Research & chill day
Walk around Grey Lynn park
Sunday 5th March - Day 185
Walk around Auckland: Mt Eden, Domain winter gardens, University area to the harbour
Monday 6th March - Day 186
Research & chill day
Grey Lynn library
Afternoon from the Airbnb
Tuesday 7th March - Day 187
Research & chill day
Nicola hair cut & post stuff back to the UK
Beer in Ponsonby
Wednesday 8th March - Day 188
Check out of Airbnb and into YMCA hostel
Walk around Auckland:
Roti bros pies
Coffee at Up cafe
Lunch at Commercial Bay shopping centre food court
Thursday 9th March - Day 189
Auckland zoo
Commercial Bay
Fly to Hawaii
Summary
Grey Lynn / Ponsonby
Much to our surprise it was so much nicer staying here than in a hostel in the CBD. It’s clearly a wealthy suburb (house prices are extortionate) while not really having all the much glam.
Ponsonby nearby is like Auckland’s equivalent of an edgy Hackney. Would have happily spent a load of money at the various street eats and hipster bars here, if we were able to.
Auckland (revised opinion)
Opinion has gone up somewhat from the first time but probably arisen due to the lack of stress the second time around. The walk we did from Mt Eden through the university and into the CBD highlighted some much nicer parts and the food hall in Commercial Bay shopping mall / building was again like being back in London. Grown on us a bit.
Accommodation
Grey Lynn - Airbnb
Number of nights - 6
Price per night per person - £27
It was much nicer having a private room in a house than a hostel in Auckland CBD. The transport network is pretty good so it actually makes little sense to stay central if it’s cheaper and more comfortable elsewhere. So we were very very happy with this place.
A bit of a lucky find. Brittany’s family was very nice (especially her mum) and the dogs were alright, two very small yappy things and they have absolutely nothing on Albie. But Luke had a brand new kitchen to cook in while feeling zero pressure in doing so so it was pretty chill. Very comfortable to hide away in our room when we wanted to.
Auckland - YMCA Hostel
Number of nights - 1
Price per night per person - £25
Conversely this place was pretty weird and horrible. Room full of single travelling men, which is always a bit odd, while the room was hella warm, noisy next to the road and not overly comfortable.
The kitchens were weird single cooker rooms that had zero space and all pretty run down. Thankfully we didn’t need to use it.
The communal area on the ground floor with reception also wasn’t comfortable so we spent all our time away from the hostel.
Diary
[Continued]
The last of our long haul driving was completed without a hitch, although the traffic going into and out of Auckland is absolutely shocking at all times so this made us considerably later than we planned.
At our Airbnb in Greys Lynn, a nice posh suburb of Auckland and so much nicer than the CBD, we were greeted by Terri (the host Brittany’s mum) and two little terrier type doggos called Bonnie and Clyde.
Clyde was super chill and barely did anything the whole time we were there, sometimes rolling over for tummy rubs and giving the occasional foot and ankle lick. Bonnie however was a bit of a shit; yappy little thing with all the hallmarks of small dog syndrome - all bark no bite. A massive attention seeking whorebag who was unrelenting in her desire for strokes, belly rubs and attention which just got annoying after a while so we basically spent the rest of the time once fed up with her, ignoring the dogs.
Terri was great however. Such a lovely lady and just constantly trying to help us such as trying to find a dealer who may buy our car. Britt was also nice but we got the sense that she was having a bad day so we stayed away from her a little bit more, granted she was working and trying to look her 2 year old daughter, at the same time. But otherwise it was a great place to wind down and sort our gear for selling.
In order to sell the car a bit easier we decided Chops needed a glow up. We had spent some time at the Airbnb hoovering and cleaning the insides so the last part was to wash off some of our travel muck. We took off to a nearby self service car cleaning place and spent a fair amount of time scrubbing down Chops down until we deemed the car clean enough for viewings.
We spent the rest of the evening pooling all the stuff that was to be sold and collating all our normal travel crap that over 3 months was in all sorts of disarray.
Officially it was day 1 of selling all our NZ travel possessions.
Once on Facebook marketplace, Luke was left to deal with the hordes of absolute morons that were interested in our gear.
Fortunately for him the camping gear and the tent was super easy. A guy wanted to buy both almost instantly the link was put up, and was probably the only reasonable human being Luke had interactions with. We reached a deal to knock some money off but given he was taking all our camping gear we couldn’t have cared less about £15 just for the ease of it.
The car sale was a whole other beast. Most of the people who messaged didn’t seem to have any Facebook profile or presence which made Luke trust them less but in all there seemed to be none interested who were reasonable.
50% of the people would come in straight with stupid low ball offers, throwing ‘bro’ and ‘cash now’ around like it was going to make him like them more. None really read the description and the whole process wasted so much of his time. He got pretty good at telling them they are morons.
There was literally one person who had offered something sensible and asked all the right questions. The recent floods in Auckland meant there was a ton of car write offs and hence, for us, there was sadly quite a lot of demand. But Rehan was our first viewing and in all honesty, with the 3 days of viewings planned, seemed to be the only one really willing to go forward with this. Trademe probably would have likely drawn a more intellectual crowd but we didn’t want to pay the fee - fortunately we had the time to spare to see this out.
The camping gear and tent was picked up by the Canadian couple first thing in the morning which thankfully went off without a hitch. Now our focus could be solely on the car.
Luke had found a spot to meet for a viewing with people at the Mobil petrol station in Grey Lynn as it had plenty of space to park up and allow no pressure in viewings. Rehan however was a complete moron and didn’t turn up. When Luke pushed this on messenger he asked for us to go to him at his work in the CBD. We had little choice so catered towards this douchebag move.
The CBD is not a fun place to park or do a test drive. Nicola was very stressed at this point and pretty angry with these people we were pandering to, her bad mood solidified by whacking her head into the car door and then proceeding to slam it in anger. Not the greatest move when trying to sell the car so she was on time out while Luke handled everything with Rehan.
He seemed alright with the car and asked sensible questions. Luke went with him on the test drive around the block (our AA policy thankfully covered test drives as long as they had a valid licence) and he clearly had no idea where he was going so this took quite a while to loop back around to the start. The sale then started to fall apart when he wanted to arrange for an AA WOF review of the car… of course he hadn’t thought to book this ahead of time so the earliest would have been Monday.
And there ended our Luke’s assumed best chance of a private sale. Our booking at 3pm cancelled on us so we had a whole lot of time to kill before the last of the day. Nicola then pulled out the winning move.
We had booked Chops into a valuation with Turners, a large used car dealer, for the Saturday morning. Given we had a lot of time to kill she found a slot free on the day a little bit further out of Auckland so we happily made our way back to the scene of the Turners that fucked us around when trying to view/buy a car way back when.
The Turners guy pointed out two ‘issues’ we knew nothing about that seemed pretty minor. Asked how much we were looking for and Luke simply quoted very incorrectly how much we spent. The dude offered us $6k and boom we were done.
Sold to a trusted dealer, signed a contract and cash expected to be transferred to our NZ wise account in a few days. The pure ease and getting the price we wanted was just a delight. Sure we lost $2,150 in buying and selling the car but we had it for about 100 days of use and put over 12,000kms on the clock. The drama of trying to sell it for more would’ve likely just burnt through cash reserves on shitty Auckland accommodation, added stress and we wouldn’t have enjoyed ourselves at all.
We couldn’t have wished for an easier outcome.
The Turners guys gave us a lift to the bus stop in Chops and we had an incredibly emotional goodbye to our trusty steed. Well actually we were stopped on the side of the busy road and more or less ran out of the car, only realising this was the end of the road once we had settled at the bus stop.
So now all's said and done, we would recommend if planning to buy a car rather than camper and staying for a long time:
Go to a dealer to buy - just so much less risk and so much easier
Buy a newer model and fork out the extra cash (if possible - basically is like investing in a temporary asset)
Sell back to a dealer - lose a lot more than if doing all privately but if like us you can accept this cost for the security and stress free element, totes worthwhile.
Once back home we just had a full wind down and did very little. Cancelling all the car viewings was good fun for Luke and he popped open his last NZ vino, a celebratory bottle of Rock Ferry Sauvignon Blanc 2021 and as we had the house to ourselves for the day, just sat and chilled watching TV. Not that the TV was any good having lines and constantly flickering as it was clearly broken. But we were too tired and stress free to care.
The rest of our time in Auckland was planned research days and maybe getting out to see a thing or two.
We spent pretty much all day researching and concluded we should go to Hawaii rather than French Polynesia on our way to San Francisco. For some reason it was cheaper to have a week stopover and as we had alleviated ourselves of all of our NZ baggage we were free to go whenever. French Polynesia would have been cooler but the forecast for the week was going to be terrible so the sunnier Hawaii and island of Oahu was decided.
We were home alone for most of the day so we were pretty comfortable doing our Hawaii and USA research. We left the house in the afternoon to have a walk around Grey Lynn park to stretch our legs and Luke was very happy to be cooking in a pretty much brand new kitchen with fancy induction utensils that seemed hardly used.
Every time we thought we had some freedom in our first stint in Auckland we tried to arrange a visit to Mt Eden but this consistently was thwarted by car purchases. Now with our freedom we finally had the time to visit the crater and with the perks of being in Grey Lynn it was very easy to get to.
The walk up to the crater rim is pretty short and is a well looked after park rather than any dodgy ridge line walking, sadly. It was very nice to sit and take in the panoramic views of the Auckland skyline with islands stretching out into the distance.
After a couple of photos of the crater we decided to walk through the Domain winter gardens, University area and finish at the seafront.
The gardens were nice enough and gave us some shade to have some lunch.
The University side of town was quite nice. It has a nice park right by the lecture theatre and halls which a load of students clearly spent a lot of time chilling in.
Once we had gotten to the harbour we had a quick countdown shop and then we’re back at the Airbnb for the evening.
To mix things up we opted to go to the Grey Lynn library, via the post office to research sending back home a few things such as magnets et al that were weighing Nicola down.
Usually the libraries we had been to were pretty comfortable and more or less empty. This one was pretty busy and was absolutely freezing cold so once Nicola had managed to do the things she needed to on the computer and the queue for a machine had built up we ended up leaving after not too long.
The rest of our day was research and chill at the Airbnb.
Nicola had a far more exciting day today; posting stuff back to the UK and getting her haircut.
Luke in that time didn’t leave the house but made fair progress in planning the USA National park trip and repacked his big bag for the first time in 3 months. Thankfully it wasn’t a struggle at all.
By the early evening Luke was itching to get out so suggested grabbing a drink in Ponsonby, the Hackney-esq hipster place nearby. It’s a very nice area with plenty of cool places to eat, drink and chill. If we had more money / were on holiday then we totally would have frequented these places a whole lot more. But we’re cheap so we settled for a beer and a lemonade at a nice bar and then had a short walk around the area before cooking back at home.
After 6 days of doing pretty nothing noteworthy at our Airbnb, although much needed, it was time to move on back to the hostel life for an evening. Great Airbnb reviews all around which is always nice, don’t want Luke’s score potentially hindering future stays.
Now armed with our big bags, day bags and leftover food, carrying all that weight brought us right back to the bus wanker traveller pre NZ. While we may have gotten pretty fit from all the hiking, carrying about 25kg each we had limited exposure to of late and the slog through the uphill park near the hostel in the CBD certainly got the heart racing.
We were here way before check in so we dropped our bags in the luggage room and took off into town to relax as the hostel was far from comfortable.
Nicola, craving a pie that NZ did surprisingly well, had a Roti bros chicken tikka pie as a late breakfast. She is a messy eater at the best of times (putting it politely) and a curb side road pie is by no means the easiest to eat. She did however do a stellar job in containing this, for the most part, but in wiping her face with the pie paper managed to smudge the black ink all around the bottom half of her face. Not a strong look but it did showcase Luke’s future parenting skills in cleaning Nicola’s face - looks like he’ll be doing child and other half all at the same time going forward.
Post team clean, we spent a short amount of time trying to find a cafe with WiFi. Sadly the scenic harbourfront cafe did not provide us with this requirement so ended up at the Up cafe which was part of a fancy hotel. We did feel pretty slobby walking through and up.
After a few hours we left to get some lunch. Luke went back to Roti Bros for a pie and probably prematurely acquired his food as on top of the Commercial Bay shopping centre was a wicked food court full of all sorts of cuisine. So with Nicola talking full advantage of this, Luke got food envy and doubled down on his lunch.
We continued to potter around Auckland with no grand plan for a little while before going back to the hostel and checking in. Walking with the Uni crowds that had just finished lectures was quite amusing, wondering whether we looked like we fit in. Luke is after all still a young looking 31 year old, as confirmed by pretty much everyone he meets - the shock horror never gets old.
The hostel room was pretty uncomfortable. It was unbelievably warm with one tiny window for ventilation near our bed. The other 3 bunks must have been awful as we had all the airflow, although that also came with the loud roadside noises as well. We did jazz the room up somewhat with 4 out of bumper 6 pack of magnets finding a new home.
We had leftover paella for dinner, again thankfully as cooking would have been shite in the tiny kitchens, and then Luke went to the countdown to get some small provisions for the next day before we crashed out.
It wasn’t a great night's sleep with the heat, loud noises from the road and the 6 other people checking out at all sorts of times. Again, going to have to get used to this again going forward.
Rather than mill about Auckland all day our options were see the new Ant Man or go to the zoo. We had done quite a lot of animal related activities in NZ so we didn’t feel like we would gain anything from spending the money here but given our flight was at 11pm the thought of sitting around for the whole day to do the same at the airport / on the flight sounded painful. So we decided on the zoo in order to get us up and moving.
The zoo was actually pretty good fun. £19 each so not too expensive and had plenty to see for a good 3 or so hours. Favourites were the emperor tamarins who were rocking great fu Manchu style moustaches. Sadly we got no photos of these guys.
Once done with the zoo we got the bus over to the hostel, grabbed our bags and sat in Commercial Bay for a few hours chowing down on food.
At about 6pm we got the train and bus to the airport with absolutely zero drama. Very nice to have such easy journeys to the airport.
At the airport check in our onward flights out of the USA (for us, to Mexico), vaccine certificates, ESTAs and hand signed forms were all checked and approved with no issue. Note that we had onward flights to Mexico and not out of ‘North America’ - an important point for later.
Bags were checked in no problem, Luke’s weighing in at about 19 kg while Nicola’s was considerably lighter.
Luke got through security without a hitch. Nicola however got flagged up for leaving half a cucumber in her bag that she had forgotten about, the reason being they ‘weren’t sure what it was’. Turns out taking suspicions cucumbers on flights will raise questions FYI.
After a laugh, we parked up in a fairly comfortable spot in the airport (independent chairs that were movable with long backs) for a few hours. Our last remaining $25 cash was probably unnecessarily spent on mcds and sweets but we couldn’t be bothered to try to change it up to USD.
Luke did enjoy walking through the wine section in the duty free and being able to reel off most of the big names of the wineries. Sophistication level = moderate.
The flight was slightly delayed from 11.35pm to 12pm but this made little difference to us. We were on the plane and it was goodbye to New Zealand.
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