Today we met Sunny, who will be accompanying us for the next two and a half months around New Zealand at a cost of NZ$28/day. We ended up with Sunny, a cute little white four door 1999 Nissan who mingles well with other local rides, when we decided to rent a car following a few unsuccessful inquiries regarding purchasing a vehicle. We actually had a pretty brutal experience at the Backpacker Car World where the woman “helping” us look at cars lied to us (which we found out by talking to other customers to whom she was saying completely different things about the same cars) and were discouraged by the lack of options on the market at the time.

In the end, a very helpful staff member of the Auckland i Site was able to hook us up with Sunny (an amazing “car hire” deal) and accomplished in minutes what would have taken us hours considering the difficulties of making local calls from our hostel. With our sweet ride, we set out from Auckland today and headed north to Whangarei where we  checked in at the beautiful Little Earth Hostel for the night. Sleeping in luxury one last night, we are getting ready to drive all the way to the northern most tip of New Zealand tomorrow and start our roadtrip-hiking-camping adventures in this beautiful country.