Hola, my peeps!
It’ll probably be Sunday when this posts (for all you statesiders), as I don’t have reception right now, parked on a forestry pullout off a dirt road just outside Abel Tasman National Park.
Woke up pretty late today, I think, after another night of really vivid dreams. I can’t remember what they were at this point, but they’ve been pretty vivid the last couple days
Sun was up and hot. We’d parked next to a hill, but it was late enough that the sun was already over the hill and beating down on the car.
I spent a little while walking up and down the road (which was out in the middle of nowhere) working on my blog posts for the last couple of days, trying not to get behind again.
It’s a lot easier to stay on track with the girls gone not traveling with us, not seeing them first thing in the morning and late at night.
Anyway, so i wandered up and down the road, and then i spent some time picking up trash, getting a pretty decent bag full.
I wish they would make a provision for freedom campers that they could stay in the designated self-contained areas even if not self contained if they pick up any trash they can find in the area, up to one bag.
As I’ve mentioned, I try and leave every person and every place better than i found them, and if we all did that, then it would be fantastic.
What else…
Oh! I went to cook my breakfast (oatmeal and bananas) on the engine this morning, and i found that we’ve been leaking coolant even more. We were starting to get to the level where we could have overheated.
Gratefully, we didn’t. But i put in about a liter and a quarter of straight water to get us back to topped off, and instead of heading to our next vacation destination, we headed into the nearest town (Richmond), which was about an hour away.
We went to RepCo, bought oil and an oil filter to do an oil change. We bought concentrate coolant to fill the system with. We bought an air filter m, two different kinds of stop leak, some silicone sealer, and some epoxy–crossing our fingers that one of those would work to stop the leak (there’s more than one leak, but the other, for now, is almost nothing.
From there, we went to a noodle restaurant for Chase.
Then we headed over two the Super Cheap Auto store (the other major parts store in the area). They recycle the used oil we found out, so we swung by and began the saga of fixing the car.
I didn’t want to buy an oil drain pan, so Thomas, one of the workers at the store there grabbed me an old empty oil container which i cut one side out of in order to make a drain pan out of it. I had to buy a ratchet and socket set as well (this time a 3/8ths set), so i could get the oil drain plug off.
We’ve spent so much money in car stuff so far. 🙃 It’s just been basic things, but good gravy stuff is expensive here.
To give you an idea, Mobil 1 oil (a five-quart jug) in the U.S. is about 40ish, i think? Here it’s like $60-70. One 5-liter jug of coolant was like $50.
That’s crazy money (and those are US dollars).
Thinking that if the parts and supplies and tools costs were so crazy high, I wondered what the shop rates might be. I figured around $120-150 an hour maybe, but no! It’s like $40/hr for shop labor!!! (in US dollars). You can’t even make a living at that. The poor mechanics themselves getting like $18-22/hr.
That’s… awful.
I guess I won’t be starting a car repair business here, not that i was anyway. 🙃
Anyway, i drained the oil. Chase removed the super-stuck-on oil filter (jamming a screwdriver through the side and twisting off, still with significant effort).
He replaced the air filter as well while i fought with the coolant leak. I found a bad o-ring was the main culprit, but a new o-ring wouldn’t seal it.
I lost an o-ring in the radiator that’ll be there… Until the radiator is replaced. 🙃 Eventually, I coated the leaking piece with silicone sealer, put it back together, waited a good long time for it to set, and then we were off!
By the way, Thomas, the Super Cheap Auto store guy was awesome.
From there we headed up toward Abel Tasman National Park, stopping off at a swimming hole that turned out to be amazing.
It was just a river, but there was a bend in the river with some sandstone cliffs, crystal clear water, rock ledges, and… the river rocks. I don’t… I mean… how on earth geologically can there be so many different kinds and colors of stone in one river bed?
The whole bed was probably 100 to 150 meters across, and mostly it was just rounded smooth rock. And no joke, it was like a freaking rock garden. It was amazing. I was just blown away. So. Many. Different. Colors. And so many patterns and designs. It was just–so beautiful!
I figured I’d take advantage of the opportunity and take a bath, so i grabbed my biodegradable soap, and took a nice river bath–my absolute favorite way to take a bath.
From there, we tried to go to a huge cave, but we didn’t get there until 9, and it was an hour walk to get to, so we left, looking for a place to sleep for the night. it took a little while, but we found one, and here I am writing this.
Health updates: shoulders bad still, left one maybe worse? Nearly three weeks later, left hip is still pretty bad. Doesn’t seem to have healed really at all. 2+ weeks later, my ribs are still super bad as well.
The old broken man here.
What else… oh, i made some decent progress on sales tax stuff. That was good. Need to get that done in the next couple of days.
I know there’s more… Oh yeah, stomach issues are really bad. I’m trying to get the issues figured out. So far the only thing i seem to be able to eat without issues are oatmeal with bananas in it.
The rest seems to be giving me issues. Gonna try again tomorrow to see. Wish this were over getting nervous this could turn into something major.
Oh well.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 