Stray fiasco!

The Stray bus was to pick us up at 7:45, so our driver, Wels comes running up the hill at  8:15, says our names, myself and Susan, a Dutch woman also on the bus. So we walk down and there is this huge white bus that says richies or something? Were like “whatever”, so we get on and the bus is packed full, only a couple seats left, with 2 at the very back where Susan and I sat down.. One of the reasons I booked my ticket was because the brochure said groups of 30 or so, the busses were small orange eco busses and their customer satisfaction is 97%. Ok, so off we go, pick up a few more here and there and we don’t have enough seats on the bus for all the people! We head to the stray office where we get briefed on the booking system and two people have to get off the bus. I hear lots of bickering and complaining from other passengers about various things. We finally get off and out of the city and stop at the supermarket to shop for the big BBQ tonight. Susan and I volunteer to help Wels shop for the BBQ. So we do that and just as we are pulling out a sign he parked to close to hits our window and SMASH!!! Our whole pane of tempered glass cracks, he checks it out, pulls a u-turn and starts back to Auckland! Then as he’s driving the glass starts to move in and out and then some off it falls into the bus, so we yell stop and we pull over and knock it all out so  no more will come in. Then he pulls another u-turn and heads back into town to go to a glass shop, of course everybody is out of town working. So a few of us put up a big piece of plastic for a quick fix. We drove another 2 hours or so with Susan and I standing up the whole time! We did finally get to our accommodation and got to go to “Hot Water Beach” for 30 minutes! A place that would need at least 2 hours to properly experience it. I made the best of it though and was 1 of only 2 that got right into it digging holes in the sand where the water coming through was super hot and made little hot tubes. I would have really liked to stay there much longer but that’s the price you pay when on tourer busses! We all had a big BBQ together that night and a few beverages. It was a very interesting day!