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The Wrong Way Round
DRIVING DAYS - Picton to Nelson to Franz Josef
When we awoke (for Lucy had also fallen asleep on the ferry crossing) we were in the little town of Picton on the South Island (the better island if backpackers were to be believed) and with a whole new array of dangerous activities for us to indulge in. We waited patiently at baggage reclaim and watched as the carousel went around and around and around consistently lacking our backpacks - of course ours would be among the last. Lucy located a payphone and called the number she had been given in an email to call. The woman on the other line then had no idea why we were calling and gave us another local number. We called that (although this one was not a free number as the other had been) and finally got through to someone with any idea of why we might be calling. We waited for the guy to come and meet us outside the terminal and were beginning to get the feeling this company was not all that together.
The guy shortly met us and said we could just get the paperwork out of the way now in the car and that would save us having to go back to the office with him. Well... the car had the most ridiculous doors that did this odd sliding thing, the radio whilst clearly advanced (it had the ability to pick up TV) would also appear to only work in Japan as the bands it picked up where like 70 - 85FM, on which there are obviously no radio channels and to top it off it was an automatic and not a manual as we had requested. We raised this point and the guy told us that this was a request, a preference, and since they did not currently have any manuals we were to be given an automatic. Lucy was, to say the least, not best impressed. The man ignored my question of what would happen should a person "request" an automatic and then be given a manual which they would be legally unable to drive with only an automatic license. With little choice, but to take the car we signed the contract grudgingly. He left and I began running Lucy through how to drive an automatic, starting with how the stick shift was behind the wheel, the meaning of D, P and R and the lack of a clutch. Lucy took it on a practise drive into town to grab some food and did so with mild success only forgetting the (absence of a) clutch a couple of times. We then had a whole other issue trying to lock the car and eventually got it do so through some combination of button presses and door slammings although having no idea how we had done so or whether we would ever be able to open it again and sat ourselves into a nice cafe where I had nachos and Lucy some wedges - standard.
We got ourselves on the road to Nelson and Lucy grew in confidence with the car, occasionally fumbling with an invisible stick shift, but nothing to actually do anything to the car, but aggravate the driver. At the YHA in Nelson we found a bountiful book exchange that we pillaged and swapped all our worn, read and swapped books with this new supply. We then set up shop and started on 'The Fellowship of the Ring' in their cinema room, our interest rekindled by our tour in Wellington and now wanting to compare and contrast the locations with the movie setting. We took a walk to Woolworths and bought fajita ingredients, which we promptly made in the hostel's sizable kitchen before curling up in bed with our new books.
We checked out at 10am the next day and began what was to be an unadventurous and uneventful drive to Franz Josef stocked to the brim with junk food from our shop at Woolies the previous day. But why would such pre-conceived notions of dullness ever come to pass when Lucy and I are involved. Perhaps three quarters of the way and in what is essentially the middle of nowhere Lucy brought it to my attention that we were running out of petrol. "WHAT?!" was largely my reaction. We had filled up the tank only a while back and even just an hour ago when I'd glanced at the meter it had been at least three quarters full. In the past hour it had somehow managed to plummet to just under a quarter. As well as being an utterly s*** car for the passenger, it turned out it was a gas guzzler! I consulted my maps and calculated there was a small town in about 30km, which we could make it to and fill up. 30km later we pulled into nothing more than a shed where there was not a petrol station. The nearest petrol station was in the next town down the road about 30km away. We decided we could probably make it there and little other choice anyways besides the red light hadn't come on yet. Almost as soon as Lucy had spoken this the red light came on and we began formulating what we might do should we actually run out of petrol - we could walk to the town buy petrol and walk back to the car, we could hitch-hike to the town buy petrol and do the same back, although we would then have to also buy some kind of container for the petrol to be carried in... we could call the AA, the car came with that, the only useful thing the car would have appeared to have come with, but being in the middle of no where we had no mobile reception... we'd be fine we'd make it to the town... and we did! To find that being a Sunday the entire town was closed including the petrol station. The next town was some 40km away! And these towns were nothing more than a long street with a few houses dotted down either side. So off we drove on red, out of town, and up into hills! Just what you need when you are running on air!
We took to rolling down the hills in an attempt to save fuel and travelling at a nice optimum speed, minimising fuel-costly revs. This road was steep, winding, there wasn't a chance we were gonna make it to the town, but we did! And there at the end of it was a petrol station! Was it open! WAS IT OPEN! YES! When the proprietor found us laughing hysterically in the seats of the car she must have thought we'd been drinking on the road or something, but we were just so thankful to have made it to the petrol station. We doubted if we'd tried to start the ignition there and then it would not have done anything. We'd also possibly broken some kind of record managing to drive some 45 minutes and at least 100km on the red light and no petrol. We rolled into Franz Josef less than a hour later and checked into the YHA and confirmed our hike up the glacier for the next day, before heading to the supermarket to stock up on supplies and lunch-making materials in which chocolate chip breakfast bars featured highly. I made myself a chicken and chorizo paella for dinner and thanked the god I don't believe in for having a sense of humour and not leaving us stranded in the middle of the wooded road with no petrol and praying for good weather for ice-climbing tomorrow.
When we awoke (for Lucy had also fallen asleep on the ferry crossing) we were in the little town of Picton on the South Island (the better island if backpackers were to be believed) and with a whole new array of dangerous activities for us to indulge in. We waited patiently at baggage reclaim and watched as the carousel went around and around and around consistently lacking our backpacks - of course ours would be among the last. Lucy located a payphone and called the number she had been given in an email to call. The woman on the other line then had no idea why we were calling and gave us another local number. We called that (although this one was not a free number as the other had been) and finally got through to someone with any idea of why we might be calling. We waited for the guy to come and meet us outside the terminal and were beginning to get the feeling this company was not all that together.
The guy shortly met us and said we could just get the paperwork out of the way now in the car and that would save us having to go back to the office with him. Well... the car had the most ridiculous doors that did this odd sliding thing, the radio whilst clearly advanced (it had the ability to pick up TV) would also appear to only work in Japan as the bands it picked up where like 70 - 85FM, on which there are obviously no radio channels and to top it off it was an automatic and not a manual as we had requested. We raised this point and the guy told us that this was a request, a preference, and since they did not currently have any manuals we were to be given an automatic. Lucy was, to say the least, not best impressed. The man ignored my question of what would happen should a person "request" an automatic and then be given a manual which they would be legally unable to drive with only an automatic license. With little choice, but to take the car we signed the contract grudgingly. He left and I began running Lucy through how to drive an automatic, starting with how the stick shift was behind the wheel, the meaning of D, P and R and the lack of a clutch. Lucy took it on a practise drive into town to grab some food and did so with mild success only forgetting the (absence of a) clutch a couple of times. We then had a whole other issue trying to lock the car and eventually got it do so through some combination of button presses and door slammings although having no idea how we had done so or whether we would ever be able to open it again and sat ourselves into a nice cafe where I had nachos and Lucy some wedges - standard.
We got ourselves on the road to Nelson and Lucy grew in confidence with the car, occasionally fumbling with an invisible stick shift, but nothing to actually do anything to the car, but aggravate the driver. At the YHA in Nelson we found a bountiful book exchange that we pillaged and swapped all our worn, read and swapped books with this new supply. We then set up shop and started on 'The Fellowship of the Ring' in their cinema room, our interest rekindled by our tour in Wellington and now wanting to compare and contrast the locations with the movie setting. We took a walk to Woolworths and bought fajita ingredients, which we promptly made in the hostel's sizable kitchen before curling up in bed with our new books.
We checked out at 10am the next day and began what was to be an unadventurous and uneventful drive to Franz Josef stocked to the brim with junk food from our shop at Woolies the previous day. But why would such pre-conceived notions of dullness ever come to pass when Lucy and I are involved. Perhaps three quarters of the way and in what is essentially the middle of nowhere Lucy brought it to my attention that we were running out of petrol. "WHAT?!" was largely my reaction. We had filled up the tank only a while back and even just an hour ago when I'd glanced at the meter it had been at least three quarters full. In the past hour it had somehow managed to plummet to just under a quarter. As well as being an utterly s*** car for the passenger, it turned out it was a gas guzzler! I consulted my maps and calculated there was a small town in about 30km, which we could make it to and fill up. 30km later we pulled into nothing more than a shed where there was not a petrol station. The nearest petrol station was in the next town down the road about 30km away. We decided we could probably make it there and little other choice anyways besides the red light hadn't come on yet. Almost as soon as Lucy had spoken this the red light came on and we began formulating what we might do should we actually run out of petrol - we could walk to the town buy petrol and walk back to the car, we could hitch-hike to the town buy petrol and do the same back, although we would then have to also buy some kind of container for the petrol to be carried in... we could call the AA, the car came with that, the only useful thing the car would have appeared to have come with, but being in the middle of no where we had no mobile reception... we'd be fine we'd make it to the town... and we did! To find that being a Sunday the entire town was closed including the petrol station. The next town was some 40km away! And these towns were nothing more than a long street with a few houses dotted down either side. So off we drove on red, out of town, and up into hills! Just what you need when you are running on air!
We took to rolling down the hills in an attempt to save fuel and travelling at a nice optimum speed, minimising fuel-costly revs. This road was steep, winding, there wasn't a chance we were gonna make it to the town, but we did! And there at the end of it was a petrol station! Was it open! WAS IT OPEN! YES! When the proprietor found us laughing hysterically in the seats of the car she must have thought we'd been drinking on the road or something, but we were just so thankful to have made it to the petrol station. We doubted if we'd tried to start the ignition there and then it would not have done anything. We'd also possibly broken some kind of record managing to drive some 45 minutes and at least 100km on the red light and no petrol. We rolled into Franz Josef less than a hour later and checked into the YHA and confirmed our hike up the glacier for the next day, before heading to the supermarket to stock up on supplies and lunch-making materials in which chocolate chip breakfast bars featured highly. I made myself a chicken and chorizo paella for dinner and thanked the god I don't believe in for having a sense of humour and not leaving us stranded in the middle of the wooded road with no petrol and praying for good weather for ice-climbing tomorrow.
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