Day 16 - back to Auckland
After two weeks living in Kylie, it was time to give her back. We spent our last night in a car park, freedom camping for one last time and headed nice and early back to the city. We covered over 3000 km's in Kylie over the course of the two weeks that we had her and the 'roadkill' featured on the bonnet was testament to the adventures we'd had. My theory was the more mozzies splatted by the van, the less for us to chase round the cabin come bedtime!

With nothing untoward to report on return, we were in a taxi back to the city before long and headed straight to our hotel to drop bags giving us the opportunity to spend a bit more time on queen street getting some final tourist crap.

We ate a meagre granola breakfast early in Thames, and so were in need of a refuel to give us the energy to shop (you all know how much I love to shop..) before we explored Auckland's main streets. Where better than coffee and cake from the cafe at the top of the Sky Tower which dominates the skyline. The views from the top were amazing, especially looking out over the harbour/bay and islands to the North. Not quite as tall as Pearl Tower in China, it is still a very odd feeling walking over the glass tiles and leaning out against the windows to look down!

Auckland has one main street, Queen Street, with a couple of more independent and boutique-y shops down side roads. We had a couple of things to hunt down, me, I wanted a t-shirt. We'd tried a few tourist shops before I clocked a 'cult clothing' style shop..bingo! My list ticked off, we then needed to eat again (a hangover from Hobbiton I can only assume!). Last day so why not spoil ourselves. We ate Michelin starred dim sum in Sydney so thought, given the eastern influence, we'd try for dumplings. Huame did the trick, fancy pants, lots of Chinese people eating (and business people) and we smashed 3 different dim sum and a plate of noodles. Not quite as good as the Sydney dumplings but still pretty damn good!

Time to checkin at the hotel so we headed back to wash enough t-shirts and pants for the trip. With a plan to meet Gilly and Glenn at 7, we decided to have a chilled out afternoon drinking our remaining wine from Esk Valley vineyards.

We were picked up by Glenn, Gilly and Gilly's dad John and went a long way around the bay, past mission bay and out to the far peninsular to a Spanish restaurant that G+G were keen to try. Lovely wine, lovely company and pretty good food again. We even found ice cream and ate it on the beach at mission bay on the way back.

It's been an amazing trip. We have thoroughly loved New Zealand and I imagine that we'll be back at some in the not too distant future. Talk has turned to 'which campervan do we buy?', 'where are we going next?', 'if we worked for two years could we travel for 1?' And 'what about a vineyard/farm/b+b in France/Derbyshire/Southern hemisphere?'..

Looking forward to getting our pup back.. Massive thanks to Ness and Chris for their love and care of him, the pics we've had suggest he's been spoils rotten!