Au revoir New Zealand, c'est magnifique

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A great nights sleep was followed by a trip to the airport via the car rental place, we had to drop Frank off.

He was one month and 6,225 KM's older, he'd lost one hub-cap, cracked another one, had a chip the size of a 5p in his windscreen and was filthy, not to mention the broken arm rest that Fiona constantly wrestled with, luckily the dirt covered the numerous scratches to the bodywork.

All these things were by no means caused be wreckless driving, I've never had so much as a scratch on any of my own cars, but because of the state of the roads, some are no more than gravel tracks while most of the 'good' roads were being relayed with fresh 'chuckies'.

Now I've 'bumped' a hire car before when I was working down South, this was really Youth's fault as he was guiding me in to a parking space when I drove into the wall, "that's you as far as you can go", he helpfully informed, I'd already worked that one out. Anyway in that instance I 'nosed' the car into a parking space behind another one when we returned it and purposely never left enough space for the dude to walk in front while he checked it back in, we got away with it but I wasn't confident this time, there was a specific bay for car returns and there was nothing around it.

The guy at the rental firm was sound, he didn't care what state it was in, he had a quick scoot around it to see that there was no real damage then took us to the airport, no questions asked.

We checked in on time and got some coffee with out last 10NZ$, we got some Fiji dollars at a great rate of $3.15 to the pound and before we knew it we were on the plane and about to leave. There was no real excitement about moving on, we've loved our time in New Zealand and could have spent a whole year there, onwards and upwards though and we've still got so much to see. I hope we return to New Zealand one day and I'm sure that we will, I hope you've enjoyed reading our tales from this far away land as we've enjoyed experiencing them.

For those who are thinking about a trip to New Zealand I would say do it, and for those who aren't I would suggest that you should. If you ever find yourself with a spare January I can't think of a better place to spend it, Aotearoa - 'Land of the long white cloud'. I thank you.

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