We had an awful night of sleep, the parking lot while safe was very noisy. They were remodeling the grocery store so all night workers were in and out in loud trucks, forklifts and man lifts. In the morning commuters parked next to us to catch the bus into Christchurch which was a whole new ruckus once the construction workers started heading home. We laid around till 8:30 to make sure the shop was open then headed across the street to see Alec. When we arrived he was already on the phone! What a great man, the conversation was going well, he explained the situation and then said "crikie"! This did not sound good to Paul and I and we sat there tense while ease dropping on the conversation which was in heavy kiwi slang so we only understood about a 1/4 of it. Once he was off he said the guy just got out of the hospital from back surgery, but he would sent some guys out to look at our van in the parking lot. We thanked Alec very much for setting it all up and went back to the van and wait.
15min later while we were eating breakfast and brewing coffee out of the back of our van in the parking lot two guys pulled up and said there were going to tow us to their shop. They had a Mitsubishi Pajero, it looked like an old Bronco II with a hitch on the back. They clipped an end to us and put the loop on the other end of the 7 foot tow rope over their hitch ball. He then gave Paul a series of hand signals that meant break, slow down, and turn with them and we were off. Ok…I hope this works…We put the she devil in neutral and let them do all the work while being towed not more than 5 feet from their bumper. We were just a mis-read hand signal away from smashing into the back of our rescuers. Negotiating the round abbots out of town was interesting, but we made it and headed out on country road to who knows where. At one point I had to tell Paul that I see a one way bridge up head, and we are just start laughing, we are tired, don't know what is going, we have no idea where we are, but it's all an adventure! Between one lane bridges, round abbots and the driver waving at his friends which also was the same sign to us to brake it was a long trip!
Finally down a dusty country road we pulled on to a beautiful property, with perfectly manicured garden and a gorgeous home with a big deck and a shop in the back so we were directed to the garden area and picnic table to wait while they asses the situation. Soon a very friendly boarder collie came over to greet us, she is desperate to find a ball for us to throw her and is running circles around the yard looking for something and finally finds a frisbee. The house cat then came over to greet us as well, she sat by me as I typed on the computer and purrrrrred from behind the screen.
After a few tosses of the frisbee for the collie the "Boss man" (owner and recently out of back surgery man) came over and gave us the bad news. We need a new transmission! Dang you she devil Nissan Serena! He tells us the expensive price and asks our "situation" as if we have options with a broken van in the middle of the Canterbury countryside. Well we tell him to fix her since it is our only option. He does have good news that he found a used transmission in town and she can be ready today, which is very nice for us since our friends arrive in just a few more days! They are cash only so we need to go back into town to get some more money, so they gave us a loaner vehicle, and was she special!
This beauty was a hatch back civic, stick shift (left handed gear shift), probably from the early 90's, thats 1890's incase you're wondering. There were cob webs around the windows, two empty beer bottles under the passenger seat and misc trash in the back and cigarette butts everywhere. The mechanic drew us a map back into town which he had to literally spin around 4 times before getting his bearing.. oh yeah, "no problems you live here and can't figure this out but we'll have no problem, thanks!". The car was appropriate for us, not having a shower in a few days, and camping in a grocery store parking lot, we were feeling a bit haggard but atlas we have a car that fits our style!
Finding town was actually no problem and we were laughing the whole way cause of this crazy situations, we got our money and headed back to wait another few hours for the van to be done. We were grateful for the beautiful day, and the nice people who helped us. The bill was more than we wanted to pay, but we forked over the money anyway, somehow it is harder to pay a large bill when you are laying out the cash than throwing it on a credit card, we had the picnic table lined with 50's to hand over, ouch! With our wallets a lot lighter we headed back to the DOC campsite with all the sand fly's but we were both happy to be driving not walking.
No comments:
Post a Comment