Saturday, April 6 - Van for sale

 The hard reality of the free market

     Auckland has two car markets open to sellers and buyers where you simply pay andentry fee, then hope someone comes along and likes your vehicle enough to make you a nice offer.  Saturday's market is downtown and less popular than Sunday's, but for only $25 we thought it was worth a try.

After sprinkles during the night we awoke to a glorious double rainbow.
We hoped it was a good omen for selling our van. 

      We paid $2350 for the van back in January, and with the repair to the rear end, new tires, and a rebuild of the starter motor have a total of about $3500 in it.  We could have rented an older camper van for around $3000, but it wouldn't have worked for the six weeks we were also traveling with the kids.  And I'd initially budgeted a total of $4000 for vehicle costs before we left home.  So we aren't desperate and don't expect to recoup all our costs.  But obviously, we'd like to get as much as we can.  Gotta have the cash to fill up a shipping container with Tim Tams, you know!

Auckland shimmered in the morning light as we crossed the bridge
towards town. 

We spent five hours waiting for someone to show interest in the van.  There
were many other small vans set up with different camping variations, all driven
by young European backpackers initially very eager by their prospects.

     Most of them had airline tickets to leave the country in the next couple days, and their options to make a little profit, break even, or even not loose too much were pretty narrow.  A lot of them had come at the beginning of the NZ spring or summer, as we did, and entered a sellers market.  Now they were leaving at the beginning of fall, when fewer backpackers come to NZ looking for work or travel.  So as the day wore on and very few private buyers showed up, their faces began to reflect the grim reality that they may have to deal with the used car dealers prowling the lot.
    One young French couple had paid $4000 for their van four or five months ago.  They came to the lot with a price of $3500 pasted to the window.  Within a couple hours that price was crossed out and $3200 written in.  Then a little later $3000.  A grizzled dealer stopped buy and looked the car over, chatted with them, then offered them $1600.  Whew, with Gallic indignation they refused and demanded how he could possibly offer such a low price, since the van was clearly worth at least twice that much.  The man calmly agreed, saying, yes, next Spring you could probably sell it for $4000.  He raised his offer $100, then when they rejected it out of hand, calmly walked down the line to negotiate with another seller.
     About an hour later we saw him shake hands with a Dutch couple with small child in tow who were selling an immaculate Toyota Hiace, a larger van than ours that was several years newer and in better shape. They had arrived with a price of $3800, which we probably would have given them three months ago, and considerably less than they had paid.  They ended up selling to the same dealer for around $2500.  After closing the deal he drove them to a rental car lot where they could pick up transportation for their last couple days in the country.
    Then, to the horrified indignation of all the young backpackers, he returned to the lot with the same van with a new price sign the read $6000, Non-negotiable.  The kids sputtered and cursed, incredulous that anyone could be so brazen and unfair.  The French girl (actually she was from Montreal) seethed, and said all the sellers needed to band together and form un syndicat, and to raise all their prices and refuse to give the dealers any more bargains.  I tried to figure out what she meant, then with her decent English and my limited French realized she met a union.  Her French boyfriend smiled good-naturedly and just rolled another cigarette.  I think he realized that the situation was probably not as dramatic as his petite copine was making it out to be, but with a shrug, implied what are you going to do.  I joked with him that perhaps it was time to man the barricades, and he gave out a decidedly un-French guffaw.
     A few of the German, or Dutch, or Belgian travelers sold their vehicles, but most hoped desperately that the bigger market the next day would be their salvation.   Seeing the depressed looks on their faces, I felt sorry for them.  
   
Out and about in Auckland

  Since we were in the city we decided to do a little sight seeing.

Parking is expensive in Auckland, but since it was Saturday we were able to
find a spot in a residential neighborhood where weekend parking was free.  We
walked through the attractive University of Auckland at the top of the town.
This Art Nouveau bell-tower is one of the more famous architectural elements
in the city.

      As retired vacationers, we generally get out of bed whenever we fell like.  But occasionally, we do have to set an alarm and force ourselves to get  up early.  Since the car market opened at 8 we were up by 6:30 and had an  early breakfast.  So by the time we got into town at around 2 we were starved!

Feed me!

We came across the No.1 Pancake stand ...

... and each had a savory Chinese pancake.  Delicious!  Sort of a yeasty dough
like beignets with cheesy veggie filling.  I'm going to try to duplicate
it when I get home.

Lost and found

Auckland was holding an International Triathlon Competition on Saturday
and we were in the area as the elite woman biked by

Lost and found

     After we'd eaten our pancakes and watched the bikes we got up from our bench and headed up the the Auckland Art Gallery.  We had walked about 10 yards up the sidewalk when one of the women helping out with the triathlon called to us and asked, 'is this yours?', holding up our camera.  We'd left it on the bench, hidden behind my backpack, and when we got up to go both missed seeing it.  Wow, was that lucky!  It was only the first of three lost and found incidents of the afternoon.

The Art Gallery has a nice collection of NZ art.  This painting of Mount
Taranaki with a dairy processing plant in the foreground  from the 1920's
was interesting because we'd seen almost the exact scene when we were there.

This '30s painting of Maori people was revolutionary for it's time because
it wasn't an idealized vision of Maori culture, but rather showed ordinary
people in an everyday situation

    Our second chapter of Lost and Found occured when we walked up to Albert Park for a short sit to watch people and enjoy the perfect weather.  I noticed a wallet lying on the end of the bench.  We decided to stay awhile to see if anyone came back to claim it.  After fifteen minutes we wanted to get going but were reluctant to just leave the wallet there for anyone to pick up, so we opened it to see if we could come up with a phone number or email address to notify the owner, and to see if in fact there was anything of value in it at all.  
     Yikes, how about 1800 in euros, $500 in NZ dollars, and four credit cards!  That works our to over $3000 in USD!  We found the owner's personal card inside, he is a 50ish German fellow with a long noble name and a family crest imprinted with the date 1717.  With our failure to sell the van, we sort of wished we could ignore our better nature and just pull out the cash and turn the wallet in to the police.  But, having had had our camera rescued by a good Samaritan only an hour earlier, and plus it would just be really wrong, we emailed the guy and told him we'd be taking it to a nearby police station.
     Which lead to our third L&F event.  We chose a path through the University to admire the buildings and landscaping.  A massive jade plant drew our attention so we stopped to take a photo.  Earlier I'd removed my beloved wool sweater and drew it through a loop on my backpack.  Ten minutes later when we got to the police station, which was just a small branch location and closed for the weekend anyways, I started to get a little chilly and pulled off my backpack to grab my sweater. 
     Horrors!  It was gone!  I checked inside the backpack, looked around on the sidewalk, but it had disappeared.  Funny, I was more upset about losing a $5 thrift-store wool sweater than the fact that we were having difficulties selling the van.  Diana hustled off to retrace our steps and I plodded along behind, checking every corner and under every tree.  We got back to the campus and she found it hanging on a rail near the jade plant.  It put a smile on my face.

The scene of the lost sweater

     We emailed Karl Gustave zum Schlessenhof von  Heisenberger and said we'd be taking his wallet to the main station downtown instead of the the closed substation.  We hadn't gotten a return message, which was weird, since I know if I'd lost that much of a stash I'd be doing everything I could to trace it.
      Then we missed the turnoff to the station and before we knew it the crazy Auckland road system had us over the big bridge and on the other side of the harbor.  Oh well, we had to return the next morning to go to the car market, so another we sent another email.  And wondered why we hadn't heard a thing back from him.
      Back at camp we visited with our new old friends while we cooked and ate dinner, then went to bed.