Wednesday, April 10 - Gotta sell today

     The registration on the van would run out at midnight on Wednesday, so after that we'd be taking a risk if we took it out on the road to show it to someone or even take it to a dealer to sell.  We've only been checked twice while driving in NZ, but we didn't want to have to deal with a $200 fine this late in the game, since it follows the car, and would make the sale even more complicated.
      Geoff, one of the permanent residents at the campground, had said that he thought he would be able to get $1500 around to buy the van when we arrived a week earlier.  It looked like that would be the best we could do, so we texted him in the morning and said that if he could get the money together before the end of the day we'd sell him the car.  Otherwise it would be a game of calling the three dealers who had made offers  and see which one would pan out.  'Lucky' had made the best, at $1400, but there was no guarantee that any of them would actually end up paying that much once we had it at their site.
      Geoff called us back about an hour later and said that he couldn't come up with that much money until he was paid for some of the cleaning jobs he'd done.  But, his sort-of business partner Peter was very interested in the van, and he would contact us soon.  We waited out the afternoon to hear from him, then walked over to the shopping center to buy a few things for dinner.
     While there we got a call from Peter and he said that he hadn't known that the registration was up, and that he could only offer us $1400 so that he could use the remaining $100 that he could muster up to buy a few months of rego.  He said he'd go right to the bank and withdraw the cash then if we said yes.  Errgh.  I said we'd call him back in a couple minutes so we could talk it over.
     He texted minutes later and told us that his bank closed in ten minutes and he could get there if he immediately left work.  It was realistically the best we could do with the short amount of time before we could leave, so we said yes.  And as I said before, whatever we cleared on the car was more or less gravy.  At least that's what we told ourselves.  He said he'd be by the campground in an hour with the money, and we finished our shopping and hustled back.
     We weren't really breathing easier yet.  We hadn't even met the guy, and had to hope that he'd show up with the cash.  Once it was in our pockets we'd finally get to exhale the tension of the past five days.
      Back at camp I saw someone drive in and wave.  It was Peter.  He got out of his car and walked over and introduced himself.  He's older than us, seemed very pleasant, and I had an immediately feeling that everything was going to work out.  I showed him the van, we got papers out to sign, and he opened his wallet and pulled out a stack of 14 one hundred dollar bills.  After some small talk in which he offered to drive us to the airport on Friday (we already had plans with Don) he told us he'd be back in the morning to pick up the van, since he was alone and had to drive his car back home.
     What a relief!  We fixed dinner and toasted the 'successful' sale of the van.  Now we could enjoy our last two days in Auckland.