Wild West Coast – New Zealand

Tow Truck Extraordinaire

The New Year begins in a blissful escape from working in tiny Akaroa and off to the West Coast for new adventures.  We woke up to one of the worlds first sunrises of 2010!  Our plan:  to head over to the glaciers on the West Coast of the South Island.  We instantly drove to Christchurch and stayed a night on the beach in New Brighton…unfortunetly we were temporarily locked in the parking lot but woke up in the morning to a beautiful day and swimming in the surf and off to the West Coast!  We drove for a few hours towards the Southern Alps .. our car had quite a lot of trouble getting up some of the steep hills combined with the desert heat we had to make a lot of pit stops.  We stopped in one park with an incredibal name:  Korowai Torelesse Tussocklands Park.  This park had amazing trad and sport rock climbing, boulders, cliff faces but no sign of any climbers when we were there…we jumped around the rocks and climbed some of them too.

Arthur’s Pass is known as the border town between the West & East as it sits right in the center of the island & the Alps.  A funny little stretch of town with good cafes and hikes to the nearby waterfalls & alpine trails.   We were warned about the massive amounts of rainfall & general bad weather in the West which was instantly apparent driving in on SH 73 –there was a physical wall of clouds/fog/rain that divided the region from the rest of NZ.  The area has its own weather system that sees no sunlight most of the year–mainly an onslaught of South/North/East/West Westerlies and a hell of a lot of rain … it actually rained the entire 3 days we drove around–one day.. the worst day.. it rained 300mm and flooded the highways.  So much so that our poor 92′ Toyota died on us b/c of flood water making its way into the engine.  The break-down situation unwrapped quickly, we found ourselves stranded on the side of the highway with flood water rising around the car and the unrentless rain pounding down.  It was only a couple minutes before some people stopped to help us out–towed our car to the closest drive way to get out of the flooding tried to revive our soaking wet engine.  To add to the distress we had a dead cell phone & no road-side assistance.  Determined to figure a way out we walked up to the closest house to ask for help… a farmer named Mr Maisely who let us use his phone.  We got ahold of a local mechanic who could tow us to his shop 10 km down the road –the mechanic made his way over to us and hand cranked us up on a flatbed.  We were saved!  One last obsticle–get the truck to the shop:  FAIL!  The water was increasingly getting deeper on the road by this time and mid-way through a large flood the truck suddenly choked and came to a giant halt.  So we were stuck in a fast-moving flood, in a tow truck with our car on the back…  The only option at this point was to laugh… has to be one of the most hilarious looking break downs–even another mechanic stopped by our window to ask if we needed his help.. haha he instantly started laughing!  Eventually, our mechanic came back with a 4×4 to tow the whole lot outta the giant puddle and onto the town another few km’s.  Our good’ol’ car started after about 10 min of spraying it down with WD40 (a magical potion).  Annd we were on our way again–off to Franz Joseph!!  After a night in town we made a very instant decision to leave NZ altogether and start our trek to South East Asia!  We carefully drove back to Christchurch… got a room with our UK friends for the week and prepared our car for an auction.  We must be masters of marketing or something b/c we sold the car in a matter of hours.. just a few carefully placed ads at the downtown hostels and one online ad on the backpackerboard.co.nz    We got a bit less than what we paid for initially but happy for a quick sale and money for plane tickets!

Our Next destination… Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur!  We’ve bought direct flight tickets via Singapore Airlines leaving in 4 days from Christchurch!  We’re currently purging all of our excess stuff we’ve accumlated eg. sweaters, scooters, boots, books, clothing and preparing for a new kind of travelling!  Unfortunetly missing Oz this time around but we’ll make the trek back here in the future to fully experience ‘down under’ but in light of our rough timeline we want to have the most amount of time to explore S. E. Asia!  Check back soon!

Make sure to watch the final cut of our road trip video below!

Flood Warning!