Saturday, March 19, 2005 (Christchurch – New Zealand SI)
Pushing on through to the where we started from.
Just follow me please. Perhaps re-routing to Wellington wasn't such a good idea
after all?
Day 376 (186). By all accounts, there is little
by way of reason to stop between Oamaru and Christchurch so we made the
conscious decision to push all the way through this morning. Michiel was going
along for the ride and we will set him off there and say goodbye. It was a long
and uneventful drive up the coast and we stopped but once for fuel and a leg
stretch. Along the way, I consulted the guidebook and decided to try our luck at
a different hostel that was going to be a bit cheaper than the one we booked
and, more importantly, with cheaper Internet access. I had originally chosen
this new place yesterday but they have a policy of not accepting advanced
bookings so I wasn’t able to book until today. Fortunately, they not only
had a room for us but we would be allowed to stay there for the three days and
it would be very inexpensive at just NZ$44 (€25,52) per
night.
When we finally arrived and
located the hostel on the edge of the inner city, I was quite surprised when the
receptionist took us for a walk to locate our room. It’s located in
another building in another street across the road and around the corner.
It’s a fair trek from the Internet, which is only available in the main
building, but there’s just one other bedroom in our building and thus just
one other couple with which to share the kitchen and bathroom facilities. The
cheap Internet is a little bit of a disappointment in that although it is cheap
at NZ$2 (€1,16) per hour, you have to pay in whole hour increments so just
logging on for a couple of minutes to check on e-mail will cost NZ$2
(€1,16) every time. After offloading the car, I wasted no time in dropping
a NZ$2 (€1,16) coin into the slot on one of the terminals to search around
some more for a rental car in Wellington. I did my best to locate and call just
about every car rental agency that I could but still the only agencies with cars
that I could take from Wellington to Auckland were the bigger companies that
were charging upwards of NZ$50 (€29) per day. This problem is now starting
to eat away at me and I’m starting to reluctantly conclude that we are
simply going to have to eat the higher cost, lest we risk not getting a car at
all. There was one possible option with one particular company for NZ$42
(€24,36) but we’re still waiting to hear back from
them.
Michiel was also sitting at one
of the terminals trying to look up the phone number of the people he was going
to be staying with here in Christchurch but was asked by the receptionist to
leave. Apparently, the Internet here is just for paying guests only. I felt bad
for him. He ended up wandering into the city centre to try to find another
Internet café.
With the car
rental problem weighing heavily on my mind, I decided that we should drive over
to the airport. When we arrived there a few weeks back, I remember an
advertising board with numerous car rental agencies listed where all newly
arriving passengers, ourselves included, were comparing rates. We set out
towards the airport and made it onto one of the main roads here around
Christchurch before we both realised that we had no idea where the airport was.
We ended up taking the main highway but I had a feeling we were going the long
way around. Anyway, we arrived and parked the car in the arrivals car park and
went inside. I spent the next half hour calling all the listed companies but
still with no luck. For whatever reason, all the rental cars in Wellington are
just sold out. I was now starting to get very despondent. Not having eaten
anything at all so far today, except an apple in the car on the way up here,
probably wasn’t doing me any good either. I’m now really starting to
worry about what we are going to do when we hit the ground in Wellington with no
transportation arranged.
We drove
back into town following the signs to the city centre. We weren’t but ten
minutes on the road when Sandy decided to get ahead of the game and start
looking for street names. As we sat there at a traffic signal, we realised that
our hostel was staring us right in the face on the opposite side of the road.
Had we set off in the opposite direction to begin with, we’d have been at
the airport in ten minutes instead of
forty.
The other two housemates at
our hostel were at the house when we returned - an Irish guy and a New Zealand
woman. They were in the middle of making a roast dinner and the aroma wafting
through the room was quite appetising so I set off to find a supermarket to grab
something for Sandy and me.
The
clocks apparently go back tonight so we should enjoy a peaceful and restful
Sunday morning here in the Christchurch suburbs.
Posted: Sat
- March 19, 2005 at 11:31 PM