Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk

Last weekend I did one of the Great Walks out near the eastern coast around Lake Waikaremoana. On the way to the walk, there is a long gravel road that takes about an hour and a half long to drive down before you reach the backpackers accommodation at the foot of the trail. Halfway driving down this road, we heard a loud pop! And discovered the front left wheel of our car had hit a rock and we had a flat tire. After tirelessly trying to get the tire off, we were advised by a car passing by that the wheel was stuck on and that we needed roadside assistance. We graciously took a ride back with this man to the closest place we had service (an hour back the way we had come) and called roadside assistance who came to pick us up from Rotorua (another hour back) and drove us carefully back up the mountain to help fix our wheel and put on the spare. We ended up getting back to the vehicle at 10:30 pm and to our accommodation at 1:00am. We were supposed to arrive at 7:00pm. So much for a relaxing evening and early bedtime before starting the longest hike I have ever been on (46km total)! Not the best way to start our walk, but definitely worth all of the trouble! To top it off the roadside assistance guy told us that there would have been no possible way for us to have gotten the wheel off ourselves as two of the bolts of the rental car were broken to begin with.