WWOOFing with Liz
Liz lives in a 1940s farm house with her daughter Louise (who is rarely home); Shirley Temple, the rabbit; Tosca, the kitten; four chickens; and our favorite, Lilly the little dog. Our week at Liz's was entertaining and our workload was pretty light. She works during the day and we only had jobs like clearing a section to be landscaped, planting brussels sprouts, pulling weeds, feeding the pets, etc. A highlight of the week was going with Liz to the local hot pools called Palm Springs. We also enjoyed her meals, many of which had more than one course. Liz lives near Auckland, and because she's so nice, she invited us back to her house before flying out. So a week later we went back, only to be treated to another fantastic dinner.
Roadtrip with Chopper
After leaving Liz's place we were ready to sell the car. There are two car fairs in Auckland so we arrived on Friday night planning to hit them both up. If we didn't sell the car then we would dump it at an auction house on the way out of town. Just for fun I posted the car on a website. Right when we got into town a girl emailed me about it for a test drive. To make a long story short she offered NZ$1000.00 and we took it, happy that we would avoid any more hassle of car ownership.
Now that all the unknowns of our trip were gone and we had "fat pockets" for the first time in months, we decided to treat ourselves a bit. We rented a campervan and headed North. The van was pretty dorky with advertising painted on the sides and a dumb name (Chopper), but we made the best of it by including it in as many pictures as we could. I also took full insurance coverage for the first time ever so I had a pretty good time driving fast on unsealed roads.
During the week we found some sweet campsites and pretty much just took the oppurtunety to relax. 4 out of 5 of the places we camped were right on the ocean; it was pretty awesome. I definitely felt like we were cheating by staying in a van instead of tent camping, but also have to admit it was pretty nice. It had a DVD player and everything, plus having a consistent bed was nice!
Now we're sleeping the night in Auckland International Airport before flying off to Brisbane, Australia tomorrow morning!
