Goodbye Wanda

We got to Auckland on my birthday. We woke up at the caravan park and as I was getting up I felt a pop in my neck along with a lot of pain. I just laid right back down and didn't move for a while. My neck had already been sore, but not that bad. After a little while and some Advil I was able to get up. It still hurt a ton and I couldn't move my head very much but it was manageable. During the day we toured around downtown Auckland and got the lay of the land a little bit. But we left early afternoon because we had a big night to get ready for.

For my bday, Dave and I went to see The Boss in concert. It was the first time that Bruce Springsteen had been in NZ in almost 20 years and he just happened to be playing on my bday. We got tickets a few days before hand and we were both really excited to go. Oh man, does he ever put on an amazing concert! He played for over 2.5 hours straight and totally rocked the house. He even open the concert with an acoustic version of the Lorde song "Royals" and everyone went crazy since Lorde is from NZ. I got drunk and pretty much just danced the night away. Great Birthday!!

Not the best seats but great show

 

The next day we had to get down to business. We made an online ad to sell Wanda and posted it on Gumtree. We made a flyer and dropped it off at over 10 hostels in the city and we posted another add on the backpacker car market. We started the day off pretty optimistic, but by the end of the day we were both feeling very defeated and sad because we hadn't heard from anyone. Clearly we were VERY impatient with very high expectations! By the next morning we had 2 phone calls from people interested in looking at the van. We made some appointments with them and showed them Wanda. Later in the day we got another call from a French couple who were also interested in Wanda. While Dave showed them the van I went to a Physio appointment for my neck. Yay insurance! Later that day we heard from the French couple and they wanted Wanda!! We made plans to meet the next day to get the registration changed over and to sell Wanda. We were so happy to have sold Wanda, but we were very sad to see her go!

Luckily for us, my mom and sister had another contact in Auckland for us. Jan and Iain to the rescue. Since we sold Wanda a little quicker then we expected we didn't have anywhere to stay, but Jan and Iain were kind enough to let us stay at their place for a couple of nights. It was actually beyond kind because they also had their daughter Fiona and her two boys, Oliver and Callum, staying with them as well. So, it was a full house. I had met both Jan and Iain once before when they were staying with family in Toronto, so it was nice to see more familiar faces. Iain met us downtown and picked us up and drove us out to their place in St Heliers Bay. We had an awesome dinner with them that night and got to chat and catch up. Iain even let us indulge in a nip of scotch with him that night. It was definitely the best scotch I've ever had, but that's not saying much!

The next day everyone went their separate ways and Dave and I went to the Auckland Cup. Neither of us had ever been to a horse race before, but after being in Australia during the Melbourne Cup, we definitely wanted to go to one. And luckily enough, the Auckland Cup was on the week we were in Auckland. So, we got dressed in the nicest clothes we could find in our bags and off we went. It was actually a really fun day! We bet on all of the races we were there for. I did really well - I won 4/5 of the races I bet on. Dave, on the other hand, did not do very well. He was 0/6 on the races he bet on. It was still a really fun way to spend a day.

Another one of Steph's winning races

 

After a few nights in Auckland we decided to make our way north. We had about 4 days until we flew back to Australia and everyone raved about the Bay of Islands area north of Auckland so we rented a caravan and decided to drive north.

Thanks for reading!

xoxo