14 04 2010

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14 04 2010

Woke up and had a last lingering look round civilisation before committing ourselves to life in a camper van. Got a taxi to the place and went through the rigmarole of being shown the van, they didn’t have a 4 berth though so we were upgraded to a 6 berth instead! We have called it Bertie as in Bus as it’s huge. Wendy has her own double bed and I have mine. With luck we should have a meeting before the holiday ends.

We said we understood all the various gizmos and off we went. That was a lie obviously as we were confused by the time we were shown the electricity master switch, the grey waste, the LPG system ,the air con, the shower, the toilet cassette ( bog music ??) the TV DVD, the mechanics under the bonnet, the cooker, how to stow everything, the fridge and its power sources, the lights, the microwave which can only work when we are on mains, the double bed system, the clean water, cooker system hood and lights and venting, the water pump, the light controls, the air vents in the ceiling etc etc

We drove about 200k to Timaru. We booked into a top 10 camp site and joined their club as they have camp sites throughout both islands. It also gave us 10% off the ferry trip to Wellington which we booked for 24 04 2010 when we go to the North Island.

On our arrival our lack of knowledge combined with an overload of trying to get the van organised was evident. The waste water didn’t do down the drain, I somehow locked us in the van for about 10 minutes. Wendy thought the van needed a major clean and set about like a woman possessed. I was despatched to get the essentials, gin tonic lime and ice to soothe our frayed nerves. We ended up cooking in a communal kitchen which was great fun, we could see what we were doing, and loads of hot water, cookers which we could operate and a sense of adventure aided by a lovely bottle of Merlot led us to a fun evening.

We then retired to the bus and found we couldn’t open the bloody door which by this time brought on the hysteria. We did get in, settled down and phoned home. Carole was full of death messages and Tom hadn’t even told Sami about the blog address, so we updated them.

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