01JAN2020 – DAY 19: THE SEND-OFF

After getting a typical 5 hours of sleep following the New Year’s celebration, I woke up at 7:30am feeling quite normal. No adverse feelings aside from being a little sticky from more than few drinks that were spilled on me. I cleaned up and waited with my bags outside the hotel as the rest of the group slowly emerged from their rooms. We all hopped on the bus at 8:15am for a relaxing ride out to a nearby park where we walked through the woods to a clearing with a gorgeous waterfall. I decided to climb over some large boulders around the side of the pool at the base of the falls to get up close and personal with the roaring water! A few of the other saw what I was doing and decided to follow my lead. We hung out at on a large rock next to the falls for a bit before climbing our way back to the trail to return to the bus. We finished the bus ride and got into Auckland just after noon. We arrived at the same hotel we were at when we were stayed in Auckland a few days earlier. I had to book my own room to stay for the night since I was no longer part of the group. Sadly, my trip was over… Or was it? I had asked our tour leader a little earlier if I could join the group for the Giapo’s ice cream sensory experience since I missed out on this when we were in Auckland before. My request was accepted, but I had no doubts on that! When we got to Giapo’s, the place was literally a giant kitchen strung across 3 rooms. We were brought to the upstairs where Giapo explained how he turned ice cream into an art of passion. His art combined various forms of ice cream across seemingly endless flavors and unusual toppings with music intended to foster a specific mood. Some of my favorite treats were the chocolate shelled ice cream lips enjoyed to the upbeat Prince hit Kiss, the wearable ice cream cone ring best flaunted while dancing to Single Ladies by Beyonce, and of course, the Selfie Cone! All hopped up on sugar, I asked the group if they would be interested in trying out an escape room since there was nothing left on the agenda for the tour for the day. With yesses all around, we booked an escape room for 8:30pm and split; some went to check out various shops while the rest of us went back to the hotel to clean the chocolate off our faces. We met back up at the escape room and sat down in the lobby for our briefing. The escape room theme was James Bond 007! After poking around the room for 20 minutes, we almost immediately got hung up on the second puzzle, but once we figured out the pattern in one of the documents we found, the rest of the puzzles were relatively easy. Our main problem became the race against the clock to complete each puzzle before moving onto the next one. Luckily, we blasted through the last 4 or 5 puzzles to stop the bomb from exploding with 7 minutes to spare! After the successful escape, we stopped by a food truck for dinner to celebrate…! Back to the hotel again, we crashed on the couches in one of the quads while watching Soul Surfer on TV. Great movie! After the movie, I made my way to my room and tried not to think about the end of this amazing trip. A few tears rolled down my face as laid down to sleep. It was going to be a sad day tomorrow…