We make our way to the northern outskirts of Auckland to grab the coach to Whangārei and it’s a bit of a tough 2.5 hours, with the vehicle being full and a group of loud people behind us, but we arrive around the Town Basin

First point of call is to grab some groceries, of which we get as much as we can carry, and then realise it’s not easy to reach our final destination west of the city – no local bus services going our way and the cheapest taxi is the same cost as our coach journey up here, at $70!

We reach out to our new employer / landlord and one of them can pick us up but only in a few hours time so we decide to go back to a place we’d visited before that we really enjoyed: Jimmy Jack’s

They have a ‘cook your own meat’ special on so we opt for two of those with a couple of drinks

The time comes where we get picked up and we make our way around the town as he needs to complete some chores

After, we get taken to a residential address with their kiwifruit orchard on a couple of hectares as well as worker accommodation

For the next couple weeks, we work here and are taught to do various tasks: bud thinning, string untangling, stringing vines, and so on

Dave even gets well acquainted with some of the orchard residents (see the featured image)!

While we’re here, we get some news that Daisy has been offered a marketing role in Wellington so we make arrangements to get set up there for after we work enough here to cover the initial costs

We become friends with some of the people we’re working with and get to enjoy the experience a little

On the last night, we enjoy a few drinks and watch a film to celebrate our time here before setting off to begin the next chapter of our adventure!