Selling a car at the end of the backpackers season in New Zealand is no fun!
We were quiet dissapointed by the Auckland Backpackers Carmarket. We expected a place, just like the Backpackers Car Market in Christchurch: A place were you can park for a couple of days and try to sell your vehicel to interested customers, a place were you are allowed to sleep inside your van within the city, a place were you can do laundry, take a shower and use the internet for maintaining your gumtree add.
But Aucklands Car Market is different: You pay them for parking your vehicle on a tiny, inclined property, set the price you’re asking and hope for the best. No sleeping within the car allowed, not a pleasant place to hang out while day, and not many customers passing through …
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| Surfing at Muriwai Beach |
We drove away and reduced the price on our gumtree add. We did print some infopapers, advertising our van and put them on several blackboards of Auckland hostels and then we left.
We had seen enough of this huge, but not to beautiful city and did not want to spent our last days here. We had 5 days left and wanted to see more of the country!
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| Muriwai Beach |
Our privious hitch-hiker friend Torre had mentioned a beautiful beach, just 40 minutes drive from the city which we wanted to see. At Muriwai Beach we rented a surfboard and enjoyed a long and exhausting day in the sea. We are both very beginners of this sport and barely managed to stand on the surfboard, but it was fun! We ended the day with a delicious sourcream, meat and pasta dinner at the beach while the sun disappeared and our spirit went up again, as we got a first text message of two dutch surfers in search for a van.
The next morning we went back to town and met for a test drive. They liked the car a lot, but were looking for a bargain. We were asking about twice as much as they were willing to pay, so we said goodbye and moved into a hostel which we had booked for our last three nights. We cleaned the van and prepared it to get sold. The next morning we went to a car trading fair, but there were about 10 camper vans and over the whole time of 6 hours only 2 of them got sold … 1 to a low price car dealer.
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| Car Fair in Sydney |
The second car fair which is held every sunday is supposed to be 5times as big, but our motivation level was low, so we decided to text the dutch surfers again and sell it to them. We agreed on a price in the middle, which was a bit of a loss for us. But that’s life! And the van still did cost us less than half of what a rental car would have cost us.
After a relaxing last day we got our luggagae packed up again and went to the airport. Usually I know Emirate Airlines as a customer friendly company. They never bothered me about carring to much luggagae or about the crashpads we transport (they are way bigger then a checked luggage is allowed to be!). But this time it was a pain to check in. I head to repack our bags 3 times before they accepted it.
In Sydney our friend Eddie Fowke was already waiting at the pickup bay. He’s a photographer and author of a new climbing magazine called „The Circuit – World Cup and Performance climbing Magazine“. Take a look at his website if you’re interested and let us know what you think 🙂
The Circuit Climbing
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| The Circuit Magazine |
He was so keen to pick us up at the airport and host us for our first couple of nights in Sydney, as we wanted to buy our next camper van.
The prices are way higher here in Australia and even tough its a big city there are not to many camper vans around in the moment. Due to Finja we need three seats in the front of the vans, but more than 50% have only two seats.
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| A well-earned coffee at the Fine Food Store in The Rocks, Sydney |
We finally found an other Mazda E2000. 10 years and 100.000km younger, but not as long and as high as the last one. We made a deal and tomorrow first thing in the morning we are driving into Central Sydney to buy the van, prepare it for the next road trip and head to the Blue Mountains.
The plan is to meet up with Roman again and as well with our Christchurch hosts Greg and Jean. Psyched!