Day 150 Ferry Drama

6th March 2009

How hard is it to get on a coach?

Day 150

So my coach that picks me up from the hostel and goes to the ferry terminal for the ferry to the south island leaves at 7:15am... or so I thought. I got outside the hostel at 7:15am to see it drive past me. Ok so maybe I got there a little after 7:15 and I remember the driver yesterday saying they leave Wellington at 7:15 even thought I thought he was just saying that to get me there 15 minutes early (like they usually do) and I thought the actual time the coach would leave was 7:30 am. By these calculations I was about 10 minutes early for the coach. It just worried me that the coach had just driven past me and that there was no one else around waiting for a coach, well there was no one else around at all!

Getting slightly worried, I went into the hostel and asked what time the coach usually leaves. The girl behind the desk said she didn't know, but she had just seen a coach drive past. To save face, I said that it was just going to get petrol (which I hoped) even though I obviously had no idea and I had just asked about it and now I was acting like I knew what was going on to avoid the embarassment of knowing that she was thinking I had missed the coach. It was very bizarre.

I went back outside and was extremely aware that I was on my own. My ticket for the ferry, which I had bought last night, said final check in time was 7:40am. It was now 7:30am. Not bothered about losing face anymore I went back to the receptionist and asked her to call me a taxi. The taxi was at the hostel in 5 minutes, although it felt I had been waiting a lot longer. The taxi man said it would take 10 minutes to get to the ferry terminal.

I told him about how I'd been at the hostel on time and how the coach had driven straight past me and now I may miss the ferry. He seemed to be listening (a taxi driver skill?), but did not seem to share the same outrage at the coach driver as I did.

In the end, I got to the terminal and onto the ferry and was still fuming so marched over to the phones and tried to call the coach office to inform them that I had been stranded and forgotten. I frantically pressed the buttons but found that none of the phones worked, which looking back was definately a good thing as when I had calmed down I admitted to myself that the coach hadn't left early but it was I who had been late and missed the coach.