2nd April 2011
Despite being on the far side of the world, there seems to be no country more closely connected to the UK than NZ. People all over the world have asked us “where are you from?” and usually the answer “England” satisfies them. Here if we say England they’ll say “yeah, where?” so we’ll say London and they’ll say “yeah, where?” and when we say Richmond they’ll say “oh yeah, my aunt Belinda/best mate John/wife’s hairdresser used to live there.” Even the AA man turned out to be from Liverpool and only moved to New Zealand nineteen months ago to start a new life.
Yeah, the AA man. Yes, we’ve got another dud rental car. This one has blown its head gasket, resulting in a magical cloud of bonnet steam even more impressive than the one in Malaysia. So our rental company Jucy have effectively dumped us (“it will be two days before we can get another car to you, so how about we just end the contract and refund the remaining days?”) and left us to find a new rental car in the dozy west coast town of Greymouth late on a Saturday afternoon. Yes, we found one. Unsurprisingly the rate is high.
Our motel downstream of the Franz Josef glacier is nothing special and hard to heat, it’s a chilly evening and the forecast is rain, rain, rain. So I wonder if the cloud of steam from the car marks the end of our run of good luck. Because apart from five days of sunny weather we’ve also had five nights in five different accommodations all of which were lovely.
Related Images:
Ooooh a photo of Pukaki rocks! Did you have a crazy time in rockin’ ol’ Greymouth?
Probably not..
Nice to see you’re killing cars as well as time.
Heheh. Some of those west coast towns are a bit provincial, yep. All the locals seem to have about three or four jobs on the go, and everyone knows everyone else.
Anyway, good to hear from you. Check out the Tasmanian Devil pictures – look like anyone we know?