Today was supposed to be my Wellington day, however I am still in Hastings. When I started my car this morning it began to shudder. Knowing this wasn’t a good sign, I drove in circles for a few minutes to see if it would go away. Nope. After going through a stoplight, it just shut off and I had to pull over to the side of the road. Luckily, at the corner of the intersection was a petrol station and they recommended a good mechanic. About an hour later the guy arrived and saw that my distributer was buggered. I’d have to get a new one. That also meant there was no way to get my car started so it would have to be towed to the shop. Not with a tow truck, but with a tow line. He asked if I had ever handled a car behind a tow line and when I said no, he smiled and said, “eh, you’ll be fine.” After receiving instructions on what to do and where we were going, I climbed in my seat and braced myself for an interesting ride. It only took about two minutes to get to the shop, but there were a lot of turns and stops along the way. We managed to get the car there without incident, and I can now add that to my list of new experiences I’ve accomplished here in NZ.
Unfortunately, the part I need won’t get here until tomorrow morning, so my plans are thrown off a bit. At first I thought this was going to cost me a lot of time and money, but after about an hour on the phone I managed to get my ferry from the North Island to the South Island rescheduled free of charge, my all day train ride from Christchurch to Greymouth and back rescheduled free of charge, and my hostel bookings rearranged and updated. I’ll still be able to see Wellington tomorrow, take the ferry over night, do the whale watching boat tour a few hours later, make it to Christchurch, and enjoy my train ride the following day.
I am really happy this happened while I was in the middle of a little town and not while I was out in the middle of nowhere. The rest of today will be filled with walking around downtown Hastings and seeing a movie at the local theater. I hadn’t gotten around to seeing The Hobbit anyway.
Pictures Don't Count 