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Published: February 18th 2008
Murder it was....
The smiles were superimposed!Arthur's Pass was a bit of a disaster for us.....& we did just as the name suggested....we passed through fairly quickly. It just wasn't meant to be. After driving for most of the day to get there in our Nissan, we were lucky to get to the hostel hidden away in the mountains, miles away from civilisation. We'd been getting a strong smell of freshly baked bread for quite a while, which was getting progressively worse the more hills we had to climb in the car. I'm no Delia Smith now....I eat bread & love it but certainly don't have a mobile bread-maker with me. So obviously this was the car's way of telling us to give-up. Because the car really wasn't able for it.....it struggled up the hills with hardly any power & at one stage I thought we'd have to get out & push it. It was slow.
We got to Arthur's Pass eventually & had a hostel to ourselves. With nothing else to do we sat & had a marathon DVD session, drinking copious amounts of tea & eating into mountain supplies. The DVD selection wasn't the best & we ended up watching a very depressing film
Mt. Fyfe
And then the clouds came about Maori Gang life.....to say it was brutal is an understatement. It lashed rain the whole night but was dry once we set out the next morning for some earnest walking, not before investigating the mystery bread-maker first though. Now we're no mechanics but with the aid of our "user's manual" we decided Kia was road-worthy....had oil & water- the basics so off we went.
The day was dull & grey & neither of us was in a "let's climb a mountain" mood. We parked up at a secluded spot & had a walk in the cold with socks for gloves & hats. Well we were only gone 45mins & some little buggers had broken into our car. At first I thought the crack in our windscreen had spontaneously shattered but no, the passenger window was smashed by some yobs. They emptied the glove compartment & took my ipod & our "user's manual".....you see it was in a nice leather case & they probably thought it was something good.....HA! Am unfortunate man behind us had much more taken so we were very lucky.
Anyway we had to head back to Christchurch early on account of our broken window.....no
Dusky Dolphins
While I could still focus tears there. Turns out though when it came to cleaning up the car in CC that my ipod had escaped & was nestled in between the leaflets & other collection of crap in the glove compartment. I thought I wasn't meant to have an ipod but I guess I am....so will be extra careful with it now. We were so lucky though that the thieves were in a hurry cause all they had to do was pop the booth & they could have cleared us out.....someone is looking out for us up there!
Actually it turned out to be a blessing in disguise in a way. We traded our car in for a better one.....a Nissan called Sunny that is much more agreeable on hills, in that it doesn't want to roll backwards down the hills in such a hurry. We came out of it lightly in the end with just a broken window & it got us out of having to hike around in the dull weather. All's well that ends well😊
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