You Know You Make Me Wanna Shout!

We hadn’t heard Lulu all night, or even in the morning for that matter. I should explain that Lulu is the campsites dog. We did see her in the morning as we went to ask Colin where the McDonalds and library were in the town centre. We needed to log on and work out why the battery wasn’t being recognised in the broken netbook and those were two sources of juice we knew we could get to before we had to make it back into Wellington for the ferry and half 1. When we got to the library James clearly hadn’t seen the sign that said it opened at 10am and nearly marched straight into the sliding glass doors in front of a few locals, all eager to get their read on. When the doors finally opened we plugged in at some desks in the far corner but couldn’t get any Wi-Fi whatsoever. Had Colin been lying to us? Surely not. So we packed up all our stuff and went in search of the McDonalds or Mobil petrol station (that apparently offer free Wi-Fi) round the corner. We parked up outside the Mobil as I had managed to connect on my phone and we sat and waded through a bunch of forums all regarding “battery not recognised” or “battery not charging” and all to no avail. Soon it was time to leave for Wellington, so we would have to delay our fixing of the netbook til later.

It was a short drive down to Wellington and finding the ferry terminal wasn’t easy. Well, it was, but only because we went in the wrong entrance and ended up driving round the dock dodging all manner of vehicles and chaps with clipboards. We eventually got into the Bluebridge depot and I went to get the boarding passes for me, James and the campervan. The boarding passes were 3 lengths of plastic, two orange and one blue. I couldn’t help but think that this system would not be hard to crack if we ever needed to use that ferry again. Once on board we took a wander round the vessel and watched from the top deck as she pulled away from the dock. I hadn’t been on a ferry since 2001 and my trip to Greece, and those bad boys were an accident waiting to happen. This one seemed very sea-worthy and settled in to enjoy the 3 and a half hour journey across the water.

Leaving the North Island

After about two hours of lurching around in the open water we entered the space between the islands off the north-east coast of the south island, where the water was much calmer and even looked like glass in some places, until the hulking great ferry tore through it. Although the weather was gloomy the scenery looked amazing already and I couldn’t wait to get docked and see what was on offer. As we were arriving after 5pm we had chosen a campsite to stay at rather than try to look for a spot in the wilderness, in the dark, on a new island. It also meant that we could have another crack at fixing the netbook if we had some Wi-Fi. We booked in and parked up in what was the cheapest (by $1) campsite so far, and it got better from then on. Washing machines and dryers were cheap too, there was the usual kitchen stuff and good toilets/showers also. In addition to all that was the friendliest black and white cat (probably not called Jess) that had already jumped up into the cabin with James as I returned from reception. 

Our new friend at the campsite

All the boxes were being ticked so far. Until the woman in the main office looked blankly at me when I asked her about Wi-Fi. She had no idea as she was only looking after the place for a couple of months, and that maybe us “young ones” might have a better idea about it. Once James had got into the office and shown her how to load up the card with some credit we were away and booting everything up and charging all manner of gear. But still no joy with the battery issue. We searched and we searched the forums and Google but no joy. We couldn’t even get it connected to the internet to download ay possible missing drivers for it. And then we realised that we had an identical twin right next to it. So we went through the system recovery options, created a new image (?!) and loaded it on. It got it back online, which was one good thing. Still no joy with the battery. And after all, we needed the battery as we only had “mains” power every other day. And then we wondered if we should screw in all the missing screws that we had taken out to get the back off. We hadn’t done this as we kept needing to get in and out of it, but we thought we might just give it a try. In they went and……BINGO! Now why didn’t any of the forums say that…?

So, we were back online and both had a netbook each. We had worked hard that night and I was having a “dry night” (no alcohol) so I celebrated with some crystallised pineapple and raisins.