A Wizard Time
Trip Start
Oct 15, 2007
1
77
97
Trip End
Aug 24, 2008
Christchurch,
South Island,
New Zealand
Sunday, March 23, 2008
First things first then. We found somewhere to park in the centre of town and went to an internet café where we designed a poster advertising Lucy's need for a new owner. We found a car wash and spent a few dollars getting Lucy as clean and spangly as is possible for a fifteen year old van with oil stains all up the back of her. We gave her a good vacuuming. We went through everything inside and got her all packed up and ready to sell.
We were ready. The following day, we would be taking her to the Canterbury Car Fair in the morning and, if she didn't sell, going to the Backpacker Car Market in the afternoon. For now though, we found ourselves a place to camp near to an old quarry which was now a sort of nature reserve.
We messed about in the nature reserve, playing badminton with our bent badminton racquets and eating a picnic tea of bread, hummus, olives and a pork pie. Eventually, we went to bed with our fingers crossed that this might be our last night in a van.
Early the following morning, we drove to the car fair. There were quite a few vans for sale and we checked out the competition. It seemed that we had priced the van fairly, but that was to be largely irrelevant as there were very few customers. Nobody sold a van that day.
We took Lucy over to the Backpackers Car Market and found ourselves a spot. The place wasn't exactly heaving with potential customers either. When we had bought Lucy in Auckland, the Backpacker's Car Market had been a lively place with vehicles coming and going all the time. The Christchurch version was far more depressing. It was located out of the main town centre. It was dark and quiet. There weren't many people about. This wasn't looking promising.
Kirsty went into town to put up posters in as many backpacker hostels as she could find. Jacob stayed with Lucy and managed to get chatting with the few potential customers that came in. Most kicked the tyres and left, but a small group of Germans showed a bit more interest. They were a bit strange to be honest. They seemed to have been given a list of things to ask about, but didn't really understand the implications of the answers. Having looked at our engine and seen the old oil splatters on the cylinder head, they commented on the oil leak. Oil leak? On top? Leaks happen downwards, in our experience. We also had a bit of a laugh with Ethan, one of the other van-sellers about their having asked him where he kept his 'spare battery'.
By the evening, not much had happened, but as things were closing down for the night, a couple came in and chatted to us for some time. They seemed to be interested, but didn't want to commit to anything straight away. So, Day 1 in the Backpacker's Car Market and we had no sale.
We treated ourselves to pizza and beers at a nice looking place in town, then bedded down in the van in the car park of the Backpacker Car Market. The following morning, we moved the van back into the main building and waited. Not a lot happened all day. Gemma and Joe, the couple from the previous evening came back in for another look at the van but still weren't decided as, although the van was otherwise perfect for what they wanted, they "didn't like the paint job". Fussy buggers.
Towards the end of the day, another couple, Anna and Ashok, came in looking for a car, but by closing, they were also considering buying our van. We can be very persuasive.
Still, Day 2 ended with no sale. We drove into town, picking up Anna and Ashok and giving them a lift, thus earning ourselves further brownie points. A trip around the supermarket later, armed with ingredients, we settled down in the car park for the night.
We feasted on garlic mushrooms, bread and red wine, again toasting the possibility of this being our last night in the van. Again, as soon as the place opened up again in the morning, we bagged our spot inside and Kirsty settled in to wait, whilst Jacob went off to buy some vehicle licence duty for the van, as it had by now expired. Not the greatest of selling points.
Unfortunately, it cost $80 for the minimum three month period of vehicle licence duty, which was an expensive purchase for a van that we were hoping to sell. Fortunately, Jacob happened to mention to the lady behind the counter that we wanted to pay as little as possible in order to obtain enough vehicle licence duty to make the van legally saleable. She told him that he could "apply for an extension" on the existing duty, which came in at a monthly rate of $30, so he did that. Ta-da: one legal van, for $50 less than we had anticipated.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Kirsty was playing the haggling game. Gemma and Joe had been in touch and made an offer, but it was lower than we had been hoping for, although higher than the minimum we would accept. Kirsty had taken a view and decided that we could probably come to a better agreement and had made a counter offer. She was now pacing up and down, waiting for Gemma and Joe's decision.
Whilst she was pacing, a man and his son came in looking at vans, so Kirsty sold up how great Lucy was. Jacob got back and joined in. Not long after, we sold the van. The price we agreed on was exactly what we had paid for it in Auckland, although, of course, we didn't mention that to the new buyer.
Having done the deeds with money and paperwork exchange, Lucy's proud new owner, Max, drove us into town and dropped us off. He hadn't until that point even fired up the engine, let alone test drive it. An automotive idiot and a vehicle seller's dream. We practically skipped to the tourist information centre, who sorted us out with a hostel for the night, then pranced down the street to the hostel to check in.
We bounced on the bed and admired our very own bathroom. To be fair, that is standard behaviour for anyone checking into a hotel, but even more so for people whose bed for the last two months didn't have the headroom for bouncing, and whose bathroom was the nearest public toilet block.
We had a celebratory lunch at KFC, which was the first place we came to that was selling food that seemed sufficiently bad for us, then had a wander around Christchurch before heading back to the hostel to get scrubbed up and respectable for a night out on the town.
It was a good night out, consisting of pretty good Mexican food and a nice pub with live music, which was also pretty good: a band called The Eastern consisting of a guitarist/singer and a banjo/harmonica player/backing vocalist. To be honest, everything was good that night. We'd sold our van, for the same as we had paid for it. Woohoo!
The following morning, we packed up and walked to the house of Tony, who was to be our CouchSurfing host for a few nights. He arrived home just as we were about to add credit to our phone and call him. He showed us around and we chatted for a while before leaving him to his work and walking back into town.
We spent the day mooching in the sunshine and shopping for a birthday present for Kirsty's Dad, whose 60th birthday she was soon to be missing. We found a whisky shop and discussed their wares for a while, failing to make a decision but being given a wee nip to try by the nice Scottish salesman.
Kirsty made an appointment with a hairdresser in another attempt to get her hair died bright red. Jacob had his ear pierced at a small piercing and tattoo place. It was obviously the time for changes to our appearance.
We bought the ingredients of a salad and a couple of bottles of wine, thinking that we could make a meal for ourselves and Tony. However, when we got back to his place, it was in darkness and there was no sign of Tony. We weren't sure if he was already in bed or not, so we quietly set about making the salad and settled down at the table in the garden to eat it and to share one of the bottles of wine. Some time later, a rather muddy Tony appeared, having been out playing football with his friends. He had already eaten, so refused our offer of salad and wine. We joined him inside and chatted for a while, then turned in for the night.
The following day, Kirsty cancelled her hair appointment, having learnt that dying dark hair vivid red requires the natural colour to be bleached out first. She had fancied having bright red hair but only on a temporary basis, as she would have to be respectable enough to be employable on our return to the UK. Bleached hair was a little too permanent for her liking, so she decided not to bother.
We went back to the whisky shop and settled on a fancy bottle of Highland Park for Kirsty's Dad's birthday. Highland Park is a particular favourite of his, and this was an independent bottling of a cask that had been selected as a particularly fine example. Although it may seem a little strange to send Scotch Whisky back to the UK from New Zealand, the price was similar to ordering it online from a UK stockist and the websites were suggesting possible delays in delivery. Besides which, the staff of the whisky shop had spent a long time with us, so we felt that they really deserved the sale.
We wandered on into town, where we encountered a Christchurch legend known as 'The Wizard'. Born in London in 1932 and originally christened Ian Brackenbury Channell, his actual legally recognised name is 'The Wizard'. He was also proclaimed as 'the Wizard of New Zealand' by the then Prime Minister Mike Moore in 1990. Viewed as (depending who you ask) an eccentric, a nuisance, a crazy person or a genius, he frequently gets on his soapbox (or more often a stepladder) and regales the assembled crowds in Christchurch, dressed in wizards robes and flowing beard, with deliberately controversial and often whimsical oration.
He was in the main square, preaching about how religion is the domain of people who don't have the intelligence or the physical means to be leaders, so make up stories about a deity in the sky who will 'have your dinner money' if you don't do what he wants, and are basically the cause of pretty much everything bad in the world. Maybe he's not so crazy after all.
We also bumped into Jo, the vegan we had met at the Hokitika Wild Foods Festival. Small world.
We decided to go for a pub lunch and found a nice looking Irish bar. We ordered their 'Ploughman's Platter' to share, as although Jacob is well known as a cheese hater, this particular platter also included a selection of cold meats.
The platter wasn't exactly what you'd call a traditional Ploughman's Lunch. The cheese was Brie and there were olives and sun dried tomatoes, but it was pretty tasty. Then, a very strange thing happened.
Jacob has been trying to understand why the rest of the world eats cheese for some time. He has always loathed and detested cheese in all of its forms - he has been known to bolt from the room at the smell of cheese on toast being prepared - and has never really understood why anybody would want to consume it voluntarily, or how it could possibly fit in with a meal. Consequently, Kirsty is quite used to having to explain the differences between flavours of various cheeses and how those flavours work with the other components of a meal.
Some time ago, much to his surprise - the cheese issue overflowed into a general distrust of all things dairy - Jacob had discovered that he liked good quality thick cream with apple pies. Our friend Charlotte had insisted that he try it, despite being well aware of his dairy scepticism. A glimmering little realisation occurred. Up north, a nice crumbly Wensleydale is quite a popular accompaniment to apple pie or fruit cake - always anathema to Jacob of course. Now though, even though he probably wouldn't like it, he could see - hardly news to the rest of the world, granted - how a rich, creamy dairy partner to the sweet, slightly sharp fruit would work. Knowing this, Kirsty suggested that Jacob try a little of the Brie with a slice of apple. It worked. Jacob, in a culinary equivalent of seeing the vase between the two faces, appreciated how cheese could be a part of this sort of meal. He finished the whole piece of cheese.
For some of you, this may seem like a fairly uneventful thing to be writing about, but others will recognise the huge step that this represents for such a confirmed cheese-phobe. Although he probably wouldn't be seeking out chunks of stilton any time soon, he was voluntarily, for the first time in his life, eating cheese, and he wasn't retching whilst he did it. Progress was being made.
We had arranged to meet up with Tony for the afternoon to go for a walk. We went back to his and found another CouchSurfer there. It turned out that she was Kirby, the CouchSurfer who had been due to stay with Mike in Waiheke at the same time as us and of whom we had heard so many bad things from Gaby. She seemed quite nice, as it turned out.
We went out to a local park, hoping to find a Frisbee Golf course, but it turned out that the course is laid out once a week and then removed again at the end of the day. Today was not the day that it was there, but we had fun throwing a Frisbee about until it started to get dark. We went to the supermarket and got things to barbeque and a case of beers, then back to Tony's to barbeque stuff and drink the beers. A good night all round.
The following morning, we packed up and bid goodbye to Tony and walked to our next CouchSurfing host's place. Biff, our host, was just about to go out canoeing with her friends as we arrived, but she gave us a quick tour of the place and gave us a key, then headed out. In fact, we didn't see a great deal of Biff in most of the time we were there. Her canoeing friends were also staying with her, so, understandably, she was playing hostess to them. She'd just moved back to Christchurch after living in China for about twelve years, and the house was still mostly unfurnished. We were glad of a patch of floor on which to unroll our sleeping bags though, and we're perfectly happy to be left to our own devices.
We settled in and found a wireless network, so sat in the garden and caught up on some e-mail whilst drinking the bottle of wine that we'd bought a couple of nights earlier to share with Tony before it became apparent that he's a beer man.
It was a lovely day, so we spent the afternoon wandering around Christchurch in the sunshine. It was Good Friday, so pretty much everything was closed for the day, but various bars were open so we decided to spend a lazy afternoon at the street front tables of a bar called His Lordship's, with a few drinks, watching the world go by.
It turned out that there had been a silly new law introduced in New Zealand. Bars were not being allowed to sell alcoholic drinks to people on public holidays. They were allowed to sell drinks to accompany food, but it had been decided by the powers that be that people who fancied spending a lazy afternoon at a street front bar table with a few drinks, watching the world go by, were all potentially violent alcohol-driven hooligans so, just in case, they should not be served. A lot of places were doing a fair old trade in whatever the cheapest food on their menu may have been. Lots of bowls of chips and baskets of garlic bread will have been gracing Kiwi tables that evening.
Having cleared up the licensing peculiarities with the apologetic English manageress and a fab-u-lous young bartender, we got food and had a few drinks with our meal, watching the world go by from our street front table. The lazy afternoon drifted into a lazy evening and after a while, we drifted back to Biff's house and spent a while chatting with her and the friends she had staying with her.
In the morning, we went into town and sorted out some admin, which in the end took up most of the day. We found a liquor store and bought a bottle of wine as a thank you present for Biff, then had a quiet evening packing up and preparing to leave New Zealand the following day.
We woke up to discover that Biff had left Easter eggs outside our door, which was a sweet gesture. We said our goodbyes and walked to the bus stop, where we caught a bus to the airport.
At the airport, having wandered around duty free, availing ourselves of the free samples, we decided to ask at the Qantas lounge to see if our 'Frequent Flyer Club' membership would allow us in.
The woman at the desk seemed harassed. Somewhat snappily, she asked us to wait until she had checked all of the card holding members in. We did so patiently. During this time, various other people turned up and asked about membership conditions, received answers from her and left. We continued to wait. Finally, the stream of people stopped and we were able to ask again if our membership level included entry to the lounge. We had only just joined and we weren't sure of the conditions. It seemed a fair enough question.
"No. That's just a Frequent Flyer number. Obviously that's not going to let you in."
A little taken aback by the rudeness of the reply, Jacob asked what membership would cost and what it would entitle us to. Neither of us expected what came next.
"Mwweh mwweh mweeh mweeh? What's that supposed to mean?" she said. This was accompanied by the classic 'Blah Blah' hand gesture - akin to Rod Hull manipulating Emu, minus Emu.
That didn't exactly go down well. Jacob left, informing her that he wasn't going to tolerate being spoken to like that. Kirsty demanded her name, advising that it would be mentioned in our letter of complaint.
An unfortunate end to a fantastic few months in New Zealand. Our great Kiwi odyssey was finally at an end. Our flight was announced a short while later. We were on our way to Fiji.
