Friday, July 8th
We woke up super early, realizing we were actually jet-lagged. But getting started our day at 5:30am was probably a good thing. In the morning, Scott went to school to get registered in his classes. We took a walk around the University of Waikato campus. It is beautiful.
After making sure they would still let Scott into school, we found a place with internet and began the hunt for somewhere to live, making appointments for that evening and saturday morning to see a bunch of places. Despite the number of places for rent on websites, people here communicate a lot by text message, so not many of our emails were actually returned. We figured out the texting thing though and started getting responses.
We used Lenny to get around town that day to see some SKETCHY places. Among the weirdness was a really nice place, but not available until the 23rd. So we kept looking a bit. We stayed at another hostel that night, J's Backpackers, where we made friends with some americans and actually got to cook dinner. It was nice to have real cooked food.
Saturday July 9th
Still jet-lagged, we got up early again. Turns out waking up early in a hostel is not too bad of an idea, since you get first dibs on hot water and dry towels. Anyways, we went to go see a couple more places. We ended up having to choose between 2 places literally right across the street from each other that were very simliar. We made our choice but couldn`t finalize things until Sunday, and we still needed a campervan, so we had to head back to Auckland.
We found place called Backpackers Car Market where they facilitate the buying and selling of campervans. They were located right off of Canada Street.
Scott: What should I do in the picture?
Nikki: What do you mean "do"? It's a picture.
Scott: Well, I don't just want to stand there with my hands in my pockets like an idiot.
There were lots of vans at the market, so we implemented the classic smell test to start knocking some out of the running. We also knocked out the manual transmissions (there is NO way we were going to deal with driving stick and on the wrong side of the road). We narrowed our search down to one van that was pretty much exactly what we had thought we'd get. We sent it for an inspection. While waiting for that to be done, we checked into another hostel, KRoad Backpackers, for the night, knowing there was no way we'd be able to purchase the van today.
With a campervan and a place to rent pretty much lined up, we finally had a chance to relax and realize that we are in New Zealand!! We walked around downtown Auckland as the sun was setting (which happens super early here, it was probably only 5:30pm). It was a much needed break from the stress of the last couple days.
Sunday, July 10th
Still waiting on info about the campervan, we had another day to be tourists in Auckland.
We got the call early in the afternoon that the inspection was done, with some minor things that needed done. Luckily, the sellers agreed to pay for those things to be done. Unfortunately for us, that meant we needed to stay another night in Auckland while the van was in the shop. So we checked into ANOTHER hostel, BK Hostel for the night.
Monday, July 11th
In the morning, we were able to finalize the purchase of the van. We were very thankful for the Backpackers Car Market because they helped us with everything that needed to be done to buy it. We walked away with keys to our very own 1992 Toyota Estima Campervan!!! (pictures to come... i know the anticipation is killing you...)
So gas here is like $2.05 per litre and sometimes higher, so even an average gas tank like ours is $135 to fill up, which we did and drove back to Hamilton. All the fuss around getting the camper meant that Scott had to miss the first day of school. Oops. But it was either miss the first day, or extend the rental car, and drive back and forth for the third time in a week.
During our weekend in Auckland, we had worked out our living arrangements as well. The place we wanted was ours but not until July 23rd. Luckily the landlord had a room in another one of his houses available that we could stay in until then. So when we got back to Hamilton, we had a home to go to. No more hostels!
We are finally feeling like we can start to settle in now that we have a home and a campervan. You'd never figure that an English-speaking, Westernized country could give you culture shock, but we have certainly had our share of it so far. It sounds cliche, but it's the little things: no indoor heating, people walking around barefoot, walking on the left side of the sidewalk, red peppers that cost $4.95 each, ketchup is called tomato sauce and tomato sauce is called pasta sauce. Anyways, despite some stressful moments we are loving it here. The kindness of strangers can be a powerful thing sometimes, and has been a big part of making the last week easier. The most exciting part has been starting to plan out our weekend trips...
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