We booked a great little place to stay, Rusty Anchor, being $20 as against the other places $50! No idea how a patch of grass no more than a mile away can cost so much more!! We arrived there in the evening after our drive, set up camp and had tortillas for dinner! This was a significant nice change for us!! Though the spices dont taste the same as the packs you buy at home….! There were 2 nice Israeli girls eating too, big chunck of steak with a little bit of rice, you could see james mouth watering as we cooked up a huge bowl of veg!
The next day we woke up and were in nice shade, thinking wow we did really well positioning the tent and car, or the weather isnt so good! The weather was really bad! We’d planned to drive to a couple of stunning beaches, but it was uterly pointless in the weather so instead we had a really productive day! We hadnt even looked at south america, and with only a couple more days before we flew to fiji we were able to make good use of our time, finding spanish courses, planning dates, flights etc etc! We also used our betty crocker mix that we’d bought for the chocolate fudge icing at christmas! Yum! We then emptied the whole car and sorted the HUGE pile of stuff to send home! And packed everything else into our rucksacks….. Not looking forward to traveling around with them again, its been sooo nice having a car and being able to leave everything in it!! Very lucky we never got broken into…!
We met a really nice couple from Chile in the kitchen, and stayed up late into the night chatting away to them, they gave us tons of advice on S.America, and showed us his pictures, he was an amazing photographer with a fantastic really old Cannon camera!
The next morning we’d arranged to drop our hitchiking couple off somewhere and all piled into the car (only made possible by serious sorting the day before!!) However the car didnt start…. They helped us push it down the hill, no luck still! James had moved it earlier that morning and it had a shiny new battery so we were baffled! A really friendly guy drove past though and asked what was wrong, he had a look under the bonnet and said he’d be back soon to jump start it! A few minutes later he was back, little rudolph was all wired up and after a little while came back to life! We all got back into the car and dropped out couple off! We then started our drive down to auckland…. stopped en route to try and get james a new lense but no luck. Found ourselves a campsite, did a ton of washing! and ate late as we had the past couple of nights, sorting and booking the final fiji and s.america things!
Our last day was rushed from the moment we got up til the moment we got on the plane!! We almost missed everything but somehow everything ended ok!! Missed haircut app, as went to the wrong high street! Made a new one, which meant cutting the airport fine, Packed up our rucksacks for the plane on the edge of the road and then headed into central central auckland to where the hairdressers actually was! All the way there the petrol light decided to flash empty! James dropped me off and I just found the hairdressers intime on foot! Back in the car after inches of hair cut off, the petrol now seemed happy! We dropped our tent into a homeless place, thinking it was better than throwing, and headed towards the airport. We then got stuck in really bad roadworks! Got to the place to return the car, and gave the guy behind the counter the rest of our huge sack of rice! We told the car place we were late and instead of having to wait for our shuttle they dropped us off in our car! We made it!!
We checked in, grabbed some food, and then realised that boarding was in 10minutes and we hadnt gone through secrutity left…. only 2/5 NZ postcards got written and posted! The rest would have to wait til after Fiji! We rushed to security, then realised hadnt filled out the departure cards…. The queue was huge as there was a flight to america at the same time as ours…. The security person then stopped James to search his bag, he’d left the swiss army knife in it!! BUT apparently as it was ONLY 6cm’s it was allowed on! By this time we heard our final call letting us know all the passengers were boarded and waiting (we discovered that NZ were very good at final calls and really did make planes wait for people!) So anyway we made it! Always wanted to get a final call and still make the flight! And there were passengers that boarded even later than us!
We arrived in Nadi – it was HOT!!! we booked the remaining boats, and our first island bounty through the place we were staying, which had cats everywhere!! Was fantastic! We just picked the cheapest and it definitely did the job!
The few pics we took are here!
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