Off

The next stop on this seemingly endless journey (seriously, I'm already home in my dad's kitchen, when in Dennis Bergkamp's name am I going to get this done?) was Westport. 

To make things easier on myself, here we ate some food and did some laundry. Dan and Jimbo went fishing and caught a tyre, a boot and a book of clichés. Nothing else much happened in this place, although it was rather beautiful. Oh, I did read an interesting article on circumcision in the laundromat though. Moving on.





Just up the proverbial road was Abel Tasman. This proverbial road was mostly dirt tracks, and when it was not it was a mind-twistingly bendy mountain road. When we got there we attempted to break into a camp ground that good honest Kiwis enter a ballot up to nine months previous to stay at. 

We didn't have the nerve to hang around and so drove about fifteen minutes away from the official park and stopped at a - still completely illegal - spot. We went down to the beach and played a lot of football and did a lot of lying about. Like this.


Dan also tried to have sex with a little buoy.




That night we cooked some ready noodles and began to plan our future war against sand flies. They were EVERYWHERE.


We stayed in Abel Tasman for two days, and once thoroughly relaxed and bitten to buggery, we climbed back into our wagons and soldiered on. This was when Dagley's driving was really put to the test.

We were attempting to leave the town on a Sunday evening. Big fucking mistake. If you have seen The Village then you can sort of imagine the sort of amenities that were available in the town. (If you haven´t seen The Village, well done you.) 

The petrol station was shut. At quarter-past five. We thought we had just about enough petrol to just about get us over the mountain, where hopefully we would be able to just about roll down the other side to the next town. How wrong we were.

We got about two thirds up the mountain when our car started dry heaving and bouncing along the road like the Duracell Bunny with its leg stuck in a bear trap. We sensibly pulled over by a blind corner and got out. Dan and Jimbo went on ahead to the next town and got us a small can of petrol that would hopefully allow us to make it there to fill up.

We just about made it up the side of the hill, and Helen skilfully rolled us down the other side, in total driving about 40km with the engine off. Getting to the next town had proved a petrol-less doddle. However, there was still no way of getting petrol as the fuckers had shut there as well.

By the time we found somewhere to sleep that night, we were scared that we wouldn´t be able to start the car the next morning. So, logically, we got drunk.


The next day we crawled up to the petrol station and managed to fill up enough for us to push on up to Kaikora, where we stayed at possibly the nicest camping spot of all, cooked bangers and mash, had a fight with a massive rodent and then the most confusing game of 21's ever.

The next morning, after having a swim in a freezing cold stream and in a state of pure teary anguish, we bid farewell to Daniel and Jimbo and made our way back down to Christchurch. 

Faster than you can say 'holy-missing-information-Batman' we were on a plane to Auckland, and before you knew it we were on a plane to South America.

Exciting.