It was time to move on from North America. After 28 states, 1 District of Columbia, 2 Canadian Provinces, 106 days, 10,000+ miles (16,000 km)

I had decided to fly out from Boston mostly because it seemed to be the cheapest in terms of airfares. I would have two days to pack my belongings, get rid of my camping gear, and sell my car. It was going to be tight.

I left Quebec City in the morning with a long drive ahead of me. Boston was over 600 km away, at least a six an a half hour drive. I also had to cross the border back into the USA. The weather was miserable as I headed south. The roads were long and straight though hilly forests. The border crossing did indeed take a while but for no obvious reason. I then drove through Vermont and New Hampshire through some remarkable terrain. I had to stop at one point as the road ran through a mountain pass, the peaks shrouded in mist.

Cannon Mountain Pass

I eventually arrived in Boston in the evening and managed to figure out the extremely confusing inner city freeway system to get to my accommodation. I was staying at an Airbnb guesthouse. This is basically a house where multiple rooms are rented out at once to different people. It was nice enough and reasonably close to the city centre.

The next morning was the first of the two days I had to get everything sorted out. I started by going through all of gear I had accumulated to decide what I could keep. Other than a few bits of cooking equipment, everything else was taken to a charity shop. It was a pretty good haul for them I must say with a full set of camping gear. I also took my last trip to Walmart to get a second suitcase. I had more clothes than when I had first arrived and my flight allowed two pieces of luggage.

Next came the hardest task: selling my car. Back in California I had paid $6500 for it so I was hoping to get something reasonably close to that. Before visiting any car dealers I took it to a car washing place to gear a full clean. The first offer I got was only $200. I was completely taken aback but moved on to see if I could do better. After visiting a number of places during the remainder of the afternoon the best I had gotten was $800. It was pretty demoralising as I had spent a huge portion of my travel savings to buy the car with the expectation that I could recover at least half of it. It was now looking like I might struggle to recover even a fifth.

The next morning I set out again to try more dealers. I was flying out the next day so I had to accept whatever I could get. In the end I managed to find a few dealerships that were close to each other and with some creative wording I managed to play them off and get a final offer of $1800. A would have been disappointed with this had it been my first offer but after the small change the day before it felt like an acceptable deal.

I think there were a few things that were working against me here. First of all I had bought in California which seems to be more expensive due to stricter regulation of emissions etc. I suspect that buying from anywhere close to San Francisco also didn't help as the cost of living in the region is very high. Secondly all of the car dealers that I visited were using the same app to get an instant valuation on the car. This meant that there was basically a well defined limit to what I could expect to sell for. I couldn't help but feel like this was a bit anti competitive somehow but there was nothing that could be done about it.

It was a bittersweet moment saying goodbye to Pav (the car's nickname). He had been my companion for the whole trip and together we had covered over 10,000 miles. Part of me wonders whether he will be the last car I ever own. I certainly have no need for one in the UK and if current trends continue back in NZ there are likely to be more economic options. But that's a story for another time...

It was sad to say goodbye to my trusty car

It had felt like a bit of a trial and after signing the car over there was one last challenge. Because I didn't have a US bank account the only way that I could take payment for the car was via a cheque (of check as it is spelled in the US). Cashing this check was difficult for the same reason. In the end I had to take the cheque to a cheque cashing store where they took a $40 commission. I then had to get back to where I was staying with $1750 on my person. Not quite as nerve wracking as when I was walking around with $6500 to buy the car but still a little scary.

You might be wondering why I didn't try to sell privately through Craigslist or Ebay? It basically came down to a question of certainty. Selling privately would have likely taken me much longer to find a buyer. Yes I might have been able to get a better price in the end but this had to be balanced against the cost of accommodation (and if you want to be really pedantic you could include the potential for lost earnings as I would have to wait longer before I could start looking for work). At $60 a night just for my room this wasn't cheap and I decided that there was a good chance that any increase I might be able to get in selling price would have been cancelled out. I was also eager to move on at this point. There was no point waiting around for a few weeks just to get a few hundred dollars more out of the car.

With all of my tasks completed all I had left was to pack my bags and go to sleep. The next morning I took an Uber to the airport and with minimal fuss was on my way to Europe. My flight to London was via Reykjavík-Keflavík Airport in Iceland. The flight left at midday and took five hours. The change in time zones meant that it was almost midnight when I got to Iceland. The airport was nice but quite small, and because of the time most things were closed. What was open was insanely expensive. I think I spent over $50 NZD on a coffee, and sandwich, and some yoghurt. There was also nowhere that would have been comfortable to sleep and because my connecting flight left at 7am I opted to just wait it out.

I drifted in and out on the shorter second leg. It was an odd feeling looking out the window on the British Isles and thinking that this was about to become my home. I landed at Gatwick in a daze and caught a train in to London towards Wimbledon where I would be staying with the Wilkinsons - Which I'll cover next time.