On Monday, I went into Napier town centre to re-confirm my flight to Australia, then got on an Inter City coach to Auckland, which left at 11:30 and didn't arrive until 18:30. I checked into Auckland Central Backpackers again, this time for a couple of nights, before going for a short walk around the city centre. The next day I went to the IEP office in the morning and updated this, since I was about a month behind! In the evening, I went out to an IEP pubmeet, which was at the Empire Hotel where they were again holding a quiz night.
On Wednesday, I checked out of ACB, went to IEP and used up my New Zealand phone card by calling home, Rebekka and my grandmother for an hour (in total, not each!). At about 11, I got on the AirBus coach to the airport, which took about an hour to get there. Learning from previous experience, I allowed more than enough time to check in, have lunch, pay my departure tax and go through security. I got to the gate early enough that a guy from the Department of Tourism (or similar) asked me to contribute to a survey and go through a ton of questions with me. They basically wanted to know where I had been, for how long and what I'd done; which took about 30 minutes in all. Once I was finished with that, it was time to board and on I got, leaving a country I'd been in for the last 91 days.
So, final impressions of New Zealand... Well, I couldn't recommended it enough as a place to visit. Its landscape is its strong point and within it there's so much variety, not just what you see in the likes of The Lord Of The Rings. The South Island in particular, has golden sandy beachs, tropical rainforest next to glaciers, spectacular fjords and towering mountains, breathtaking coastal scenery, shimmering lakes and wildlife to match any number of countries. Better yet, this is all so close together and accessible, while remaining largely unspoilt. Beaches, roads and the like never seem to get busy. New Zealand is geared up for tourism and reliant on it, but it's not overwhelmed by it either.
The flight itself was fairly routine, a three hour hop across the Tasman Sea to Sydney Kingsford. When I got there, I didn't have any problems with immigration, even though I put down that I'd recently been in a rural area, a question that's red-flagged. A representative from the Work and Travel Company met a girl who had flown in from Hawaii and I in the arrivals lounge and drove us to our hostel in town, going via a few sights like Bondi Beach. We were checked in and given a few pieces of information about the area, before being left to unpack and get to know our roommates.
After being in New Zealand for three months, there are a lot of things here that are fairly similar, but the weather certainly isn't. When I walked out into the car park at hte airport, it was like hitting a wall of heat. It was just so hot and humid, even though it was lightly raining. Whatever the weather, whatever time of day it is, you never need to wear more than one layer of clothing. The climate certainly takes a bit of getting used to!
