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Published: April 24th 2006
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Flying time
View over Queenstown area from plane This blog is in honour of Katy and Laurel (HEY GUY!)and their lovely vanette which has now been reclaimed by the remaining Hippo gang!
The long and short of it is Katy and Laurel, our good friends from the hippo, took their van to christchurch to sell it, and as we've heard happen many times just could not shift the thing. Which was unfortunate as they had to fly to Auckland quick smart. So knowing us folk were still around and always wanting extra unsellable motor vehicles they left the van in christchurch for one of us to come and collect. Christchurch is about a 6 or 7 hour drive from here so as we went through the various option of how to pick it up....involving convoys of people and cars and coaches and lifts and days off work and various complications it was decided i, claire, would fly across to christchurch taking advantage of cheap flights and favourable days off from work and drive the van back. Eager for an adventure and relishing the idea of a road trip me and my FLANGE flask set off on thursday evening hoping for the best.....having been told after i'd booked the
landing in christchurch
whizzy air streams and sunsets. flight that the vans head gasket was about to blow, this worried me slightly as i was about to drive a long long way across the country on my own!
Putting these worries to the back of my (fairly hungover) mind i boarded my flight and was treated to some of the best views i've had of New Zealand. It was just gorgeous, ZING!, the sun was setting as we flew up over Queenstown and The Remarkables mountains and all the rivers and lakes were shimmmering gold and there was loads of SNOW ranges in the middle. I barely had time to eat the in flight cookie before i landed in Christchurch and wandered off to find the holiday park. Anyone who knows me well knows how much i detest caravans so to end up in a holiday park was actually hell for me, surrounded by the damn things. So i quickfooted it out of there, thinking I CANT BE ASKED with this, and after a long and pointless drive around christchurch trying to decide WOT to do i finally gave in and booked into a hostel for the bargain price of $10. My first night in a camper
van was a delight, slept soundly and warmly thanks to the extra blankets and spotty dog hats left inside, cheers girls. I considered cracking open the bottle of wine left for us but unusually for me i resisted!
Set off at 9 oclock the next day and i had a corking day. The van drove like a dream, no problems at all, got the music pumping (there's some great cds you left behind!) and bought me some hard boiled sweets for the way. Still slightly worried about it blowing up i popped into a garage and swallowing any pride i had i admitted to Bill the mechanic that i wanted to check the oil and water but in all honesty i had no idea where the engine was(it was under the passenger seat), let alone anything more complicated ! Gave him a smile at least and made me feel a very 'GIFTED' individual. Stopped off loads of times on the way to mull around the big old lakes (Tekapo and Pukaki) and gaze at the big old mountains (Mount Cook to be precise). Nearly took a fairly big detour to go right up to Mount Cook but head it
I got a van!
First stop of the road trip.(ok...i know it's not just my van.) was rainy up there so turned back and carried on my merry little way. Autumn is at it's height at the moment so the colours in the landscape were gorgeous and i had much fun kicking the leaves around like the big kid that i am!
Got back into the hippo lodge at 8 in the evening, the longest drive i have ever done especially on my own but it was a brilliant REDONCULOUS day and quite honestly i fell in love with the van.....you must have had some fun times in there girls (can almost hear you saying ummmhuh yeah we did!). Hope you like the pictures, if you look closely you'll be able to see that i'm wearing suzies TROUSERS and Katies 'Mooks' t-shirt.....nearly became an incarnation of you all for a day!
So now the hippo lodge has a camper van to share until we decide what to do with it, looking forward to getting back out on the road again....i'm hooked! BO YEAH!
The Hippo lodge has been missing you dearly katy and laurel, marc jeff and i were up til 5 this morning reminising about the fantastic times we had when you
were here and how lucky we were to find such a great group of people and you girls were a huge part of that. REALLY?!?!Bring on the road trip in the states!!!!! It'll be SO WIGGY!!! Love you loads, claire xxx
ps the capitals do make sense to some people i promise, for the rest of you I'm sure they are just annoying but as i said it's all in honour of katy and Laurel, hope you liked it guy!
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Tim
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Fly by wire
Hey, and did you hear about the accident on the Queenstown fly by wire? Some Swedish tourist "Seriously injured", apparently. Tim x