We spent the week trying to sell our lovely Baby Hippo. We stayed in him for the last few days. Understood how complicated it can be to sell a van, must more complicated then buying one. We enjoyed amazing sunsets and watching bats in Sydney’s night sky and drank beers in a cool bar at Kings Cross. We climbed the Sydney tower and have the picture to prove it!

Day 126 (05/01/2011) Unpleasant surprise

Today we woke up in the morning, happy and ready to meet the young couple from Holland that was meant to give us a deposit for our baby hippo. We planned a meeting place and got ready to head into Sydney by public transport, when I got a message on my phone. ‘Sorry but due to some events we can not buy your van anymore’. Our hearts sank. We are left without a buyer for our little baby. Luckily yesterday I had a call from a girl that wanted to see our van and I said I would call her back in the morning, so I called her back and we headed back down town to show her our van. In the evening we went back to the campsite and ate Kangaroo steak for dinner.

Day 127 (06/01/2011) The Waiting game

Waiting is a horrible thing, we are waiting to sell our van with no idea when we will sell it and after the disappointment we suffered yesterday we are less confident about being able to sell our baby hippo soon. The problem with this is that we can not book our tickets for New Zealand or start working on things there as we do not know when we will be leaving Sydney. In the evening we got a call from a French couple that wanted to visit our van. They seemed very interested, but we could tell that it was a bit more expensive then they were hopping for, but we told them to give us their best offer. So we are back to waiting.

As we were doing our shopping for dinner, I got a call from the German couple saying they would like to buy our van tomorrow! Game on, tomorrow we will move into a hotel and soon we will be on our van to Auckland!

Day 128 (07/01/2011) The Perfect sales contract (not)

We wake up really early as we need to pack all of our things up into to our backpacks, move to the hotel and then clean the van a bit before giving him away. We pack everything up, meeting next to us a group of French people that were leaving that gave us a new gas burner and a tent. It has hard packing everything up as it was raining in the morning, we put up the trap, but we still got wet. We drove off as fast as we could to the formula one hotel near the Sydney Olympic park, where we planned to stay tonight, as we did not know when we would be leaving. We took the hotel room for only one night, this was a very good move as, just as we were leaving the hotel I got a phone call. ‘We have a problem’, my heart sunk, it turns out that the couple had a problem taking money out there bank account in Germany and did not have the money to pay for the van. We met up with them anyway and discussed options; they wanted to transfer money into our account. That would take a long time, so we agreed that they would contact their bank and get back to us with their solution tomorrow. We went back to our hotel room feeling disappointed and annoyed, but what can we do. We also got a message from the French couple saying that they chose another van; we are starting to get worried. At night the Sydney Olympic park is totally empty when there are no events happening so we wondered around the empty streets feeling stressed. Oh and then we got ‘chased’ by a spider on the way home.

Day 129 (08/01/2011) French friends in Sydney

Today we moved back to the campsite where we were staying before as we have not yet sold our van and do not want to spend more money on hotel rooms then is needed. We spent the day not doing anything special, just waiting for the phone to ring mostly, and hoping that someone wants to buy our van.

In the evening we go and visit some friends of Fred’s that live down town Sydney, near Kings cross. They have a nice apartment and we sat outside in their garden watching bats fly over our heads and sharing stories of what we love in Australia and what we miss from France

Day 130 (09/01/2011) A step closer

Today the morning starts in a more positive way, we wake up and go and meet the German couple that want to buy our van, and they gave us a deposit and say that they should have the rest of the money tomorrow. Not wanting to get our hopes up and move for no reason, we ask them to call us once they get the money and then we will move into a hotel before going to meet them. We spent the rest of the day at the campsite, just enjoying the sun and watching TV series that we got as Christmas presents.

Day 131 (10/01/2011) Goodbye Baby Hippo

Goodbye Baby Hippo, today we said goodbye to our baby that has been our home for the last 3 months and helped us travel safely across Australia. We are sad, but happy at the same time as now we can move on with our plans. We move into another Formula One hotel, this time in the centre of Sydney at Kings Cross. We plan to stay 2 nights before flying out to Auckland. We go to the train station where we have agreed to meet the Germans to hand over our baby. Then something strange happens, they tell us that they have the money, but they don’t have their driving licences with them, so they ask us to drive them to where they stay that is 10 minutes away by car. We find this curious as they know we are meeting to sell them the van, we think that they wanted to check the van one last time before buying it. So we drive to where they stay and back to the train station, where we sit at a café and do the paper work. The van is now officially theirs. We take the train back to Sydney with our pockets full of money and sad hearts. We arrived at the HSBC bank 1 minute after in closed and of course they did not want to let us into the bank. We did not want to keep so much money in our pockets so we stayed outside of the bank until someone told us that we could go to the post office and put the money into our account from there. The Australian post office is a magic place where you can do almost anything administrative in Australia.

In the evening we printed out flyers for our tent that we still have not sold and went around hostels putting them up. We booked our tickets to leave the day after tomorrow to Auckland.

Day 132 (11/01/11) Last day in Sydney

Today was our last day in Sydney before flying on to Auckland tomorrow. We visited the Sydney tower and brought the pictures are a souvenir. We walked around the town centre in search of a place to buy a cheap bag to put some of our stuff inside, but at the end decided not to buy an extra bag as it would be hard to carry.

We sold our tent, we are happy about that, if we had not of sold it, we would have given it away for free as we can not take it with us. We packed up all our things all ready for our departure from the land of Kangaroos tomorrow morning.