copland track and the death of Lucille

Click here for the full album of our Copland Track weekend.

The weekend began with us waking up to go to Tunnel Beach to watch the sunrise.  This was part of a plan that Alex has wanted to do all semester: watch the sun rise on the east coast and set on the west coast.  Six thirty am came around way too quickly, especially since we had gone out the night before to show Spencer some Dunedin nightlife.  But we got up and went anyways and it was worth it, even though we just watched the sky get lighter and didn't actually get to see the sun rise over anything because it was cloudy.  But we decided it still counts.  We got going later that morning and headed out for our trip to the west coast to hike part of the Copland Track.  This track is actually really neat because it used to be the main pass to be able to get from the west coast over to the east coast of the south island.  Click on the map to the right to maximize the image to see the arrows i've inserted to show how much we had to drive to get from Dunedin to the west coast side of the track (about 7 hours driving)...so you can imagine why it would have been much more efficient back in the day to travel the track (where the red circle is) before roads were built.  And to add some more perspective, this track ends about where Mt. Cook is, which is right near where we hiked the Mueller Hut Route at the beginning of the semester.  Anyways, we drove through Wanaka on the way, which will be significant later in our weekend adventure.  In Wanaka we picked up one more passenger: Sarina from Switzerland.  Long story short, we met her on the ferry ride back from Wellington back during break and she'd been around Dunedin the previous few days and was keen on coming with us.  So Lucille was now hauling me, Spencer, Alex, Paula (first tramping trip for her - woot!), and Sarina.  And we were meeting a few other friends who drove separately.  We made it to the west coast around dusk and stopped by Haast Beach around sunset-time, where we watched the clouds grow dimmer as the sun set behind them, once again counting this as seeing the sun set on the west coast.  For the rest of that evening we hung around Haast waiting to find Alex's parents, who were flying back to the States the following day and wanted to say goodbye to him.  Turns out that communication gets interesting when one party doesn't have a cell phone (parents) and the plan was just to meet in the town of Haast at sunset.  We made tacos for dinner in a random parking lot.  We watched Paula dump tack powder mix all over herself on accident, which was really hilarious.  We waited for a while longer and then just decided that we would need to continue on to Copland since we didn't know where the Moores were and had no way of getting a hold of them.  But fortunately we did end up running into Alex's family at a gas station just up the road...New Zealand feels huge sometimes but can be a pretty small world.  After that i drove us to the base of the Copland Track, where we camped and woke the next morning to a clear day and the sun rising on a nearby mountain peak.  After a breakfast of oatmeal (which i am very sick of after this semester, it has been our camping staple) we started out on our tramp.

our campsite at the base of the Copland Track

my tired feet and the view from the pools

Our first task, about 3 minutes into the day, was to cross a river, which obviously made us all feel pretty legitimate as trampers.  The hike up to the hut was really phenomenal, a great choice to take Spencer on, as we saw mountains nearly the whole time we hiked.  We crossed many a stream and several rivers and i now consider myself a talented swing-bridge-crosser.  There were a few active landslide areas which added a bit of danger to our tramping expedition.  After about 6-7 hours we arrived at Welcome Hut.  It was about as happy as it sounds and a really nice hut.  The best part: natural hotsprings just a few minutes walk from the site.  We had heard about these before coming on the trip and they definitely provided some motivation : )  Water naturally bubbles up from underneath the earth's surface at 54 degrees C, which is about 130 degrees F.  The water runs in little routes into 3 different pools of varying temperatures.  The hotpools were sooooooo neat, i loved chilling (no pun intended) in them after our many hours of hiking; it was a great end to our day.  The hut ended up being totally full that evening, and we got there right before it filled up, whew.  There was a crew of Uni students that also hiked it that weekend and they spent the whole evening at the pools drinking like fish.  Now, i'm no fan of abusing alcohol, but is anybody else just impressed that these guys and girls hauled that much booze on the track??  I mean, Copland isn't a ridiculously difficult hike, but hard enough that i wouldn't want to add any extra weight to my pack.  I was pretty amazed, but they were Otago students, so no shock there.

On Sunday morning we got up to see the sun shine on the mountains and then got moving to head back down the track.  We could have continued on to the east end of the track and ended up in Mt. Cook National Park but didn't have that much time and weren't sure about weather farther up, as it becomes more technical and exposed.  Everything was even more beautiful in the morning: the mountains and the rivers and the hotpools.  Check out some pictures of the track:

note the intense blue of the glaciated river water! 

Paula and I on the way in

yet another swingbridge, the longest one

the crew L-R: Sarina, Spencer, myself, Alex, Paula, Ruby, and Dana, at Welcome Hut

So we finished the hike and re-crossed the river and arrived back at the car.  It wasn't long until we all began to be eaten by the sandflies.  I did feel bad for Spencer, who had not yet experienced the satanic creatures, but a small part of me was glad that he could no longer think that i was exaggerating how miserable they are.  And we had another situation of needing to drive fast down the road with all the windows down while we massacred so many of the buggers.  At least this time we better knew how to handle it though, as we weren't taken by surprise...they had all gotten in the car while we were packing all of our junk into the back.  We dealt with them and continued on our way to Wanaka, where we planned on finding a good spot to camp and go to a really cool dinner-and-a-movie place that evening.  WELL, that didn't end up happening.  We were about 40 kilometers outside of Wanaka when Lucille started making an odd sound under the hood.  We turned down the music and listened more carefully but there were no warning lights and the temperature showed as normal.  We had made sure to check the oil and coolant before we left the base of Copland, so we knew that should be fine.  A few minutes went by and then, all of a sudden, the temperature spiked from just below halfway on the gauge, where it usually sits, to above the red, totally off the scale...and this change on the gauge happened in about 5 seconds.  It was a 'crap we need to pull over right now' moment, that's for sure.  Alex pulled off the side of the road right away and Lucille took the liberty of shutting herself off.  Now before i explain any further, let me just say how thankful i am that after this big problem with Lucille pretty much everything seemed to work in our favor...well all except for the car herself.  God was most certainly watching over us real closely that night.  So it was Sunday evening about 8 o'clock at this point and i hadn't had service at all since the last time we left Wanaka several days prior.  Alex and Spencer let Lucille cool down because she was REALLY hot and then they checked the oil...which was nonexistent.  Yep, no oil.  So that would explain the odd noise earlier, which was the oil-less engine still trying to run.  We were so perplexed at how in the world Lucille had no oil, as we had topped it up just hours before.  The coolant chamber was still too hot to check.  During this time of being broken down on the side of the road i was amazed at how many people stopped to check that we were ok...car after car pulled off to see if they could help us out.  Alex hopped in with a nice indian guy to go to Wanaka where he planned on getting some more oil and finding Esther, who is Sarina's friend, and the two of them would come back and meet us in Esther's van.  It was a huge blessing to have Spencer around (for more than one reason : ), as it made the situation a whole lot better having 2 guys and him to stay with Sarina and i while Alex went to find Esther.  While he was gone Spencer continued to try and figure out where all of the oil had gone; he spent a lot of time laying on the ground watching for the oil that we just dumped in to be leaking out onto the ground below the car, but nothing.  Eventually it was cool enough for us to open the radiator (it too was empty) and put more water in.  We periodically turned Lucille back on and watched for the temperature to rise, which it did each time.  We recognized that this meant we couldn't try driving her until we got it checked out by a mechanic.  It was about 45 minutes from there to Wanaka, so we figured we might as well try to save some time and arrange a tow-truck before Alex and Esther came back.  Another great blessing was that Spencer is a AAA member back in the states and apparently that carries over to AA (the NZ version) here.  Another thing to be thankful for: if we stood in this one particular spot along the road i could get one bar of service on my phone, enough to have a patchy conversation with the AA man and get the tow-truck to come meet us, and for free because of Spencer's AAA.  Not too long after that Alex and Esther arrived in Esther's van and then the tow-truck came.  The mechanic was friendly and nice but didn't give us any false hope when we told him about the engine knock and the overheating and lack of oil.  He told us that he would haul it back that night and then look at it the next morning.

We got into Wanaka around 11 pm and hung out in the hostel where Sarina and Esther were staying.  Then Alex and Spencer and i opted to go and sleep in the van because we really didn't want to spend money to stay anywhere.  Any type of camping, including car camping, is illegal pretty much everywhere in Wanaka because they want you to stay in the accommodation.  We basically just drove across the road though and slept in the van in the public carpark near the hostel and came back over to meet the girls in the morning.  We were severely scolded by two hostel guys when they found that we weren't guests staying there.  While i want to make excuses to defend myself by considering our circumstances and the fact that we ate all of our own food, etc., i do get why they were irritated, i would be too if it was my facility.  ANYways, we left shortly after that and went back to car mechanic man, who told us the solemn news: Lucille was toast.  In a nutshell, there was a fluid leak at one of the piston heads (which we were obviously unaware of) and the leak caused a lot of pressure, which busted the coolant hose, probably sometime shortly before we started hearing the engine knock the night before.  The hose issue drained all of the coolant out of the chamber and the engine started overheating, which then got hot enough to burn off all of the oil, which explains why there was none left when we checked, and thus the intense overheating.  The guy told us that we would basically need a new engine if we wanted to keep the car, which is just a little out of our price range.  I sure wish that the warning system would have been functional though, as we might have been able to salvage her had we known the issues earlier.  But we are all convinced that Lucille committed suicide, so it makes sense that she didn't warn us.

our memorial service for Lucille.  cross dedicated by Sarina.

So now what, we asked.  The mechanic told us that there is an autowrecker in Cromwell, which is about 50 km away, that will take the car but wouldn't give us anything for it.  But, he said, there is another place in Alexendra, which is about 100 km away, that will junk it and also give us some money.  Obviously we wanted to get her to the latter option, so we went with that.  It would cost money to have her towed so we inquired about driving Lucille there.  The guy said that it would be possible, but that basically as soon as we refill the radiator with fluid it begins leaking out.  We could drive her as far as possible until we saw the temperature spike and then pull off the side of the road and let her cool and then refill again.  It was quite hilarious, really, driving towards our destination and having to stop about every 15 minutes and let her calm down.  Spencer got to drive her a lot of the way and we stopped for Alex to jump off a big bridge into the water (obviously) and we did eventually make it to Alexandra.  We talked to a guy and he offered us $400 for her, which was more than i'd expected for having a shot engine...we accepted immediately.  It was hard to walk away from our dear Lucille but she lived a good life.  And i have known this whole time that i wasn't guaranteed to to have her last the whole time; it's always been a possibility that i wouldn't get my money back.  I still hold firm, though, that it was the right decision to buy her and have her for most of the semester.  I have no regrets in our decision to invest in Lucille.  We had a good time with our farewell to Lucille photo shoot too.  After we left the junkers Spencer and i caught a bus back to Dunedin and Alex hitched back the next day.  And thus concludes our first big weekend adventure together : )

Spencer and I at the hotpools in the morning