After getting a lovely seat on the coach
(prime location with a window view and a spare seat! – it’s the little things)
we set off to Hamilton, late of course. The ride was long, around 9hrs I think,
but I think this road trip has cured me of most of my car sickness as I was
fine, I even managed to read!
The plan was jump off the coach at
Hamilton, get a taxi to Caitlin’s house, Caitlin would let me in, I’d get the
key to the car, get my suitcase out, get a taxi back to the bus station and
then catch the last bus to Auckland… None of that worked out.
Caitlin text me yesterday evening saying
work had called her in so I’d have to jump off the coach, run to her work, get
the key from her, get a taxi to the house, get the car key, get my suitcase
from the car, get a taxi back to the bus station, and catch the last bus to
Auckland. That was Problem number 1, not a big one.
Problem 2. Caitlin became ill and so wasn’t
coming back to Hamilton, she was at home having called in ill to work… A bit of
a problem but still solvable… Just a pain as the other three people she lives
with were all at home so the house in Hamilton was empty… But a quick phone
call to the landlord sorted it out, she’d meet me at the house and let me in to
grab the car key.
Problem 3. My bus was running behind
schedule, of course. Which meant the 45 minutes I had to get my suitcase and
get back to catch my bus was cut to under half an hour… which wasn’t too
promising considering it’s a 10minute drive from the bus stop to the house…
Problem 4. The land lord took forever to
get to the house, I rang her before I even got to Hamilton to tell her there
I’d be there in 10 minutes… But still that’s wasn’t too much of a problem, I
mean it was just going to be a tight call.
The real problem came with Problem 5. Tash,
Caitlin’s housemate who George had given the car key to, had ‘mis-placed’ the
car key. It was meant to be on top of a dresser, only it wasn’t. Nor was it on
the floor around the dresser, or on the floor anywhere, nor the kitchen table,
lounge table, lounge bookshelf etc. Me and the Landlord, Dianne, ended up
searching the entire house looking for this key – I needed to get into the boot
of the car to get my suitcase so I could catch my flight home!
By this point I was pretty desperate, I
told Navin there was no point waiting for me as this could take ages (my taxi
driver who was lovely and who gave me his card promising a discount if I needed
to catch a taxi to Auckland). Then I called Matt (who lives across the street
from Caitlin and was the owner of the car before Tom).
Then we attempted to ‘break into’ the car…
Dianne’s husband got out their pick up truck and tried to help matt but it soon
became obvious, neither of them were professional car thieves and neither of
them had broken into a car before! It was an interesting sight I have to say
watching four people gathering around a car on the street attempting to break
into it with wire hangers…
In the end I found the car key (at the
bottom of one of Tash’s handbags) and managed to get my suitcase out. And then
Matt offered to drive me up to Auckland which was really nice of him!
So I made it to Auckland, a few hours later
than planned, but with my suitcase! I’m spending the night in Auckland before
catching my flight back to the UK!
