The world is a small place

Cold , Expensive , Empty and Gorgeous

Those would be the first 4 words that I would describe my first impression about New Zealand.

I had a really bad landing maybe because I expected miracles from the moment I put my foot on this far away land. Maybe because of the cold weather, amazingly high prices and a very unpleasant first night confrontation with a Maori that was sure that everyone in Israel is a child killer.

Maybe because when we tried to buy a car from an Iranian Guy in the vehicle testing station I was told that the odometer was taken 100k backward which kept us for another 2 days stuck in Auckland.

Or maybe it’s was just the contrast from the warm amazing people of Georgia - their food and their mentality and our great visit to Germany. All of those left their impression.

After a week, for the first time in my traveling life, I was ready to leave this country and give up the dream of exploring it.

Luckily I’m not travelling alone and Ira was able to show me the good things about this country and that Auckland is not the best parameter for measuring the rest of New Zealand.

the nice things :)

Auckland - looks amazing (amazingly expensive)

We joined the HIT (host Israeli travelers) organization which is mostly consists of Joshua Christians that support Israel and host Israeli travelers in their home or just offer help during our stay here. Basically creating a home away from home.

In Auckland we reached the house of Ghram and Judith Porter, they have lovely rooms for the HIT members , they saw the frustration and really tried to help us with finding the Car.

They took us to celebrate Sukot in a church – YES sukkot in a church and in the end they even sang both of the anthems the NZ one and the Israeli.

Judith and Grahm - Yes they are smiling :)

In the Church we met a lot of lovely people who were excited to hear that we are from Israel.

Hatikva

big cohen

Among those people were Jose and Martin, a lovely couple who emigrated 40 years ago from Holland to NZ (and never actually became citizens of this country). They were hugging and amazing. Taking us searching for a car and inviting us to have dinner , the amount of energy and love that those people had to each other and the world could fill a room easily – that was a thing to learn!!!

We found a car in Elislle car fair in Auckland and luckily Ghram told me to check the car in one of the VTNZ. I asked the guy there to check whether the state of the Engine fits more or less the Odometer (not part of the check) it revealed that the odometer was rolled back for 100,000km (it costed us 150$) – and we could avoid that using carjam.co.nz (15$) to check this stuff.