The Road to Napier

So, the epic drive commenced. This is only the driveway to the factory (red kayak mailbox at the end of the road on the right), but already the road is steep. At this point, we are an hour away from the nearest town, and as we were about to find out, about 200km away from the nearest gas station. Half a tank of gas in the van.

At this point it had stopped hailing, but we were in the hills and our clutch started giving up. With warnings about bad brakes ringing in our ears, shifting down through the gears to control the descents was accompanied by a horrible screeching noise whenever the clutch pedal was brought back out. About 25km before this picture was taken, the petrol gauge read zero. We drove through five tiny towns, so tiny that we passed through most of them just assuming that they were just densely packed farm houses. They looked much bigger on the map but obviously didn't have petrol stations. Each one we passed through we thought of stopping and asking for fuel, but we pressed on. This was our saviour.

After about an hour on an empty fuel gauge, we pulled into Hastings and stopped at this place. Doug put 59.26 litres into our sixty litre tank. Our sphincters relaxed. After a quick cruise around Hastings we decided to make the 20k trip over to Napier, where we stayed for the next four days. It's been our favourite town so far.

More on that when we get some internet tonight, when we return to the Bliss Stick factory to make some boats!

Catch you all soon,

Sam and Doug