2 Berth Bain of My Existence

So, Rob and I landed into New Zealand yesterday. We flew into Christchurch initially. No problems there, just landed and walked across he road to our hotel. The hotel was cute, I'm pretty sure the conceirge wanted to sleep with one of us. I don't normally say shit like that, but you should have seen and heard him. I felt like Samantha in Sex and the City. And trust me, I have no clue why... he was in a nice little shirt and tie and both of us were in hoodies, and I well, still look like I'm going to a Grateful Dead Concert. But anyways, I didn't get much sleep but the bed was really comfy and the room was really nice. In the morning we had some yummy breakfast and went back to the airport. Again, the flight to Queenstown was pleasant... short and sweet. When we arrived, we went to pick up our RV.

Everyone at the counter was nice and friendly and directed us outside to pick up our 2 Berth RV. The girl pulls up and shows us the ropes-- how to empty the toilet, how to fill the gas tank and the tank for the stove and hot water. Everything was going well except when she opened the driver's side door. Shit, it's stick. I saw the freighted look on Rob's face. He's never driven stick and he's supposed to be the only one driving it. So this means I have to teach him or I have to drive the whole way. But, the problem is, I learned how to drive stick shift on a shitty pickup truck driving down back roads in Ohio, oh, about 85 years ago. I had confidence though (mistake number 1). Rob signed the paperwork, the girl walked away, and we took our stuff onto our Rv of impeding doom.

So, within the first ten minutes, I was able to stall the piece of shit 5 times. This was not a good start. This thing was huge, and I couldn't even drive it out of the parking lot yet. I was screaming, but, I still had confidence (mistake number 2). I backedup, switched into first gear, and stalled again. Starterrrrup again, and we're on the way... in 1st gear for a bit. I stopped at a stop sign and, um, stalled again. Starrrrterrrup again and we're on our way. I got quite far, even got into third gear once or twice but we encountered a problem when we got into Queenstown. Image driving down around a combination of Downtown crossing and Newbury street in a stick shift big ass motherfucker that you keep stalling out. I did not make the people behind me happy. I did however, make quite a few people laugh, but all of these people were walking on the sidewalk. So at this point, it's still funny. We didn't really know where we're going or where we were, but you guessed it, I still had confidence (mistake numbers 3-8). We headed around a roundabout toward Glenarchy(or some other similarily bullshit named town) and faced every newbie stick shift driver's worst nightmare... a 45 degree hill. But, it wasn't just one hill, it was a hole mess of hills. This is when shit really went to hell. I got up and down the first few hills, but then the speed limit changed to 100 km/h and I stalled out on one of the up hills. I had a car parked right behind me. Rob flagged the car away and I tried again. I got it going but with some really interesting noises and black smoke. I go down one more hill, and stall again on another uphill. At this point, I'm a mess. I was pretty much screaming bloody murder and shaking. The scariest part of this all is that we were not just on any old road. There was a quite large and quite intimidating dropoff on the left side of us. Not only were we stalling on the uphills, but we had like 3 inches to roll back before we encountered a quite costly and painful death down the side of a mountain and into a lake. Wasn't this supposed to be a holiday? So at this point, there were three cars behind us and I broke down into tears. I get going again and pull off onto a breakdown section of the road.

There was this really nice man who saw us with our hazards on and turned around to help. He got into the van and made sure everything was alright. Of course all was, I just couldn't drive for shit. He gave me a few tips, we thanked him and he was gone. I tried to reverse the RV again. And again. And again. I'm crying me head off and just mad as hell. I flag down another person, and ask to use his phone. He was from Australia too, and didn't have phone service either. I did get him to turn our car around though. We got back onto the road and decided to head back to the airport and return the vehicle. I literally drove in first gear the whole way back into Queenstown and was doing fine (mind you, pissing off the large line of cars behind me though). I ran into some trouble when I had to stop around a roundabout. I stalled out, got frazzled again, and just parked it. I was sobbing and I refused to drive it any further. I felt so bad. I had told Rob that I could drive it, and I just couldn't. Because of the Easter weekend, this was going to fuck up alot of things. We'd have to first try to get our money back, second try and get a car, and third, we'd have to get a hostel everywhere we go. This was a bad way to start the week.

Rob went across the street to a hotel and called the roadside assistance. He made it clear that there was no problem but that we just couldn't drive it and to send someone to drive it back, but the operator was apparently not listening. A half hour after the call, one person showed up. He was a really cool guy about it, understood that we were going to encounter alot of hills and probably incur some damage to the vehicle in the process. He let us use his phone and we gave the rental place a call.

So, the phone call was not quite what we were hoping it would be. They told us that we had to get a refund through Student Flights and that they had no available cars. Good news though was that they were sending two people to come and get us. When they arrived, of course it was this little girl that got straight into the RV and was fine with it. I felt like such an idiot. We drove back and were right back where we started. We started with thrifty- no car, eurocar- no cars, avis- no cars, and one more car company-- no one had anything. Our last shot was budget and they had one more car left. Of course it was the smallest one available, but we were in luck. The man at the desk was crazy nice and very efficient. We got in the car and headed back into Queenstown for Rob to bungy jump.

In our worrying about the RV, we failed to fully appreciate the beauty of this place. It's gorgeous, especially the drive up to the bungy place, Nevis. There are snow capped mountains, Queenstown is really quaint, there are places to do so much shit (especially adventurous, scream your head off kindof shit). The city itself is quite small, but there's a lot to do. The bungy jump place was about a half hour drive away, and I slept the whole way there and most of the way back. I was so worn out by the morning's events that I definitely just wanted to watch Rob jump, not do it myself. After seeing everyone else do it however, I'm considering doing it tomorrow... I just don't know if I can justify spending that much money on it. I'll sleep on it though.

After we got back, we grabbed subway and some candy (cutest little candy shop in town) and found a hostel. We have this hostel booked for tonight. It's really nice, and the guy at the front desk was wearing bunny ears when we came in (so cute). Hopefully, the rest of this trip will go more smoothly, but we'll see...