I Came to New Zealand Alone with No Plan

I quit my job.

Sold my truck.

Got rid of most of what I owned.

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Then I got on a plane to New Zealand.

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No transportation booked. No place to stay. No plan beyond figuring it out once I landed. At the time, it didn’t feel reckless. It felt necessary — like the only way to understand myself outside the structure I’d spent years relying on.

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I landed in Auckland early in the morning and walked straight to the Hertz counter. Rented a car. Booked a hostel. Bought myself a little time. Not a solution — just enough space to breathe.

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The sun was coming up, so I drove to Viaduct Harbour and went for a run. Nothing heroic. Just movement. A way to shake the jet lag and remind myself that even if everything else felt undefined, my body still knew what to do. The city was quiet in that early-morning way that doesn’t ask anything of you yet.

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The days settled into a loose rhythm. Coffee. Walking with no real destination. Watching how people moved through their routines. Back at the hostel, conversations came easily — the kind you only have when no one is in a hurry.

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At some point, I wandered into a bookstore and picked up a new book. It felt fitting — starting something new while I was clearly writing a new chapter of my own life. I didn’t know what the story would look like yet, but I liked the idea of holding something that hadn’t been read, something that hadn’t been shaped by anyone else’s expectations.

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Running underneath all of this was the van search.

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From the moment I landed, I’d been endlessly scrolling listings and messaging sellers. I knew I wanted to do van life in New Zealand. I’d wanted to for years. Back in 2023, converting an ambulance into an RV had literally been on my vision board. The idea of living small, mobile, and self-contained had been calling to me long before this trip.

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There was pressure, too. I wanted to get south. I wanted to get to Wanaka. Snowboarding was a big reason I’d come, and every day without a van felt like a day I wasn’t on the mountain. I didn’t want to miss time I could never get back.

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So when I met Yan to look at a van, it wasn’t casual. The van drove well. No obvious red flags. But 310,000 kilometers is still 310,000 kilometers. I liked it. I didn’t love it. And deep down, I knew I didn’t want to force a yes just to relieve the pressure.

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A few days in, I realized what I needed wasn’t another decision — it was nature.

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I walked out to Fairy Falls. Not a challenging hike. Just a quiet stretch of trail where the ground softened underfoot and the noise dropped away. Birds somewhere overhead. Water flowing steadily in the distance. The kind of place where your shoulders lower without you telling them to.

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The falls themselves weren’t dramatic. They didn’t need to be. Being there was enough. That walk did more for my head than anything else that week. It reminded me how quickly things can recalibrate when you let yourself slow down.

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Back in the city, Auckland was unusually quiet for a public holiday — Matariki. 

The city felt paused, reflective, like it was collectively taking a breath. 

Everything shut down early. No rush. No urgency.

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The next morning, fog rolled in thick enough to swallow the skyline. I sat near Albert Park with coffee and croissants, watching runners and commuters drift past with nowhere urgent to be. The park felt like a pocket of calm tucked into the city. 

A reminder that you don’t always have to leave entirely to feel grounded.

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The van inspection eventually came back with repairs and service issues. Nothing catastrophic, but enough that we couldn’t agree on price. The deal fell through.

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So I adjusted.

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I decided to head south to Christchurch to look at another van. Found a transfer car that gave me four days of driving for the cost of gas and the ferry. It wasn’t the plan — but by then, I was getting used to that.

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Looking back, those first days in Auckland weren’t flashy. No big revelations. Just small decisions layered on top of each other. Some worked. Some didn’t. But all of them kept me moving.

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I didn’t arrive with a plan.

I arrived willing to pay attention.

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And that was enough to begin.