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Published: April 5th 2008
"Who wants a van?"
This was the main priority when we got back to Auckland. SELL SELL SELL!With a week to spare before our flight to Fiji we got to Auckland full of excitement about parting ways with the Bartmobile and sleeping in a real bed for a change. Things didn't really go that well, here's the story!
We had made an "arrangement" with the fella whose hostel we crashed at when we were originally in Auckland. As we left the city after buying the van, he said to us that we could park up in his carpark for a tiny 10 bucks a night until we sold the van and wanted a room there. When we pulled up the car park was chocker full of vans and cars and the man we had left had become a shadow of his former coolness. With excuses about his boss making him work a lot harder we decided to sack him off and park up in a park for free. Alas when we had eventually found a city park that had a car park and then made the fastest meal possible on the last of our gas stove and turn all the lights out for the evening, we found the van quickly surrounded by bright lights and rhythmic thump
thump thumping..... turns out this car park was the best spot to hang out if you are an Auckland rude boy who wants to show off his wheels and sub woofer. We remained as quiet as possible (we had read some articles on knife crime amongst youths in the city so thought it best not to introduce ourselves) and were relieved when the bright lights were punctuated with flashing blue lights. The police had come along to move those pesky kids along. We then saw torches shining through our van windows and kids voices saying that this van wasn't part of their crew! Charming! Dobbed in by knife fighting youths.... to the police! After about another hour everything went really quiet and we went to sleep, until we were both woken up by metal pounding against our door. The policeman from before had come back to question us about what we were thinking camping in an inter-city car park in the middle of the week. Thom gave the beaut of an excuse that we are English and thought it only sensible to obey the highway code by pulling over for a little shut eye as we were too tired to
drive, and were therefore posing a threat to ourselves and other drivers. After more futile questionning and flashing of passports and drivers licences he buggered off and we got some sleep.
Our next few days were busied by clearing out the van, washing it and sprucing in general ready for the weekend car markets. As we were putting the freshly laundered curtains back up in the van we were drenched by a flash flood/storm that had come from nowhere directly to Auckland. News reports told us that this weather was set in for the next few days and that people should stay at home and off the roads. We decided to go ahead and get up in the middle of the night to make it to the car market in the hope that there might be a few desperate backpackers who wouldn't mind getting soaked to get a bargain van, or at the very least some car dealers who would take it off us for a low price.
After standing in the rain for 2 hours at the first car market we were turning blue and getting incredibly dispondent. We had one man "who was partial to a Toyota" who
wasted our time for half an hour and 2 French guys who looked all around the van and then laughed at us after cracking jokes in French to each other about the van. With this we got in the van - dropped our price by 300 bucks and turned the heater on to try and warm up a little. After deciding to leave, I turned the engine over to the sound of that deathly clicking noise....... the battery had died on us right in the middle of a car market. A bunch of German backpackers had showed up and had seemed interested in the van at first but now all the buyers and the sellers were slowly turning around one by one to point and laugh (just like one of those 'naked in public' dreams) at us as we dripped and swore in the van. Thom (God love him) did the walk of shame to the man who organises the market to ask him for a jump start, we recieved this and then got the hell out of there, with hope that any of these people would not be at the next car market the next day.
They were! And
The result of film practice
Laura was trying out some moving shots with her new camera friend. Here's how they would look, only better than this! all around us, as if by evil magic. Prior to this we had decided to put the last 10 bucks of petrol in the van ready for test drivers, but the battery died at the petrol station and the 2 fellas in the station could not get it to turn over no matter how fiercley they pushed, so after braking down on the way to the car market we were more than desperate to get rid of Bart the stinking Batmobile!
We got soaked again for at least 3 hours, and then I spied 4 very miserable looking people who were dragging their rucksacks and cases along in the mud. They were Spanish and incredibly loud, only 2 of them spoke what they called "good English" (the other 2 were fluent as far as I was concerned..... why are the English so terrible with foreign languages? it really is so shameful!). Anyway the pattern of communication between us all went as follows.
Me or Thom would give details about the van to one of the guys, they would repeat it back to us, we would confirm their understanding and then one of them would light a Marlboro Red, smoke it
Auckland Sky Tower
The tallest in he Southern Hemisphere - but we think that this has something to do with the giant metal pole that has been stuck on the top of it. in about 3 puffs while they all shouted at each other in speedy spanish before all becoming silent ready for the next question to be fired at us. After this they left us for about 20 minutes and then came back to have a test drive. Thom took them out while I held our spot and prayed the engine wouldn't die, and on top of this engaged in some inter-van seller snearing - whoever came up with the idea that travellers are all happy loving hippie types are talking utter rot, especially when they are all trying to screw over fellow travellers by selling their rust heap vans on and compete with equally nasty sellers (we belong to this race too). They all came back and lit up one by one as Thom did his best to maintain the Crowder charm. Then the leader of the pack pulled out a Dell-boy "Little Black Book", licked his pencil and shouted "The Van is good...... Lets talk numbers!!!!" So the pattern I have previously described to you commenced again, and we bartered with them, all was looking up and I was getting ready to pull some choice hand gestures at the snearers,
Posh Loo
Inside the Sky Tower when one of the fellows shouted something along the lines of "Eque que queth..... Chris Waddle..... Tyres!". "Tyres!" they all shouted. "S*it" we said with our eyes to each other. Barts tyres had become so bald that the white rubber lining of the tyres was now hanging out between the treads, there was no way we were going to fork out and replace them so we were trying to sell without anyone noticing.
So we haggled some more and lied through our teeth that the tyres would be easy to replace for only 200bucks, they bought it and we sold in a half cash now, half cash tomorrow deal like we had made with the guys we bought it off.
After our last night in the van we had started to notice how much the back window leaked and also how bad all of the little quirks were. We hated Bart and we wanted him out of our lives as soon as possible. That morning we drove the van to where the Spaniards were staying, praying at every speed bump that the tyres wouldn't blow out. They gave Thom the cash and then we legged it Posh Loo that Reminded Laura of Knightmare
"I'm in a room"
"Take three side steps to your Left!" down the street with naff excuses of us having to catch a plane. Just as we were at the bottom of the street, they started to yell.......they wanted directions to the backpackers car market to get some insurance, Thom went back and gave them one of our maps and then we most definatley legged it out of there.
If karma is real, let our entertaining telling of this story to all of our subscribers please be the penance we should pay to make things right in the universe again. We are very sorry for fooling the Spaniards, we were just very very desperate for the money.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
With this, we changed our bucks to Fijian ones and flew off for chilling out - after a grueling week in a smelly dorm with the creakiest bunk beds known to mankind.
Fiji time..... Up next.
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