To the North was the town of Hastings, to the East was the Pacific Ocean, and to the South and West were vast mountain ranges. So unique to see it all in one 360 degree view!
After leaving the lookout we followed the path down (following after several runners and bikers who had made their way allllll the way up the treacherous roads - seriously - what SUPERSTARS!!) for a quick trip to the grocery store. Once we were fully stocked we got on our way towards...Wellington!
While Jon drove around crazy sharp turns on super tiny roadways, I looked up things to do in Wellington and places to stay in our camper van and found several. Then all of a sudden we heard a loud semi-thumping sound which slowly continued as our wheels turned...not making us feel great on the aforementioned crazy one-lane roads on the side of a mountain. When we finally got off the mountain we were able to pull over into a parking area. We looked under the car and couldn't see anything wrong, so we continued on our way while I called our van company, Jucy, to see what we should do. The sound continued and after about 10 minutes I FINALLY got through to a human, who told us that it was probably a rock stuck to our break pad, and that we should just drive the car forward and backward several times to dislodge it.
Ummm... ok?
So we did that. Like idiots. And the sound got louder. Awesome.
So we called Jucy back. They told us to stay where we were (about 2 hours south of Hastings and 2 hours north of Wellington) and they would send AA to come check out our car (makes you feel good that we have triple A and they have double A, huh?) So we stayed on the side of the road and played cards for about 30 minutes waiting for them as the sun beat down on our car. When the two men showed up, they jacked up the car, took the front wheel off, and then told us that our break pad was basically gone and needed to be completely replaced...something they couldn't do. AND that the car was completely not-drive-able and so we needed to have it towed to a service station.
Awesome.
We called Jucy AGAIN and spoke to a very helpful rep, Morgan, who sent the tow truck to us. So we waited another 30 minutes for the tow truck and played more cards. At this point we were fairly upset at the idea of not getting to Wellington tonight. So we called Morgan back to see if there was any way we might be able to take transport (either a bus or another rental car) to Wellington (with ALLLLL our stuff) and pick up a new camper van at their office in Wellington. Morgan tried his hardest. He really did. But there were no new camper vans to be had in Wellington. Womp womp. So Jucy offered to put us up for the night in a hotel in the tiny town that we were stuck in (Palmerston North) while the garage worked on our car. AND they're going to give us a refund of at least 1 day of our trip. While we're still pretty upset about the change in our plans (and basically the fact that we are losing almost 2 days of our travels because of the van's issues...) at least it's something...
The tow truck picked us up, dragged the van (and us) about 15 km back into Palmerston North to the garage, where we were picked up by a taxi and taken to our (paid for) accommodation for the night.
Not gonna lie, while this is all SUPER frustrating and NOT at all planned for, a nice, good, NON-CAMPER VAN hot shower was DEFINITELY in order and super exciting, as was the perfect wi-fi connection :).
We checked our emails, caught up on some world news (seriously what is going on in US politics. SO glad we've been away from that for 3 months...) and took pretty glorious showers before heading off to a delicious Italian dinner in town (which better be on Jucy since we had just purchased groceries to cook dinner but they were stuck in our camper van...).
After dinner we went back to the hotel, enjoyed more wi-fi, updated the blog a bit (hooray!!) and got a good night's sleep NOT on a slanted hill in the middle of no where :).
Here's hoping we get a phone call bright and early that the van is ready for the rest of our Kiwi adventures!
Jess' highlight of the day: fast internet and an excellent shower
Jon's highlight of the day: eating good pizza
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