Oops!

The day after our Tall Ships adventure we were heading down towards Auckland, then on to the Waitomo Caves, where we were meeting back up with Daniel and Fiona. As we passed about 25kms from Waiuku we decided to go and stay there again, with the hope of maybe seeing Andrew, Sam, Edward and Spencer again.

We stopped off at Pukehohe for lunch at McDonalds and Peter, Joe, Aaron and Luke stretched their legs in the play area. I headed off to have a quick look in the shops and arrived back with a game that Daniel had been looking for (Settlers of Catan) to find that David had spoken to Andy and they were at home.

We excitedly piled back into the van and started the last bit of our journey for the day, the boys were really excited about seeing Edward and Spencer again! We were heading up a big hill about 11km from Waiuku when the van suddenly cut out and we had to cruise to a stop...as soon as we stopped David realised what was wrong...we had run out of diesel!! In our excitement we had forgotton to go to the supermarket and the petrol station.

Luckily we were close to help, so I got the boys out the van (which was stopped right in a junction) and we took some toys and books out onto the rug further down the road, while David sheepishly phoned Andy to inform him of how stupid we had been and ask for help!! Andy said he would leave straight away to come and help out.

While we were waiting a passing good samaritan who happened to have a large car and a tow rope helped us to tow the van off the junction into a more safe position (we assured them we had help on the way...and neglected to mention to them that we had only run out of fuel!).

Andy arrived not long after and we got a few litres of fuel in...after a nervous few seconds the engine roared to life and we piled back into the van and headed to the nearest petrol station!

A very stupid mistake, but luckily Andy was at home and able to come to our rescue...I think we will be extra cautious with filling up the tank now!!

Some photos here.

Nic
x

PS - Photos of another excellent stay at Andrew and Sam's are here (they kindly let us park in their drive for another night...probably thought it was safer than letting us back on the road again!).