Back on track...

So our revisit of Auckland has been a bit longer than we both wished, but we have now sold our trusty little van to two super cool German girls. We also met a lot of interesting characters during the course of our time at the car market. My personal favorites were three girls from Israel fresh out of the army (two were from Jerusalem, and one from Ramat Gan) and traveling to Australia this week after spending 3 months in NZ. They sold their car right before we sold ours, so it was a great day for all. We exchanged information and promised to keep up and allow couch surfing in the future back in our respective homes! I fully intend to take them up on the offer someday!
Now that we can leave Auckland, we have found that the train that runs daily from Auckland to Wellington is booked full through next week!! Ugh! But lucky for us it’s just as cheap to fly (and takes 2 hours vs 12). So, on Thursday we’ll jump on a plane and head to Wellington for at least three days while we sort out some business and see the town. I feel better about this knowing that we have our passes to come back and tour the rest of the north island as in-depth as we’d like within the next year (and the more you guys come to visit, the more of a reason we have to further explore)!
It feels like things are finally starting to move in the direction we had both wished from the get go. Yes, we made some rookie mistakes, but we are recovering and learning so much along the way. I feel that all this experience and knowledge will be invaluable in the long run, especially with all our future travel wishes and plans.