instead of sitting there with the inside light on for another hour!! We did have AA cover, but didn’t want to call them out as it wasn’t fair on the people we’d hired the van from, as it was our own fault!! We tried to push the van ourselves but it was uphill and just too heavy. Deciding that the only thing to do was to wait until later on to see if more people arrived, we set off for a walk up the hill to have a look at the sounds, and suss out the weather before making our mind up about the boat.

We walked uphill for about fifteen minutes and got to the ridge that runs between Kenepuru and Queen Charlotte Sound. It was where the Queen Charlotte Track ran, a long distance path which takes 3-5 days to walk. There were pretty good views across a few of the Sounds, and we decided that the weather was fine enough that we could go and hire our little boat and see some of the surrounding area

from the water. Arriving at the shop the lady said that we could have the boat for the afternoon, and after sorting out money and buoyancy aids, announced that she was just waiting for the boat man to come back from lunch and that he should only be ten minutes. No problem we thought, until we then waited for half an hour with no sign of him. She then announced that he’d actually gone on lunch late, and would be a further 15 minutes. We were fairly grumpy, as the sun was shining, and we were missing the best part of the day, but we said ok. When he still wasn’t there after another half an hour, we decided that enough was enough, and we would just have our money back and do something else, as some cloud had started to come in, and we weren’t sure about the weather holding. The really annoying thing was that the woman told us that she knew how to set the engine up on the boat, and everything that was needed, except what mix of petrol and oil to put in it!! I politely suggested that maybe she should