The weather this morning matched our mood: It was raining, fog was hanging everywhere. Still, we had a shower and (freshly cleaned up) we had a mission. Today, we would use the charged starter battery for as long as it would run, no stopping, to make it as close to Wanaka as we could get. At least halfway, so that the AA would have to tow us to Wanaka instead of back to Haast.

The first half felt quite tense. It was also hard on the kids, especially Number 3 was worrying a lot. After Haast pass, the tension started to ease…we would definitely be towed to Wanaka now. Also, we left the clouds and the rain at the west coast. Going down along lake Wanaka, the sun was shining. Oh, Wanaka, why are you so pretty?!? I was quite sad that we couldn’t stop at any of the lookouts or walks, it all looked so wonderful in sunshine. We crossed over to Lake Hawea which was equally marvellous.

We got something better though. Timmy lasted us all the way to Wanaka! We even managed to get a powered site at a campground before the battery was completely drained. In the end, trusty Timmy got us the 140km to where we needed to go. As we had to get here in one go, it was only lunch time. It being Sunday meant that we had a whole afternoon in Wanaka to fill with sunshine and fun before any workshops would open up again tomorrow.

That’s what we did. We hung out at the lake, had a splash, relaxed and treated ourselves to a lovely dinner at Kai whaka pai in town.

Monday morning came around. Now we needed a real fix for Timmy. Our hopes sank again. Nobody was able to check out our problem with the motorhome until the middle of next week. By this time, I already needed to be in Dunedin to research. Around 10am, Flo’s luck in talking to any mechanic in a 50km radius was turning. A workshop in Queenstown offered us an appointment on Wednesday! Not nearly what we had hoped for but much better than waiting for another week. That settled things…we would spend another day in Wanaka, today, and then go to Queenstown tomorrow. Two days in Wanaka and two days in Queenstown sounded like a holiday rather than a wait for a mechanic.

Since it had gotten very cold overnight (seriously Wanaka, 27 degrees yesterday and then just 2 degrees at night? What is up with that?), we spent the morning in Puzzle World, walking the gigantic maze and doing the 8 illusion rooms. In the afternoon, the kids spent a lot of time on the playground and we walked to see #ThatWanakaTree.

In the evening, the kids befriended another German kid on the campground’s playground so that we had lovely company and good conversation for a good long while. 🙂