Road Trip through New Zealand: Franz Josef to Nelson to Abel Tasman

            Once we got to Nelson we thought we would head into Abel Tasman National Park to find a nice and cheap campground. It was late but neither Amanda or I were tired but we probably should have stopped as it’s much more difficult to find your way around a place you are unfamiliar with in the dark. We ended up taking a wrong turn and were looking for a good place to pull over for the night. Amanda decided to drive up a gravel hill (even though I thought it was a bad idea), and at the top of the hill she starts to panic because she can’t see a safe/comfortable exit, so she starts reversing (not her forte). All of a sudden we end up stuck in a ditch on a 45° angle. She makes some silly requests, “can you get us out?” and “can’t we just pick the car up and move it?” I’m not friends with a dumb person, she just isn’t very competent when it comes to anything about cars, like engines, driving skill, navigation, or the weight of a car apparently. All this happens at around 11p.m.

            Amanda, being the unprepared/unorganized person she is, has no AA or any roadside assistance of any kind and she also can’t seem to find her phone. Luckily, I expected something like this to happen eventually and had two fully charged batteries for my phone. However, we were stuck in the middle of a national park in a location without any cell reception. She took my phone and walked around to find reception and called every phone number she could think of to get someone to help us find a towing company. The only person who would help was AA, but we would be charged quite a bit because she wasn’t a member, it was a holiday long-weekend (we were unaware of this at the time) and it was now after 2:30a.m.

            After a lot of negotiation back and forth, and after being stuck in the cold for over three hours, a man finally came and towed us out, and I was the one to drive for the rest of that night (with an expired license I might add). Once I got us into the next town, I parked the car in a parking lot of a public park and we slept there.

            We woke up much later than usual the next morning and headed back into Abel Tasman National Park. We got all the way into the park and after parking the car, Amanda notices that she forgot her purse, so back into town it was. We checked every stop we had made, a restroom, the gas station, etc – nada. It was then time to file a police report and hope that the person to find it would be decent. Thankfully, I had taken her passport from her at the beginning of the trip for safekeeping so at least she didn’t lose that (she had lost it in Ireland one week before her departure – she missed that flight and it was a hassle).

            We headed back into the park to kill time and enjoy the sunshine. We spent most of the afternoon at a yatch club, admiring the pretty boats and the water. We finally decided to leave and after having just passing through town the police call us, someone has found her purse and left it at a bakery near the park we were at. We turned around and picked it up – nothing was missing. We headed into Nelson and stayed at a nice hotel with a jet-bathtub and all the fancy fixings. After the kind of night and day we had, we needed some spoiling. We slept in a fabulous bed and felt very well rested and relaxed the next day – perfect for yet another day on the road.

View from Hawke's Lookout