The End of Leland

It is on a note of sadness that I must begin today’s post, with the distressing news that Leland is no longer with us… Our trusty campervan, with whom we undertook an amazing journey around the North Island (and a good portion of the South), suffered something of a fatal blow yesterday, leaving him - to make a cruelly ironic pun at his expense - in a state of shock.

To clarify the last post’s ending, it is true that whilst Emily was writing on her laptop and I was driving through the sleepy town of Rangiora on Tuesday evening, rushing to Hanmer Springs to get at least an hour’s swim in before the hot thermal baths closed, we were ushered to the side of the road by a police car. When I nervously rolled down my window to enquire what was wrong, the policewoman said someone had noted that the vehicle with our registration number was dragging a part along the floor, and invited me to take a look at something hanging down from the van‘s underside, which had been grating against the road. Consultation from roadside assistance after a brief and nerve-wracking wait (from Emily who stayed with Leland; I’d wondered off to get a Subway) confirmed that the shock absorbers on the bottom of the van had cracked at some point during our drive though the mountains, and that it certainly wasn’t advisable for us to head up to Hanmer Springs without a more thorough inspection / repair.

Miserably resigned to the fact that we wouldn’t get to swim that day after all, we booked into a campsite in Christchurch - arriving in New Zealand’s second largest city a full two days earlier than expected (four if you go by our original South Island plan). After laboriously planning and replanning our South Island itinerary, it seemed we would once again have to adjust, delaying our next few stops by yet another day, and consequently putting even more pressure on things we still wanted to do. Regardless of planning, it also seemed that all our plans were up in the air anyway until we had either got Leland fixed at the nearby Maui rental place, or replaced altogether.

(At this point I should say that although the mechanic remarked that we must have been in some discomfort, driving for quite some time without suspension, it was not a particularly dangerous breakage, and of course Emily and I are unharmed. If it weren’t for someone ringing up to say that our vehicle looked unsafe, we wouldn’t have even noticed.)

So the next day we woke up early to pack all our things away into suitcases and bags, just in case we were told there was nothing that could be done for Leland, and would have to quickly shift into an alternate campervan. This turned out to be exactly what happened, as after some confusion at the Christchurch Airport rental place (there is a queue for returns and a queue for pick-ups, but premature returns doesn’t have the same well-worn codified procedure attached to it) we were introduced to Leland 2.

Initially, Leland 2 looked to be a considerable improvement, with shiny new interiors, new sheets and blankets, and upgraded toaster and microwave facilities, whilst still being the exact same make of vehicle we had grown used to driving. Upon eventually leaving the rental place, however, some of Leland the Second’s myriad differences from its predecessor started to become apparent; the most annoying of which was a worryingly high-pitched, kettle-like whistling whenever we reached a certain speed - what turned out to be one of the rear window’s inability to close all the way, letting in air.

Nonetheless, with our new vehicle we quickly headed for Kaikoura. The little coastal town was spectacularly photogenic, perched between the Pacific Ocean on one side, the Kaikoura Mountain Range on the other, and (as the town’s tourist information told us) shielded from the rest of the South Island’s inclement weather by cliffs, thus making it wonderfully sunny. After fush & chups on the seafront, we headed up the coast to the tip of the Kaikoura peninsula - which Emily mentioned in her last post is famous in Maori legend for steadying Maui’s foot as he pulled the North Island up from the waves.

Over the course of our time in Kaikoura, we got up close to seals from the nearby seal colony, wandered through a field full of cows on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, and admired the stunning mountains as we worked our way up one of the walking trails. Finally we found one spot on the corner of a cliff to perch ourselves on, looking out over the ocean, where we stayed until the evening. At which point, we realised that the day was not yet over as a result of our delay in Rangiora, and so headed back to Leland 2 to continue.

We’ll update on the rest of the day later on…