Campylobacter and the chaos it caused!

We are now in Auckland. When I said Tim was feeling a bit better I was wrong! I think it was the quiet before the storm. It was definitely the quiet before the day from hell! It turns out that he has campylobacter! It is some type of bacterial infection that can be caused by eating contaminated food or water, or eating raw meat. As far as we are aware Tim did none of those things but apparently it is rife in this area and it is probably just related to poor food hygiene such as using something that was not washed up properly.

We know all this as Tim went to the doctors. Under normal circumstances this would have not been particularly troublesome apart from the fact that the nearest doctors was at the hospital which was 20km north. We went there, got a prescription, found a chemist, waited an eternity for the prescription then headed south. Now if we were going back to the hostel we stayed at last night it would be fine but no, we were going to Auckland and this was 5 hours away. This would not have been a disaster as it was only about 1pm but as luck clearly wasn't on our side it was the last day of our hire car rental and we needed to take it back. So off we set...

I drove for 5 hours straight with a 2 minute stop to grab something to eat and a drink. Tim was too ill to do anything but just sit in the passengers seat. By some miracle we made it back to Auckland and to the car hire place with a millisecond to spare. They very kindly overlooked the fact that there wasn't really enough petrol in the car. (We had no time to refuel when we got to Auckland)

Unfortunately all of this meant that our plans to sort out our stuff and get it repacked neatly didn't happen. We just had to unload all our things onto the pavement. This included our big rucksacks, our small rucksacks, a massive box of food, a coolbag, various items of clothing, a bottle of water, bottles of wine, a guide book, a road map, a bucket, 2 inflatable rubber rings, some Vietnamese conical hats and a football! I'm sure the hire car company didn't know what to make of it! Obviously we had to get a taxi to the hostel. When we got there Tim could barely stand so he went to our room to rest while I made about 20 trips to take all our stuff there.

In light of all this, our time in Auckland was not what we expected. Tim didn't see any of Auckland apart from what was within a 50m radius of the hostel. I did get to see a bit more and I went on a free sightseeing tour one day and wandered about on the other doing some last minute souvenir shopping.

This wasn't the best way to finish the NZ leg of our trip but as least they have good medical facilities here. Next stop Fiji!

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