Our friends here were good to let us use their old Subaru for the last 2 trips here. When you know wheels are on their last legs last year, you come this year with a jaded eye to the survivability of that same car. In the first 4 weeks of our trip here, we funnelled 23 litres of oil into the Subaru. Up shift, down shift, any shift... blue smoke (clouds of it) came out the back end. It got so bad that the bikes on the bike rack out back were black - at first just the tires, then the frames. Sexy slick of burnt oil. With the last monsoon here we boogied back to our friends' place across island to escape the water. The trip back was wrought with coughing, kicking, back firing, you know it all. It was the palliative care trip. Last rights. It made it to the local shop where the mechanic was to do compression tests. He called our friend within 20 minutes to let him know there was none - the pistons and valves shot. He couldn't figure out how we got it going to get it in. It took 5 minutes of turning over to get it going. Hey, the starter motor's great!
So, we took the day to head in to CHCH. The internet is wonderful and it put us on to a great set of wheels. We'd wanted to buy a 4x4 van to drive since our first trip here. In fact, we bought one as an import back home and we love it. The mighty Mitsubishi Delica has joined to trip! We bought this baby today and we'll (hopefully) have it to drive the next few years here. :) For our US visitors, sorry, you can't import them to the US. In Canada, we're lucky to be able to import this line, it's fairly popular and a unique set of wheels.
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