We were not very lucky when we were looking for hosts in Auckland, mostly because we were looking for couchsurfers and HelpX host with only 2 hours work. That was not very successful until Damika wrote us and invited us to stay with her. We directly mentioned that we only want to work for two hours without her providing food as we had to sell the car (which wasn’t sold when we got in contact with her) and additionally we wanted to have some time for sightseeing in Auckland. She accepted our offer and offered us to renovate the kitchen in a house close to the centre of Auckland she is going to sell. The first day it was till vacated, why she invited us to stay at her home around 30km south of Auckland.
We were a bit sceptical, because her profile (member since 2012 and no single reference) and the E-Mails (very confusing) was a bit weird. That’s why we told Zsuzsi and Adam (the Hungarian couple from Twizel) where we were going, just to make sure someone knows where we are if it would become strange. When we arrived at the house, however, all Zweifel were gone as we were very nice welcomed by Damika. Her husband came shortly after we arrived with a delicious Sri Lankan dinner! After nice conversations we went to bed and they took us to the house which we were supposed to renovate at the next morning. They even gave us some basic food, mostly vegetables and breakfast in order help us a bit. They also offered us to drop us off at the airport! Just very very nice. That’s what we thought…
Arrived at the house they showed us what to do and we directly told them that the work is ways too much for the estimated time of around 10 hours. They wanted us to fix the cupboards of the kitchen (sanding, new hooks and closings), painting the cupboards in two different colours and painting the walls in the kitchen and the living room (including window frames and skirtings)! As we did something similar in Kerikeri we knew how much time it takes (especially as we had to tape everything before) and that’s what we told them. They just said we should do as much as we can, so pretty easy going. That’s what we thought…
The next morning we finished all the painting, except two cupboards which had to be cleaned before but we had no vacuum cleaner. When we asked Damika for one, she promised us to bring one over after lunch. So we made a relaxed afternoon and actually wanted to go to the CBD, but we missed the bus and didn’t have enough cash for the next one, why we gave it a miss. We figured out an essential problem of the public transport in Auckland. While waiting around 20 busses were passing us but all of them were “Not in Service”. Very frustrating. Because it became late we did some shopping and organisational things before departing. Damika didn’t come at 1PM as promised, but when we came back at 5PM the vacuum cleaner was in the house. We already worked enough, but as they were so nice we wanted to finish the kitchen and cleaned the two missing cupboards in order to paint them the next morning. So we should have the following days off. Later Zsuzsi and Adam visited us for dinner and we talked until late in the night! As we had done all the work we wanted to meet the next afternoon again and say good bye proberly. That’s what we thought… (you might have recognized that something went completely wrong 🙂 )
The next day we visited Auckland (after we painted the two cupboards for around an hour). There is not that much to see there (which we expected), but at least the Wharf is pretty nice! We also did a part of the Coast to Coast Walkway along the Domain to Mt. Eden, where we met Zsuzsi and Adam. There we were introduced with their host Veryan. Half way up the mountain, Tobi received an SMS from Damika saying “We were in the house and you weren’t there again. Please call back”, what he directly did. Then the little shock. She said we didn’t do anything since they were there the last day (which was obviously wrong) and we didn’t do as much as they thought. She said she understand our situation to plan our next steps, so if we didn’t want to continue she is fine with that and she would bring us to a backpackers in the city. That was really a shock. It also destroyed the beautiful sunset on Mt. Eden for us, which we couldn’t really enjoy. As we had an appointment with a couchsurfer in the evening, we went back to Zsuzsi and Adams host in order to call Damika again and clear the situation. Of course, she didn’t understand and asked us to leave the house in the evening or at least the next morning. She even thought she would do us a favour, saying “That saves you another 60$ for the hostel”. Weird interpretation of good Karma…
In order to think about everything we met the couchsurfer for a good dinner at a Korean restaurant and asked her if we could stay a night at her apartment on the floor. Unfortunately her boyfriend didn’t accept, he better wanted us to stay with his father helping him in the garden, but this was quite far away from the airport and therefore was no real good alternative. That’s why we asked Zsuzsi and Adam to ask her host if we could stay our last night with her, what she fortunately accepted.
Damika wasn’t even brave enough to come for herself the next morning and send an agent to get the keys. Adam was so nice to pick us up with the car and so we met the third time in three days. Even though Adam had to leave, we had a very nice day and conversations with Zsuzsi painting some boards for the fence! After a nice walk with Frida the dog and more conversations with Veryan, the adventure New Zealand was already over and we flew to Fiji (with a three hours delay)…