Admin In Auckland (Goodbye Lady C)

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Auckland, "The City of Sails" is home to NZ's largest concentration of people. It is a unique place unlike the rest of NZ and consequently hated by all non-Aucklanders, who consider it brash and full of arrogant city-folk. Laura and I like cities and Auckland was no exception - are we brash and arrogant people? No! We just seem to gel with the "big shmokes". It has plenty of action in the centre and attractive suburbs - particularly Ponsonby, where we stayed, Parnell and Devonport, across the harbour. The only problem for us, was the need to sell our car and arrange freight of all the stuff we'd accumulated in NZ, back to Blighty in three days. That as we discovered, would leave us with little time to do anything touristy, which is clearly evident from the lack of piccies for this blog.

So, essential admin was the order of the day and the outcome was I'm glad to say, very positive. We managed to sell our car a day before we left NZ, at the Saturday car market. We recouped the majority of the money we paid for it and considering it required a fair bit of work, were happy to simply get a buyer. As it turned out, he was English, from Durham and a mechanic, so he gave it a thorough inspection!! We knew the Exhaust Gas Oxygen Sensor needed replacing but we also discovered that the exhaust pipe had a hole in it (welding required), a CV boot joint had gone (so that's why it ticked when I turned left) and the back tyres were illegal! We have fond memories of that car and she was our first, so we will always remember her but in the end we were so relieved to see her off. The entire inspection, sale cash and ownership transfer, took 1 hour - he was our first interested party and he met our price, so we were out of the market by 10am - not bad going we thought. We also got our box of NZ bits and bobs and snowboards on a ship to the UK, so all in all our admin in Auckland was a success.

In spreading our car advert posters around the city we managed to see quite a bit from the car and were impressed. Obviously we sacrificed getting to the core of what makes Aucky tick but we sensed a similar soul to that of London. It's very multi-cultural, pretty crowded, a city that doesn't sleep and hectic on weekdays but much more manageable outside of working hours. Laura picked up a new bikini in preparation for some beach sunning in Fiji before we said our goodbyes and taking public transport for the first time in 3 months, headed to the airport...

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Photos

Auckland Cityscape
On a wet and miserable day.

That's Your Lot
Goodbyes at Aucky Airport. Our last piccie in NZ.