Picking up the motorvan

Tuesday

This was a day we would rather forget! Having had such a good reception at the hotel we went along to Maui to collect our motorvan with a spring in our step. The initial reception was good, other than an item we had ordered before leaving the U.K. could not be provided as they had 'run out'!

And it went downhill from there! We were told that as the 'van we were hiring was so new they had not had time to produce a DVD about it – presumably with all the instructions as to how things work. A young lady then took us out to our vehicle which she had brought from storage without noticing it had been damaged! Also all the locks were stiff (we won't mention about the number of keys), there was a problem with the cassette toilet and so on.

In the end they gave us a hire car so we could go back to the hotel to collect our bags and check out and then go off to do our shopping. The shopping was very interesting as we ended up at a Pack and Save (see photo) which Bert described as LIDL on steroids. We had a very educational walk up and down the aisles and in the end came out with a substantial trolley full but feeling we had at least made some progress with the day.

Maui had fixed the problems on the 'van and had replaced the two missing wine glasses (essential pieces of equipment when touring New Zealand) but could not provide us with the GPS we had been promised as the 'van was not prepared for it' so we had a lower grade model – it was not a real issue as we both know how a map made of paper works (and, sadly, old enough to have done 'proper' geography at school) – but it was the principle. Sue managed to restrain Bert but he got his revenge by ostentatiously walking round the 'van taking photographs, much to the Maui employee's concern.

Finally we left the depot and set off to work our way through Auckland's outskirts to find the motorway heading north. We were happily motoring along when we saw a sign advising of a new toll road which required us to pull off at the services and buy a ticket. We decided that we would stay there and have some lunch.

And then the next problem arose. The 'van would not start when we were ready to leave; the immobiliser light came on and would not go off. Bert called Maui and they promised to send someone out to us. Bert gave very careful details of where we were and the man at Maui seemed to understand. Two hours later no one had appeared so Bert rang again, perhaps with just a little edge to his voice, to be told that someone had come out but couldn't find us! Bert made it clear he had no wish to spend his first night in a Maui motorvan on the motorway services and was reassured that someone would be there within an hour.

We had assumed that this would be the man from Volkswagen promised at the first call but in the end it was a very nice man from the AA (New Zealand branch). He went through everything and eventually got the 'van started. He said he couldn't really understand what had happened but thought it may have something to do with VW keys being 'tuned' to a frequency very close to the NZ mobile 'phone network.

We were at last on our way again and made our way to our first campsite (we had rung ahead to explain the delay) but by this time the local eateries had closed and the lovely local meal we had promised ourselves ended up as pasta and sauce bought that morning in Pack and Save.

Oh and it had been cloudy all day!