'I think we should go to New Zealand'.
Dorte argued that our 8 nights in the Amalfi coast had exceed our budget (820 Euros for the apartment alone), as had the month in Jordan due to lack of public transportation, and the flight tickets would be expensive. We hadn't booked any part of the remainder of our trip, and the more we discussed it, the more we got excited about the possibility. On the sleeper train from Sa Pa to Hanoi we shared a berth with a couple from New Zealand, and that was too much of a coincidence for us to ignore (that good karma we learned about in Nepal)!
When researching flight tickets to Auckland, we found that it wasn't as expensive after all - around $700 per person, and when we also discovered we had reward points enough to fly from Auckland to Vancouver, the excitement reached new hights!
But the living costs would still be higher than the average of $50-60 dollars/person (or less) a day we were living on in Asia...... We could do some more volunteering to cut down on accommodation and food costs for a week or two, but most of the opportunities were farming, and our experiences at the hazel nut farm in Italy taught us our bodies ( and backs) are not young enough for that type of work!
As it is summer in New Zealand in December, and Christmas, many people go on vacation, and Dorte suggested that maybe we could try to house babysit. That would probably entail looking after a cat, dog or other pet, but we
- would stay put for a while
- be able to cook our own food
- drink tap water (you can't believe how you feel about bottled water after 5 months)
- spend Christmas in a house and not another hotel room
- would stay for free
Sounded like a good plan... We researched many housesitting websites, and decided to sign up with HouseCarers.com for a fee of $50 for one year. We put up our profile, and read the list of available jobs over Christmas. and there were quite many. We applied for three positions: one without pets (our priority #1), one looking after a rabbit ( a cutie named Stanley), and one looking after a cat.
So, as you might guess, we were successful, and will be housesitting in a three bedroom house in Auckland from December 16 to January 24. There are no pets to have responsibility for - just the house and the garden, which gives us much more freedom to explore during the day! The funny thing is, and maybe that is why we got the job among 14 other applicants, the owners are going to Vancouver to visit their son, and he lives in Burnaby, where Andy teaches!
Once done with the housesitting, we will rent a car or a camper-van, and travel around the rest of the country before heading h... (don't say that bad 4 letter word!) at the end of February!
