Bad weather in the mountains, alone and running low on fuel - Series Land Rover Adventure Vlog #11

No such thing as bad weather. Well tell that to the ones who stay home. Got no one to go with? Go alone. Ben had made his biannual trip across the ditch, so naturally we were out for a jaunt in the old Landy. These trips were becoming a bit of a tradition for the two of us. I guess it comes down to our shared love for being outside, cool old Land Rovers, and the incredible natural beauty of New Zealand. Ben had been there when the piston rings finally gave up on the little Land Rover engine, and he'd also been there for its maiden voyage back into the backcountry, post-engine rebuild. Today we're heading to a place that has eluded me for a while, the Canterbury River Valley called the Wilberforce. This is a part of New Zealand that reminds me very much of Scotland, especially in winter. Unfortunately everybody I asked to join us on this wet weather mission was conveniently too busy. Still learning to trust the Land Rover post-engine rebuild, we had decided to go it alone. No company and no support vehicle. Driving off into the wilderness in stormy weather, in a cantankerous 60-year-old Land Rover, might sound like a slightly stupid idea. Feel free to light me up about it in the comment section. Bit of a rainy day. Thought we'd drive up the Wilberforce River, but we're not sure about it now. We're gonna go have a look though. No such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. That's what the Germans say. There is such thing as heavy rain warnings though. Especially in the National Park, where streams become rivers and dozens of new waterfalls can spring from the mountainside within minutes. I guess you could say heavy rain warnings got me into four-wheel drives. I hydro-locked my first car in a swollen Ford, trying to leave the National Park after going for a hike during a heavy rain warning. Not my cleverest moment. I didn't know much about combustion engines back then and I had tried to cross the Ford too quickly. The resulting splash sent water straight into my air intake and I'm pretty sure I bent a conrod. I'm basing that purely on the loud bang that occurred. The engine cut out and wouldn't start again, leaving my girlfriend and I stranded in the middle of the river and water was starting to come in. As luck would have it, a group of young farmers were right behind me in their trusty Hilux. They helped me to get my car out of the river, but the engine was toast. We threw our packs into the back of the ute and squeezed into the back bench seat with two others. It was a tight fit for the drive back to Wanaka, but I was very grateful. After that, I decided I was not going to get caught out again. The Land Rover didn't come along till much later, but that's when the seed was planted. I wanted a vehicle that wasn't going to be bothered by a little bit of water. In spite of all the trips that were done together, Ben had actually never driven the Land Rover. So after a 10 second rundown on the labyrinth that Land Rover called a gearbox, I pointed him at the river and left him to it. Just getting the shot, you know. Some people are quite committed. Trying to get us lost, mate. That's right. Little did we know, we were already lost. And due to a miscalculation on my behalf about the rate at which the Land Rover likes to consume petrol, we had already burned through an entire tank and we're now working our way through one of my jerry cans. There are normally two jerry cans, but I forgot the second jerry can. Well, I feel like we're not on the track. The track's on the other side of the river that we crossed. There's like a small track that kind of goes along beside the station track. Apparently this track's taking us towards the main Liverpool Riverbed. Yeah. So we're lost. Well, yeah. A little bit. So we're actually a little bit strapped for fuel and we're lost. So it's kind of late in the day. We're on our own. We've kind of made the decision we might just backtrack because there is a chance that overnight those rivers are going to come up and ending up having to do lots of dodging deeper parts and it just means you could get lost a lot more easily and end up burning lots of fuel trying to find the way back. I have a second jerry can too I could have brought but I didn't bring it. And so here we are. So given that situation we're basically just going to focus up and try and get out of here and try and get back to a fuel station and not run out of fuel. Dutch wood. That's why I put the wooden ceiling in. So we're supposed to be heading somewhere over there. Admitting defeat is never easy but we were out of options thanks to me. But at least we tried and we'd had a brilliant time of it splashing around in the river in an old Land Rover. But it wasn't over yet as the weather closed in around us. We had a long and lonely ways to go back but on the topic of vehicles not minding a little bit of water we were almost back to a proper road when the truck started to hesitate. I suspected it was a fuel mixture issue as I'd been struggling to get the carburetor mix screw set correctly ever since the rebuild and I thought maybe the colder weather was exacerbating the problem. Luckily though the engine seemed to dry itself out which leads me to think it was perhaps some damp electronics. I later discovered that I had a completely clogged idle jet which was causing a whole set of problems. Either way we made it back to the tarmac and eventually the fuel station and eventually the drive-thru. So yeah a little bit of a failure this time but any time you get out is a win. Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next one.