Happy Birthday Dad!

Saturday 24th February

My dad’s birthday, a craft market in Nelson, booking to see the Whale Watching in a few days time and a long long drive inbetween wishing my dad a very happy birthday and unwrapping presents in the middle of a park with an obligatory cup of tea and biscuit. Did I not mention the detour to Nelson Lakes on the way with a scrumptious Panini lunch whilst the sun blazed down on the National Park, a walk over the longest suspension bridge in New Zealand – Buller Gorge and a drive down the wild west coast – all in one day. I have also failed to mention that we nearly ran out of petrol at Pancake Rocks. Pancake Rocks by the way was a little disapointing after last time as the sea wasn’t choppy enough so there were no blow holes and rainbows. Though what I did witness this time was a nice relaxing walk around with no tourists as we didn’t arrive until around 5pm – by which time we had ran out of petrol. So the petrol “thing”. A few Km up from our turning onto the Wild West Coast there was a petrol sign “no petorl for 87km. A bit late to tell us now we are already on the road. We plodded on anyway, running the car on economy mode (i.e. 60km / hr) and turning the a/c off. We were getting pretty low by the time we had reached pancake rocks so went into the tourist information centre to ask about petrol. Apparently next door the “wild West cafe” sold 5 litres at very inflated prices but I don’t think we cared at that point – however they were shut. In true Kiwi style the owners were sat around the back supporting a bottle or two and taking in the early evening rays of the sun. When we told them we’d ran out of petrol the guy there said it would cost us “an arm and a leg” (only one arm and one leg – not bad between us) but we needed it to stop my dad turning into Casper the friendly Ghost on his birthday. Indeed we were the 12th vehicle to run out of petrol today, and the arm and the leg translated into $3 a litre instead of the roughly $1.50 a litre charged at petrol stations. So translated back to UK £ it cost us only £3 more for this 5 litres. My dad seemed to find all this very amusing after he had destressed and onwards and downwards we went to Greymouth. More over he was amused at the story that the owner told us about one guy who asked for petrol – thought it was too expensive at $15 for 5 litres so went down the road, came back 5 minutes later saying that they were going to charge him $50 for 3 litres so he would take some. The owner turned round and told him it had gone up to $20 litres due to inflations and wars in Iraq. Small stories please small minds ey? Greymouth – renamed to Grinmouth was just that. We didnt arrive at the accomodations until nearly 8pm – myself at the somewhat harsh YHA and my parents at a hotel on the grey front. The hotel was doing a special saturday evening buffet for $25 so we opted for that as we were all hungry and it was my dad’s birthday after all. Happy Birthday dad – I know you will never forget the day we ran out of petrol.