Dealing with Bulls

4 April (and 5 April, below)

Mt Lees Reserve to Bulls / Palmerston North

KM 1442.3

Distance: 9.4km

Elevation: ascent 133m, descent 68m

Steps: 13,500

Time: 8:30am - 10:30am (Mt Lees Reserve to Bulls)

We woke up in the morning to... a slightly better frame of mind. At least we had a plan: walk in to the next town, and from there call the shop where we bought the tent and see what we could do. Since the shop doesn't open until 9am, we had time. Also, there was a heavy dew overnight, so we decided to give the tent time to dry before getting moving.

By the way, here's the problem we were dealing with: you see how the pole is sticking out on both sides, at the top? This is because the fly was the wrong size. Also, see how wrinkled the fly is? Again, this is because the fly is the wrong shape for our tent. 

We made it safely into Bulls.

Yep, the name of the town is Bulls. And they are proud of this! For example, here is a big statue of a bull, on the entrance into town. Read to the end of this post for more proof that the people of this town love the name.

The resolution:

The store agreed this was essentially a faulty product, and got into touch with the dealer/importer. We will have a way forward by tomorrow - either we exchange the entire tent with the importer; or just exchange the fly with the store. We can do these hostage exchanges by courier mail, so it should only be a day or so.

In the meantime, we've gotten in touch with family in Palmerston North, which is a 1/2 hour drive away from Bulls, and we'll get to see them and stay with them for a couple of days while we figure out what we are mailing, and where.

So we've had an absolutely wonderful night with the Palmy family - and this was a cool surprise to play on the kids, as each of them showed up at home from school, none of them expecting to see their favourite* aunt and uncle waiting there for them!

*unsubstantiated, but probable.

5 April

Palmerston North to Lower Hutt to Palmerston North (by car, don't worry!)

By 10am we'd gotten a call - we will deal with the dealer/importer directly, and we get a whole new tent (luckily this also fixes the broken pole issue). The catch? the importer will not send the new tent until they've received the old tent. So we now have to choose whether to do this by mail, and probably take about 3 days as things go back and forth... or just drive down to Lower Hutt (Wellington metro area) and do the exchange in person. The Palmy family again came to our rescue and loaned us their car for this trip! Trail Angel status achieved!

Along the way we were able to fill a craving that Eliza's had for about a week now - fresh fruit ice cream!

The new tent is with us (yes we set it up in the back yard and everything looks perfect), and we have clean clothes, and have had an unplanned, but not unwelcome Zero day. We've also gotten to see the siblings and niblings that we never get to see enough, so all things considered, it's been a good side-quest!

We are back on the trail tomorrow, with the Super Trail Angels driving us back to Bulls in the morning. We will continue on the trail to Whanganui (2-3 days), then turn around and get a bus back to Waikanae to do the Tararua section, north to Palmerston North again. From there it gets confusing, so we'll update you once we uhm... figure it out ourselves?

And now, as promised, Bulls punniness!! Try to guess the businesses represented by the three descriptions along the right. Answers below the image.

Redeem-a-Bull = a church

Inform-a-Bull = Information centre

Const-a-Bull = Police station

Even the streetside rubbish bins ask you to be Response-a-Bull!

... Obligatory bull shot.