South Island Arrival - Feb '15

A late start meant a late finish. We arrived on the South Island at Picton but had chosen to drive to Greymouth for an overnight stop so we would have more time at Franz Josef the following day. This was the least fun part of our holiday. Most of the driving was in the dark and I did miss having my driving music as there was not audio jack in the car so we made do with our phones on speaker. It was a long day and not made easier by my phone reception being patchy so that I missed the call from our hostel asking where we were.

I had booked through the BBH website and stated that we would be arriving after hours however this information had not been passed on to the hostel owner. I immediately called him back and attempted to sort it out. He was understandably less than happy but once he had sister-in-laws credit card details agreed to call back and leave a message with the door codes. All sorted we were off again only to get diverted at the last bridge. I had checked and was under the impression the diversion was the following week but obviously I had miss read the information, great. So in the middle of the night we kept driving hoping we'd get there eventually. I must admit I was stressed but mostly because I knew it wasn’t just me but my brother and sister-in-law who were affected by all this. This would be why when we arrived and my phone had no signal it took me a good ten minutes and a bit of a tantrum to think to turn it off and turn it on again. Of course that worked. Full signal, message on how to get in waiting for me and finally we were in! I used the living room to sort through my bag so as not to wake the others in our room, the others had sorted themselves in the car, and finally it was bed time.

We were so successful in being quiet the others in the room got quiet a shock at seeing us there the next morning. I went downstairs to apologise to the hostel owner who was much more pleasant once he realised it had been a genuine misunderstanding. He even recommended a place for breakfast that was unfortunately closed so we made do with a decent chain place then we were on our way. Within hours we were due to jump out of a plane so we didn’t want  be late, again!