Day 156: 92 Bridges and a Naughty Nav

High Point: The arrival of the Abela duo

Low Point: K-Bart’s navigating

No Point: K-Bart’s navigating

Fact: New Zealand has a LOT of bridges. We thought we’d see how many there are between Franz Josef and Queenstown (it was a slow start to the day). Ladies and Gents – would you believe there are about 92. I say ‘about’ as I think I missed a couple when I was being shouted at to hurry up and play my go on risk (thanks Chris). Anyway…Day 156 started with yet more rain – in Franz Josef they were expecting 20mm per hour so we got out of there early bound for Queenstown. I was on navigation duty and knew there were 3 key rules: 1) know your route 2) make sure the drivers swap every hour 3) know the address of your accommodation.  From 20 minutes in it really wasn’t going well for me. Mistake 1: Not giving Amy any direction and not telling her that she was driving the wrong way. The goading in the fire engine often gets silly and from this moment it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be an easy day for me. Mistake 2 wasn’t too far off – I’d previously told Amy that the drive to Queenstown was about 250 km so after a good 2.5 hours driving when I saw a sign for Queenstown…280 km away I knew I was in trouble. It turns out I’d looked at the wrong box on the distance calculator. Schoolgirl error. My nav skills were being brought into question now. Mistake 3 was that over 7 hours driving, there had only been 3 driver changes – the crew were now considering an EGM (Emergency General Meeting) to discuss my performance. Luckily for me the scenery on the drive to Queenstown is stunning with mountains, rainforest, wetlands and enormous lakes so the crew were easily distracted from the mess that was my navigation.

The need for the EGM was confirmed when the crew realised that I had no idea where our accommodation for the night was (thank you Amy for helping me here!). We did eventually reach our destination though so I don’t think it was all that bad…I know I need to improve though and that I’ve let the crew down, I’ve let Martha down and I’ve let myself down. All in all it was a terrible day for me. Must do better next time.

The towns on this route were few and far between but we did manage to spread the FTFE word along the way. It really is lovely how generous and interested people around the world are. We reached Queenstown (Steve’s favourite place in the world) in time for a trip up the Skyline cable car and a few runs on the luge. Having 4 rather competitive crew made for some gnarly racing – and some interesting finishing line photos. I looked like a very angry 4 year old, Amy looked as if she was on a Sunday drive and Steve and Chris looked more and more angry on every run. The final score for the men: Chris 2 – Steve 3 and for the ladies, the lovely Amy stormed to victory 3-1. Bad, bad day for me.

After the racing was done it was a real treat to meet up with the Abelas who are joining us on the fire engine from Queenstown to Auckland and after filling them in on all FTFE news it was time for me to fall asleep at the table for the 3rd night in a row and call time on day 156. We all needed our sleep…Queenstown is the home of the bungee. Big day tomorrow!

K-Bart

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