Rocky Mountain High..

Ok it’s not Colorado, but we’ve ended up in high rocky mountains, about 1 ½ hours drive from Mt Cook.
We were thinking of using “ The hills are alight..with the sound of...” but this seemed rather inappropriate as, sadly, they are alight near Dunedin at the moment, and the Fire Fighters are having great difficulty containing the blaze with the dry weather and strong winds.
So, how did we get here? It was a day of “sorting things out”! First we needed to get to the airport to collect our car.. that was easily solved with a bus from almost outside our hotel that turned up within 2 mins of us getting to the bus stop! Result! Then we got the shuttle to the hire company, and there was our nice shiny Subarau Legacy waiting for us.
Next, collect the luggage from the hotel – easy as the depot for the car was half way back to the hotel! Slight technical hitch – the car is all loaded, lights on the dashboard come on, but the engine stubbornly refused to even turn over, let alone start. Hmmm – immobiliser? Maybe, so we phone the car hire company...no immobiliser, just you need to have your foot on the clutch to start the engine – presumably so that our American friends, being largely used to automatics, don’t start with the car in gear! Hey ho, all sorted .
Ok, into town to sort out misbehaving tent poles (there is a branch of the same store that we bought it from, and M still has the receipt - phew!) Not so easy, as they want to send the poles back while we wait three days for them to be returned. We explain patiently that we can’t wait three days – the tent is our accommodation. They seem to want to send them off regardless, when M comments that it’s a pity the shops here don’t operate the same way that they do under English law, where the shop itself is liable for faulty goods, and is required to provide a refund or replacement. At this point, the young man serving us goes off to talk to his manager..we get the impression that the shops here should work that way too as suddenly a replacement tent is offered!
The only drawback was, being the end of the season, they don’t have an exact replacement, so we now have a little more room, as we’re in a brand new 4 man version of little tent. It did cost us NZ$ 70 extra, but that’s far cheaper than even one night in a motel, and the extra space is good – we just hope we don’t get cold!
It’s now Thursday morning – we didn’t get cold – although the thermals did get used for the first time last night (well, we are over 2000’ up in the mountains!) . It’s a gloriously sunny morning and we sat there having our breakfast enjoying this wonderful view. we could be in a fancy motel...but I'm sure I'd ratherbe here, in the sun seeing all this - there's nothing like it. There is talk of coffee at the Mt St John Observatory – 300m higher than we are now – sounds cool to me.