And with that, the New Zealand season has come to an end.

I’m on a bonus travel journey as I make my way home, traveling first for two weeks to Thailand, Bali, and Singapore. Then, I’ll make my return back to the states by spending a week in Hawaii before hopping a plane back to Philadelphia.

Although I’m done in New Zealand, I hope to retroactively share stories of my adventures that I had missed. It was such a great adventure period of my life, and it feels strange to be leaving. However, it never fully felt like “home,” so it in no way was as difficult a goodbye as my farewell from Pennsylvania was.

A lot of backpackers seem to really fall in love with New Zealand and find ways to stay for longer than their initial visa allows. Sometimes, you can apply for extensions to the traditional working holiday visa, or other people will seek out a resident visa by finding full-time employment. A couple I worked with on the farm was aiming to do that and get permanent positions there.

For me, as much as I loved the country and the friendliness and happiness of the kiwi people, I never got that urge to stay even longer. In fact, I didn’t even stay the full length of my visa. Would I love to return one day? Absolutely. But I think I have more of a homebody aspect to my personality than I’d originally thought. I’m feeling fully ready to return home and see all of my people again. And I’m sure it’ll feel like I’d never left and that this all was some sort of strange dream.

My final few weeks in New Zealand were spent in Wellington, the country’s capital city that sits on the very bottom of the North Island. We stayed at Steve’s aunt’s house while they were on vacation, and it was lovely having the ability to be in a house again.

With the newfound space and amenities came an immense laziness. Wellington is fairly small, so we saw the majority of the city within a day or two and did most of the things we’d wanted to do in the area. If we were a bit more ambitious, we could’ve easily found other hikes or day trips nearby. However, access to a couch, tv, and kitchen led to multiple relaxation days and several movie marathons. We’d managed to finish both the Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises, as well as several binge sessions of Gilmore Girls that I think Steve began to love.

Living in a van, every day was fairly busy as there was nowhere to really lounge and take a lazy day. The only real space we called our own was the car, and the strong summer sun wasn’t quite conducive to midday naps on the mattress in the back.

Additionally, our time in Wellington called for a lot of finishing touches on our residency in New Zealand. Tax returns were filed, bank accounts were closed, and selling the van came down to the wire.

Speaking of tax returns, that was about the easiest day I’d had in dealing with a government agency in my entire life. As we were in the capital city, we were able to walk right into the IRD office (the New Zealand tax department) without an appointment. We asked the lady working the front desk if we would be able to file our taxes with her, as we’d heard it gets done quickly if you go in (something I’ve never really heard in the US). She initially said that we could do it online, where I then expecting a quick send off and goodbye to follow it up. However, she switched it up from my expectations and asked me for my passport and my IRD number and she’d help me get it done. In about 2 minutes, everything was submitted and she handed my passport back to me, saying I’d see the money in about 2 days. Then, she did the same with Steve, finishing his in an even shorter period of time.

I’m sure it was just this easy because of our working holiday status, but that tax return was a dream compared to what I’m in for this US tax season, I’m sure.

Another surprising factor was just how sweet she was. I’ve had a few good interactions back home, but that’s usually saved for the special occasion. With this office, she was so helpful and sweet and wished us safe travels. Because it was so novel, it felt so surprising. Steve was just as shocked as I was by it all, as Germany’s government offices seem similar enough to ours in attitude and style.

Later that week, we’d also walked into what I’d call New Zealand’s equivalent of the DMV, and the lady that helped us was just as cheery. She seemed genuinely happy to be helping us, and even though she just directed us to phone numbers to call about tying up loose ends with the van, she did it with a smile.

Everything felt too smooth. Everything that usually felt like such a headache at home was a breeze for the most part. In closing my bank account – of which the remaining balance was a measly $23NZ that I cashed out – it just took a few clicks at the local branch and I was set, no lingering ties left to the country.

When Steve went to do the same with his bank, he had much more in his account with the money he got for the van. Because of that, he wanted to transfer it overseas to his German account. For whatever reason, when you transfer money within the branch, they charge you $25, and you may be charged fees from the bank on the receiving end as well. On the other hand, if you do the transfer yourself online, you’re guaranteed to only pay a fee of $5.

We were paired with a lovely lady working behind the counter when Steve deposited cash and asked about a transfer. She asked him about 3 times whether or not he was sure he wanted her to transfer the money, as he would save money doing it himself. Finally, he caved. He only wanted to do it in the bank because some part of his online banking wasn’t set up to allow him to do the transfer himself. When he showed her the notification he got online, she said it was an easy fix she could do herself, and quickly got him set up with his online banking. I remarked how I loved how much she wanted to save him money, and I found it so funny how strongly she didn’t want to go through with the transfer within the branch. She said her daughter lived in the UK and she would often send her money, so she loved doing it the online way to make sure her daughter got all of the money without extra fees being taken out on the UK end. With that help, we got Steve’s cash deposited and he walked away being able to do the transfer on his own.

Out of all the loose ends we had to tie up to finalize our departure, the van was probably the most stressful. Steve had bought the van for $6,500NZ, and was initially hoping to sell it for the same price. He tried his hand at selling it in Christchurch over the holidays while I was with my family, but didn’t get any interest that was really worthwhile. Because of that, we took the van up to Wellington with us and started over with the selling process.

In New Zealand, since the backpacking culture is so big, there’s a pretty big market for old campervans and cars that get bought and sold over and over again. There are a multitude of Facebook groups dedicated to the buying and selling of cars in New Zealand, and another strategy to spread the word is to put flyers up in hostels advertising the car.

In Christchurch, we had pretty immediate interest in the car from both Facebook and the hostels. In Wellington, however, it was pretty much radio silence. I figured the market for cars was smaller in Wellington, as Auckland and Christchurch seem to be the biggest starting points for backpackers entering the country. Wellington would be a close follow up I assume, but the market was definitely a lot smaller.

The selling of the van became a bit of a stressor, and Steve constantly contemplated how we should drop the price and get more interest. He used a website called “TradeMe” as well to put up a listing for the van, spreading out feelers to locals who use that website over the Facebook groups for backpackers. While we got very minimal interest from backpackers, we garnered some interest from locals on the TradeMe listing.

Our first guy who saw the car and said he wanted it ended up just leading us on. I’m still unsure why he never just said “never mind” to the deal or even just ghosted us instead of always answering our inquiries and making it seem like he would finish the deal soon.

Luckily, about midway through our last week, Steve got a call from a random person inquiring about the car. He could barely understand them and didn’t know who they were, but they’d said they were interested in seeing the car the next day. We figured we’d just wait for them to call back and see if they were actually interested in meeting up.

The next day, they called again, and the guy was already taking cash out for the car before they’d even seen it. It was such a relief that we had anybody that seemed like they would just take it off of our hands. It was an immediate lightener to the pressure we’d been feeling.

We met them at the local train station, and they were two kiwi farmers that worked about an hour outside of the city. One of the guys had a van that he lived in the majority of the time, but his friend thought it was time for him to get a new one. The friend was the one we communicated with throughout the deal. He bartered easily with Steve to get the price from its then-listed $4,000NZ to $3,500NZ, while the buyer was ready to just hand over the cash and move on. He didn’t even aim to take it for a test drive before Steve suggested it.

The only snag in the deal was that the ATM had a daily limit of $2,500NZ for cash withdrawals. We were offered the $2,500NZ he was able to take out as a deposit, and then we set a time to meet to finish the sale the next day. We were near giddy on the drive back to the house, happy that there was at least a deposit Steve had for the car even if they never came for it.

Thankfully, they did, as we had no use for the van anymore. They asked if we would meet them about 20 minutes away to finish the sale, and then they offered to drive us back to the train station from there. I felt like that kind of defeated the purpose of driving closer to them to give them the car if they were driving us back anyways, but oh well. As always, my “stranger danger” anxiety said that you should never allow a stranger to drive you anywhere, but Steve seemed fine with it, so I kept that piece of logic to myself. After all, kiwis are known for their hospitality, and I feel like the farmers tend to be the most genuine of them all.

In the end, any anxiety I had was worthless, as they had us drive the van back to the station while they sat on the mattress in the backseat, several beers in hand. As Steve pointed out after the fact, we’d passed about three cop cars on our way back, but luckily none of them pulled us over for our unfastened back-bed passengers.

The chatty friend kept us entertained the whole time, showing me pictures he took of the sunset as a hobby, bookended by photos of his fishing catches and his various American cars he was proud of.

We all made it to the train station unscathed, and the chatty one gave me a hug before we all departed. All in all, we’d never gotten their names and barely knew who they were, but I enjoyed our random encounters all the same.

And now, with no physical ties left to New Zealand, I’m on my way to sweat my booty off in Thailand.