02/05/09

Rich drove us back to the $8 all day parking, I then got up and walked over to the laundrette to check the prices, well expensive, $5 for a wash and $1 for 5 minutes in the dryer. I got a load of change from Countdown and returned to the camper to pick up everyones washing. No one else was up so I laid back in bed and finished my book. Eventully people started to get up, the guys went over with the washing while the girls and I stayed in the camper and tried to clean it up a bit for tomorrow. I brushed all the seats down and managed to get a dust-pan full just from behind the cushions, while the girls cleaned the food cupboards out and gave the fridge a rub down and managed to lose the cap from the top of the sink taps. We then cleaned the window sills and attempted to super-glue bits and pieces that had falled off during some bumpy rides back together. We ended up using hair pins to replace the missing pins from the hinges under the seats and they seemed to work fine afterwards. We had had enough of cleaning by now and Laura began to pack again, she had found so much stuff knocking about the camper that she had managed to fill her cupboards back up with crap again and her backpack was already full. She was in fits of laughter and the thought of trying to fit all the junk back in to her bag, she laughed so hard she started to cry and almost collapsed. The guys returned with the washing and Laura had another entire bag full of stuff to cram in, there's no way it was going to happen.

We walked in to town at about midday to meet up with Nikki and Pete. On the way Helen and I dropped off one of my hoodies and a load of the food we weren't going to use on a free food shelf in base and took a spoon as we were now missing one. We met them in the info site and the girls decided to go to Starbucks while the guys and I went to the Holy Grail to play some pool. The others had beers, but I decided against it as it was rather early in the day. The girls came and met us after a while and we decided to go check out the arts centre so they could purchase some souveniers. Rich ended up getting another kebab before we entered and wasn't allowed in with it. As we left we got to see another street performer doing some sword swallowing. He took ages to get to the point, but was fairly funny, he tried to get Laura to play with his boob as he took his shirt off and then asked a sneaky russion guy to confirm his bottle was glass. The russian said "I think so, but I don't trust you", everyone burst out laughing.

Rich, Pat and I went to use global gossip in Base and then used the showers. Best showers ever, loads of room to put your stuff and good screens to stop it all getting soaked, nice hot water and no time limit. Pat and I got a tiny portion of chips on the way back that seemed to strip the lining of the roof of my mouth. I used the book swap and then popped to Countdown for the last time to pick up some milk. The girls returned from their showers and we then drove to the nightly parking spot to park up for the evening. It was really cold so we were soon under our covers, napping and watching stuff on iPods while waiting to leave to go in to town. When the time came for us to go out everyone was moaning that they didn't want to get out of their beds, Laura and Helen had jeans and hoodies on under their covers and when they finally got up, they changed in to skirts and vest tops before we went outside, I have no idea how they did it, I had to wear a hoody and I was still shivering.

We arrived at Nikki and Petes hotel room and were amazed at how swanky it was. They had heating, a huge bathroom, a massive bed, and carpet on the floor. But what set it apart from all the other places we'd stayed was the toilet paper folded to a point. We went out for a meal at Sticky Fingers, after rather a long time deciding what to have I settled for the Lamb Loin ratatouille. Everyone else went for the 300g Sirloin except for Laura who chose the Cantebury Duck. When we ordered the waiter told us that as we had ordered so many steaks it would probably take quite a while to cook. The food arrived half an hour later, the steaks came first, they were supposed to come with chips but came sandwiched between a rather small amount of wedges. My lamb arrived and looked like quite a small portion, it was very tasty, just not enough of it. After the waiter had cleared the table Nikki amazed us all with her crystal clear recollection of the past 7 months storyline of Hollyoaks, while we explained in detail all the places Rich and Helen have had dodgy turds. It seemed to take forever for someone to hand us a desert menu, Rich, Laura and I went for the apple and rhubarb crumble while Nikki and Helen went for the cheescake. The waiter let us know that it would take a while to cook the crumbles as we had ordered three of them and we couldn't help but laugh as we imagined the chef cooking them in a tiny oven individually. I was expecting a tiny portion but it was actually a fair size, almost the same size as my main meal. By the time we left the place we had spent two hours there, they had such slow service.

We headed off to Base for the evening for a few beers, we were sat on some sofas for a while, the girls on one and us lads on the other. All night there were groups of guys constantly leering at the girls, they just couldn't seem to stop looking them all up and down, and they certainly weren't subtle about it. Towards the end of the night some guys started dancing like complete t*** . The beer didn't seem to be going down very well and after the second pint of Radler I had to move on to the JD and Cokes, giving Pete my thrid beer which he necked in a few minutes. It was approaching midnight and I couldn't stop yawning, Laura was the same so we ended up heading back to the camper and having a good chat in the process. The others returned shortly after and we all shivered ourselves to sleep as the temperature had plumeted to 1 degree.

03/05/09

Woke up as Rich was walking over me again to go to the loo. He got back in to bed and his alarm went off shortly after at 0715. I got up and attempted to eat as many of my remaining Weet-Bix as possible but couldn't seem to stomach many as it was so cold. I hopped back under the covers and shivered for a few more minutes until we all decided we had actually better get up. We finished packing a few more bits and pieces, made the camper safe to drive and then drove to the camp site to empty the grey water and toilet one more time. We ditched all the rubbish and then drove off towards the Airport.

We arrived at the Apollo centre at about 0915 and got fairly near the front of the queue. I asked the woman working there if we needed to leave the fuel gauge bang on full as had just dropped down a fraction as we pulled up. Turns out she's a right stroppy b****. She said we had to fill it right up so Laura and I drove off to fill it up again. It only took $7 for it to click off then we drove all the way back. When we got back she insisted that she speak to the main renter, Rich, only, we insisted that it concerned all of us and we would all like to be involved. She didn't like it one bit as we were all crowded round her desk. She then went for a look around the van to inspect it and came back saying that she couldn't find the catch to release the grey water, we told her we had literally just emptied it so it was definately there, she looked pissed off but gave in. She also said that the fuel gauge wasn't on full so made us drive all the way back to the Caltex to fill it up again, it took $2 this time, and still didn't say it was full even though we could see the diesel sloshing around the top of the tank.

We soon arrived at the problem with the missing reflector on the back of which we had no idea how it went missing, and the cracked passenger side light which Rich had broken a while ago. We said we thought someone must have driven in to us the other night while we were out in Chrischurch and she made us fill in a huge accident report form. Once we'd finished it she looked over it and then told us that we had filled the wrong one in even though Laura had asked about that to begin with. She then made us repeat it all over again and told us that there would be a $75 admin fee for it, which we complained about as we weren't told about this beforehand. During all of this she wouldn't even let us sit down, she made us stand to the side of her desk claiming that she had other peoples details on her desk that we weren't supposed to see. When the issue of the diesel tax came up she had no idea whether we had paid already or not, we decided to be just as helpful to her as she was to us and gave her no idea. She then attempted to get us to sign to say she had given us our bond back when she hadn't.

We let all the other travellers know how we felt about Apollo and told them all the best places to go and gave them a tour around the camper. The best thing that had happened all day was that we got a free taxi ride to the Airport. We arrived at the airport at about 1130 with a full 7 and a half hours to go until we could check in. We pulled a bench of seats over towards a TV screen with a load of sockets so we could charge stuff up while we waited. The girls fell asleep on the floor and we soon decided it would make sense to hunt down some decent chairs for relaxing in. We found some nice sofas and chairs upstairs near the food court and sat there for the afternoon. After a few hours of doing b***** all except wandering around food stalls and restaurants Rich and I were so tempted by pizza that we ended up getting a 15" pizza each. Everyone passing by seemed shocked to see two guys stuffing their faces with huge slices of pizza, we got some pretty funny remarks. I was stuffed after 5 slices and ended up having to give the rest away. The time was actually passing fairly quickly, they had showers in the toilets so we all decided to go for one to pass a little more time. Eventually it came to half six so we wandered down to the check in desk and sat around waiting for it to open. We each weighed our bags on the scales, mine was a record 23.7kg as Laura had stashed a load of her stuff in my bag to prevent hers from splitting. Laura and I weighed ourselves on the scales before and after having a wee, Laura lost 600g, I only lost 200g.

It was another hour long wait before we could go through customs because we had to wait until 2010 for them to open the gate and allow us to pay the departure fee. We then waited until 2200 to board the plane and off we went. They had some Stephanie Myer film on the go on the plane but the headphones were awful so I tried to sleep, unsuccessfully.