N.Z. North Island Day 1.

NZ – USA Trip - Monday 28th March 2011




Well, today was the start of our NZ and USA tour. Up at just after 4:30, as a friend, thanks John W, kindly offered in a moment of red wine madness to drive us to the airport. Beautiful run to the airport – for the first 15 minutes anyway – then chaos; someone had run out of fuel on the Gateway Arterial Motorway. !@#$%^%$’ers who don’t check their fuel gauges.



Anyway we still got to the airport in lots of time for us to be able to buy some duty free (booze………….)

Nice flight in a one class NZ flight – no cattle class – we were all sheep class……

Free booze with a pretty good breakfast. We watched a movie and were very soon in Auckland. Caught a shuttle bus to pick up the camper van, paper work was virtually all done – watched a video about the van and then we were off………….almost.



The Garmin decided there were no satellites to be found and so we had to take some directions from the van hire place………..and then the fun began……..Had driven for a few hundred metres and Garmin kicked in telling us we were going the wrong way!

Trusting souls that we are we followed the Garmin’s advice; especially as I has just updated maps. What a useless piece of cr*p. Told us to turn down a road that did not exist, go via roundabouts that hadn’t been there for years and soon desperation set in-------especially as a fellow motorist informed us we had a flat tyre! @#$%$#@!

Found a servo, pumped up the tyre that immediately went down of again. Drove round in circles on an ever-deflating tyre, which we found later had steel showing through it. We found a panel beater who let me use his phone but the emergency number didn’t answer. And it’s getting very late in the arvo by now. He directed us to a friend of his who had a tyre shop – he took the old tyre off and put on the spare and would not accept any $$$$ ….. HE EVEN FOLLOWED US TO A SERVO SO HE COULD PUMP THE TYRE UP!!!!!!! Such a nice guy – we eventually forced some $ on him. THE GARMIN WAS GETTING US LOST, again.



Drove southeast then to a van park – damn it was full. Directed to another park – OK. Of course we hadn’t been to buy any food – went to a local dairy and paid a fortune for a few items!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had a very restless night – ‘twas a bit coolish and we planned how we were going to ‘front’ the campervan hire people.


 



It was such a hard first day!!!!!!!!!!!!!