Kāpiti Coast Adeventure

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The Kāpiti Coast

We are trying to get out of the city one day each weekend and yesterday we continued our plans to do so with a visit to the Kāpiti Coast.  It's not a great distance from Welly, about 45 minutes without stops and features some gorgeous views of the ocean and the rolling (sheep covered) hills along the coastline.  It's actually quite a stunning trip -- no surprise there.


Before diving in with brief trip highlights let me talk for a moment about how we got there.  We still have not found a decent car so we signed up for a service here called "Mevo" -- sort of a "car2Go" model where you jump in a car and rent it by the minute. It's a great concept and we were excited to get behind the wheel.


Warning: We demonstrate our general stupidity here.  The cars they use are hybrid Audi A3 models.  We have never driven an Audi before, and we have not owned a car in four years, so to say we are behind on modern cars is an understatement.  Compound that with the variances of an Audi vs. our last cars (Outback and Camry) and you have a recipe for confusion and actionable ignorance.

To begin, the whole process of reserving and unlocking the car is done via an app on our phone.  That part was cool and easy.  Get behind the wheel of this alien hybrid environment and the fun begins.  The steering console area has more buttons, levers, symbols, and knobs than a modern airliner. There were icons there I had no idea what they meant. The digital dashboard had 10 different screen views you could toggle.... it was dizzying.  Of particular note was this rather ominous "gasoline" icon that was green. Green is good?  Within moments of driving this 100% charged car we noticed that next to the green gas icon was a quickly falling Km counter.  Before we were half an hour away from home it was down to 10 Km and we naturally wondered what bad was going to happen in 10 Km?

We got off the highway and headed in search of a gasoline station worried that the car was about to run out of gas. (Note: I didn't even know this car was a Hybrid when I got in -- thought it was 100% electric.) So we were made to look for a "Z" petrol station where we could gas the car using the credit card that comes with the rental service. We finally found a "Z" stop, got to the pump and managed to squeeze $3.00 of gas into the already brimming gas tank. Obviously, the icon had nothing to do with gasoline. That fact that we waited 10 minutes to get to a pump to put virtually no gasoline in the tank was, um, dumb.

We got back on the road and watched as the ominous Km countdown got near zero.  At 1 Km we said our final goodbyes to each other in case the car exploded at "0" and then waited. Well, it turns out that the "0" only meant it would switch to gasoline power from electric power.... In summary, we are dumb, and Tesla cannot be worried about the tiny range of the Audi battery tech... again, yes, we are dumb. But we are alive!

The trip itself was fun. I'm probably as comfortable driving left on the roads as I am right but it still requires some focus for my aging brain. We finally stopped along the coast and checked out a beach area.  We were amazed to see Osteospermum flowers growing wild along the coast with all kinds of other flowers we paid dearly to plant in Illinois and Oregon. Stunning.




We left the beach and struck out looking for a seaside cafe to get some amazing seafood chowder. We eventually found a place with amazing ocean views though the food was dismal. All-you-can-eat salad bars are, in general,  warning signs of bad food ahead --  not always, but frequently.  We got back on the road and headed back toward Wellington.

Julie had one key stop in mind on our return (might be another dumb warning here). That stop, Kmart?  As someone who has gleefully spent his life avoiding Kmart I was surprised. I kept my mouth shut (seasoned, cagey husband that I am) and happily complied with her deep desire.  We bought a few Kmart-proof items and back home we went -- four hours total time... it was fun... even Kmart (pants on fire at the moment).


That's enough for this one.  Peace Out People. VOTE!

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