An End of an Era

So tomorrow is going to be my last day of my New Zealand holiday, I am actually flying out on Wednesday but early enough and that will all be spent in the airport. Over the last few days I have found myself just sitting around staring into space and replaying the last 9 months over and over in my mind and what can I say? They were a blast.

I remember arriving in Queenstown, wondering around lost and jet-lagged for a week, heading to Dunedin and my first night in Central Backpackers and then all the class times I had there, my first road trip, making castles out of beer cans in the sitting room, playing WoW for hours in the internet cafe, heading back to Queenstown with my board and going snowboarding for the first time, changing hostels every week and meeting so many random people, doing a skydive, running out of money and having to work 60 hour weeks but then road trips on the weekend with group I was hanging with, hitch-hiking to Nelson, Doing the Abel Tasman walk and camping out for the first time, hanging around in Wellington bored before heading to Napier, all the great times in Napier working and playing, 15 of us sleeping under the stars on a beach, drinking and talking shit on the steps of The Warehouse, lazy afternoons in the courtyard and hard days talking shit for hours in the orchards, a crazy Christmas dinner for 38 under the hot sun, going back to Wellington for New Years, getting pissed most nights with 15 Germans, the shitty goodbyes when they all left for the South Island, then the road-trip up here to Auckland.

I can’t believe it has been nine months, feels like more than a year; Queenstown seems a life-time ago. I have met, befriended and said goodbye to so many people in that time as well. Some of them I can barely remember but there were so many that I would consider friends; Denise, Richard, Blair, Shane, Joelle, Angus, Nick, Rachel, Bev, Lucy, Andy, Stein, Lucille, Sylvania, Josh, Jo, Emmerson, Natalie, Marco, Jim, Jen, Mirna, Neil, Lucy, Ruth, Flo, Kirsty, Gerrit, Dave, Hila, Sue, Miyuki, Alex, Corey, Elle, Lina, Lisa. All people who I still feel sad about having to say goodbye to.

I suppose I should talk about what I have learnt from my time here in New Zealand and whatnot. Self-sufficiency is a big one, there were times when I got lonely and was stuck in a place were I felt I had no friends, sometimes for weeks at a time. Times like those you have to get used to your own company and to organising everything for yourself. On the other hand however, very often it was as a result of those bad times that I got to encounter the good times; feeling lost when I first arrived in Queenstown lead me to move and have a great time in Dunedin, my shit first visit to Wellington motivated me to move to Napier where I had the best few months of my holiday. The value of these friendships are also important, no matter how stunning a snow-capped mountain or pristine golden beach is, if you have no one to share it with then what’s the point? You learn to be philosophical about these things, good times come and good times go, as do good friends. You have to learn to juggle the skills of making acquaintances and developing friendships quickly with being able to let go and say goodbye, very often in the space of a few days. You also have to learn humility, I have stayed in stayed in some very shit hostels, been reduced to wearing cloths held together with safety pins, worked for some ignorant fuckers and in some really hard, thankless jobs.

If I were to do the trip all over again there are some things I would do differently but all in all I am happy with how it went, less time in Queenstown would be good, as would more in Dunedin, better budgeting would have helped but working was part of the experience. Surprisingly I am not actually that sad about leaving. After Wellington I said goodbye to my German friends, which was hard, but afterwards I kind of faced that fact that my money was running out and I was just not in the mood for more sight-seeing. For the last 3 weeks I have been here in Auckland staying in a friend’s apartment, which has been great. It was such a relief not to have to share a room or worry about someone stealing my food. Doing domestic things like walking the dog or just lazing around the house for the day was also great fun. We went on a few weekend and road trips but nothing major and that has been grand.

The time off has given me lots of time to catch up on my internet and organise this trip to South America. That is goingt to be fun, have organised an itenary of sorts and will hopefully meet up with some friend of mine in Argentina, Brazil and Peru, one of the plus points of having studied and travelled internationally i suppose. Dont know what the internet access will be like once i get over there and there is no Vodafone so dont think the old phone will work, will try and keep this thing going but leave me comments, even just your initials, just so I know if people are reading, saves me sending emails. Ciao for now