A British tourist remembered a little bit too late that she is hopeless at finding her way and giving directions.

Minutes after volunteering to help an American backpacker find his hostel, Caroline Gough remembered that she can barely find her own hostels, let alone other people’s.

Caroline explained: “He had just got off the bus and I heard him ask the driver where the i-site was. The driver didn’t know, but I did, so I helpfully stepped in and gave him directions.”

The situation escalated however when the boy went on to ask if Caroline knew where Swaggers Backpackers was. “I should have just said no,” Caroline said. “But he didn’t have Internet on his phone and I did, so I decided to look it up for him. I’ve got a really old phone and the maps app is no longer calibrated, so it always puts me at least two streets from where I actually am. Coupled with my amazing ability to instinctively always go in exactly the opposite direction of where I should be, I should know by now not to ever help anyone who needs directions.”

The backpackers was nowhere near any part of the town that Caroline had visited. “I just smiled a lot and tried to sound knowledgeable whilst zooming in and out of maps on my ancient phone and pointing randomly in the direction that I thought his hostel might be in. The poor guy is probably still walking around Oamaru with that giant heavy backpack on his back.”