Today we took the van to the depot near Christchurch airport. It passed all the tests, i.e. it was clean inside, was full of diesel, empty of loo and no additional bodywork features, so the only thing we had to pay was the fuel tax. From what we understand, diesel is not taxed very much in New Zealand at the pump, but the campervan companies are charged tax, which they pass on to the customer. From our notes the tax only applied to campervans with a toilet and shower, but as it was approx $80 for 4000km or so we didn’t mind too much; still cheaper than at home! After all the paperwork was done we said goodbye to the van. It was really strange setting forth again on a new leg of our travels without our trusty campervan. We’d really enjoyed travelling in the vans we’d had (although maybe the second one was slightly better as the heater worked and it didn’t leak) and it was a little sad to end that part of the journey, but we had plenty of adventures still ahead of us! We caught the courtesy bus to the airport and went to check in for our flight to Sydney. The lady at check-in scared us at first when she checked and said we didn’t have visas for Australia! This threw us as no-one had mentioned (or at least we’d forgotten) that we needed visas for Oz. But it was ok as we went to the desk in the corner and for NZ$60 we got two electronic visas and everything was fine. We arrived in Sydney and were met by Rod and Mieke, whom we had met on our Peru trip and had very generously invited us for Christmas with them. We were introduced to the family; their children Nick, Maddy and Elly, the 16-week old puppies Indy and Mara and the kitten Barkley (however they all have nicknames for each other so they all have different names depending on who you talk to! :)). Nick was off out to met some friends north of Sydney so we went along for the ride. We saw the city and drove across the Harbour Bridge, which was fantastic, but there was really low cloud hiding the tops of the buildings so we couldn’t see a great deal of the city. But what we could see looked nice!