We woke up, had a small breakfast, then continued to pack. After a bit, we said bye to Alison and David since they were leaving to go down to Wellington. I was so sad I wasn't going to be able to see them anymore on a regular basis. They've been a constant rock during my whole trip. We did a load of laundry and continued packing. I packed quickly so I wasn't very efficient in my organization but I still managed to fit everything in my carry on, big backpack, and box. After spray painting Helga and vacuuming her out, we were on our way to Auckland.
On the way, we thought of certain things, mainly food items that we were going to miss once we leave New Zealand. We quickly pulled over since we saw a sign for real fruit ice cream. I got blueberry and it was delicious. In Auckland, we stopped at Tank one last time too. Since our flight wasn't until 9PM and we didn't need to drop off the car until about 4PM, we aimlessly drove around for a bit then walked around one of the malls. Eventually, we went to drop Helga off. We had put 7,500 kilometers on her! She sure has been through a lot in the last month and a half. We were sad to leave her and the rental place guy kind of made fun of us for getting attached. Oh well. We got dropped off at the airport, we checked in our bags, then continued to wait around for our flight.
We got through security then hit a few of the bars and enjoyed some New Zealand wine in New Zealand for the last time. Out of the airport window, a pretty sunset was forming. It was a bittersweet ending. We found our gate and loaded onto the plane. We were lucky enough to have one of the middle rows all to ourselves. It was difficult to sleep on the plane but after 9 hours, we touched down in Honolulu, U.S.A.
