Driving in New Zealand

Driving on the left!

I'm not sure where to begin this post, but I know I want to share so many things about it.  Most travelers and backpackers set out to see New Zealand by rental car or campervan.  Plenty explore by buses, but those really don't afford you the flexibility of schedules and destinations.  And with my high speed schedule I knew no bus tour would suffice.  So back in the US just before leaving for Cali I made up my mind and booked every possible car rental combination between cities for my two weeks to come in May.  I then proceeded to cancel all of them but one when I got a good feeling over Skype about another traveler and threw all of my plans back towards traveling with someone else.  But more about that (and him!) later.  For now, I just want to share what it's been like driving around New Zealand!

To preface again though, part of me had actually been looking forward to exploring New Zealand on my own and being totally independent driving on the left side of the road.  I sort of craved the feeling of accomplishment where at the end of the two weeks I could say "I did all that by myself!"  A former CSer of mine from Brazil who had studied abroad in NZ had cautioned me that the roads are really dangerous and curvy and icy and treacherous and basically discouraged me from driving by myself.   Her recommendation was the bus.  However checking weather data I couldn't possibly see how the roads could be icy in May where I was going and knowing that I am a careful driver I just really wasn't dissuaded.

And now after so many days exploring by car and campervan I know I made the right decision.  Navigating here is truly easy - on both islands in fact.  South Island has maybe only two or three handfuls of roads linking the towns on the island and they are all very well marked and signed.  (e.g. "Queenstown 70 km this way" at every single fork in the road)  You almost don't need a map.  I would declare it almost impossible to get lost!  I think we drove on only 3 main roads our entire time in South Island.  And it's a good thing it is easy to navigate without maps because my cell phone had service for only about 5% of the time we spent in the car on South Island.  No inhabitants = no cell coverage I learned.  Goodbye GPS.

Sign on Day Two Driving from Christchurch to Lake Tekapo

So while it's easy to know how to get to where you're going, it's not easy to know how long it will take to get there.  (unless you are lucky enough to be traveling with a seasoned NZ traveler who had already circled the country 3-4 times and knew it forwards and backwards.  Again, more about him later!)  Google maps underestimates driving times by about 25 -40 % and I was fortunately warned about this ahead of time.   A 225km drive that Google maps would say should only take 3 hours and 5 minutes will really take you closer to 4 hours and 15 minutes with all of the twists, turns, and hills.  The roads are really, really curvy and windy...on both islands!  We are talking about hairpin turns even at some points.  I saw/experienced 15kph caution signs on both north and south island roads which is equivalent to about 9-10 mph!  And on roads whose speed limits are normally 100 kph (62mph).  So I'm not sure Google knows how to factors those in.

Yup, 15 kph near Tongariro National Park

 Another "obstacle" slowing down driving times are all the one lane bridges, though I did rather like these!  At one point on the South Island I was ready to lay down big money declaring there must be more one lane bridges on the island than two lane bridges.  I honestly think I could count the number of two lane bridges on just my hands alone, but I think I would need about 200 people's hands and feet to count all the one lane bridges!  Admittedly, since we only encountered an opposing car maybe 2 or 3 times at the bridges I can see how there just isn't justification for wider bridges.  But regardless, you still have to slow down each and every time and check to be sure.  At some points there was a one lane bridge almost every 2 kilometers!  Which brings me to another favorite part of New Zealand... All of the names for their creeks, rivers, gullies, streams, culverts, and gulches!  Every single one is signed with a name.  Lots sounded Maori in their origin (Poka Poka Creek), plenty British, some Irish, and some even sounded Native American (e.g. Little Bend Creek).  But by far my favorite creek names were good ol' fashioned funny ones!  The winners were Stinky Creek on south island and Hungry Creek on north island.  (When you do a lot of driving every day it's these little things that really make you smile!)

This was one of very few one lane bridges with an actual traffic light at it.
This is over the Kawarau River in Queenstown.

One last word of caution about south island driving is the severe lack of gas/petrol stations.  Outside of the 3 or 4 larger cities, there are maybe only 20 gas stations.  You need to know where each one is and what time they close!  Not every town has one and when a town does have one, they have ONLY one.  If you've been driving a long time and are expecting to fill up in the next town that you keep seeing approaching signs for, you need to cross your fingers that they aren't having their tanks replaced!  To me, this was one of the first ways my eyes were opened to just how different the lifestyle is down here.  We actually had to cut short our time at Mount Cook when Erik realized we needed to make it to the next town to get gas before dusk.  I knew that New Zealand was a beautiful country and that the people were out-of-this world friendly and some of the happiest on the planet, but somehow those facts didn't translate in my mind to "small town, simple, simple lifestyles." Am I just näive?  On only day 2 of driving, I was able to conclude that I could never live on South Island because of this.  It felt rather isolating to drive into a small town at 6pm (it's dark here around 5pm at this time of year) and see all the restaurants closed too.

A few other observations from driving around the country:

--The grass really is greener on the other side of the world!  It is just so so green!  (I suppose this is what comes of so much rainfall each year!)

Escaped cow!!

--I was told there are actually more cows in the country than sheep and while I didn't believe it based on my time in south island, after seeing the north island it's much clearer to see that The Count could stay busier counting the cows.  Still though, sheep really do cross the roads and stop traffic!!  I was so excited when this happened to us on the west coast of South Island one morning!!

We were stopped for about 7 or 8 minutes while they herded the sheep about half a kilometer down the road to another pasture.  It was fascinating to watch the two dogs run around and keep all of the sheep running in the same direction.

More cows than sheep in New Zealand!

Snapshot of sunset while driving on North Island

Pinkish-blue sky at sunset another day on North Island

--New Zealand really is as pretty as they say.  Admittedly on my first two days in Christchurch and hiking around Lake Tekapo (there was sheep shit everywhere soiling the beauty!!)  I did have a couple thoughts of "Really?  People think these landscapes are that beautiful?"   The ground was really brown in the center of South Island and I was just seeing brown hills.  But by the third day I began to see what all the fuss is about and why it's worth such an expensive flight.  New Zealand is breathtaking.  While some landscapes looked a bit familiar ("these hills and lakes look a lot like the Finger Lakes!") I think what is so spectacular is that the country is just full of only the prettiest landscapes of each state and the most scenic parts of other countries all compounded together.  It has beaches, waterfalls, mountains, rivers, bays, coves, islands, forests of all climates with all types of trees, hills, fields, lakes, cliffs, and did I mention glaciers?!    Plenty of parts look like how I think Ireland and Scotland look from movies and photos I have seen.  And the sky is just beautiful too!  We didn't get full sun every day, but I was mesmerized by the variety of cloud formations I saw.  And the sunsets that I saw on north island were just gorgeous with shades of blue, purple, pink, orange and spotlights of yellow behind the clouds.  My camera just couldn't do them justice.

The Southern Alps

Aren't they beautiful???

Milford Sound waterfall

More waterfalls

The grass is incredibly green!!

Overlooking Golden Bay in Abel Tasman National Park

Lake Taupo

Whangarei Falls

Just another road in NZ

--Roundabouts are actually fun.  In a country without too many people they are also just an incredibly efficient way to manage an intersection.  No need to stop for a stop sign or a stop light if there is no one else there.  Even in busy Auckland, I found them quite nice and easy to manage.  However, in this part of the land where GPS service actually did exist on my cell phone, it's not fun to hear "the voice" repeat over and over again "continue straight through the roundabout" on roads with many circles in a row.

--And on the several day trips I did on my own on North Island where cell coverage wasn't reliable and I didn't have a map, I found that an easy solution was just to load the map and directions from google maps on my iPad before I departed and save a screen shot of it to reference as a backup if I needed.  Easy as!  (the iPad only slightly redeemed itself with this)  Note: the directions look complicated, but it's just Hwy 1 to Hwy 11.  For almost 4 hours of driving!

Backup directions on the iPad

So now just some differences between north island and south island driving- because there are some stark differences I noticed right away.  On the north island:

1.  You actually encounter other cars on the road!

This horse trailer was the only car we saw for awhile one day on South Island!

In fact, there are so few cars on the road, you can do this!

And this!

And again!!

Still, no cars!!

Do you get the idea yet??  :)

There are no cars!

2. The roads tend to have wider shoulders and sometimes even street lights

3. The land is a bit more cleared.  Slightly less forests I suppose, but not necessarily more agricultural land for animals and crops... just more cleared fields with more scattered brush.  I actually learned at the Wellington Te Papa museum that the way they cleared the land from Wellington to Napier for the train tracks was by giving free land to Scandinavian immigrants who were good lumberjacks and were willing to clear the forests.

4. The roads are flatter.  There are still hills and mountains, but fewer of them.  At first I thought there were only two small mountain clusters on north island, but then on my second to last day I drove up the Coromandel Peninsula and encountered a whole another mountain range I didn't know existed with extremely treacherous roads.  There so many sharp twists and turns so lose together that they stopped posting caution signs at each one and just had one sign demonstrating "squiggle arrow next 14 km."   Then add to that the fact i was driving in the rain by myself!  Yikes!  Still, there is certainly no giant mountain chain stretching the entire length of the island like the Southern Alps of south island.

5. You actually see "evidence of crime".  Unfortunately more inhabitants equals something else as well - more crime.  It was almost culture shock for me having spent 10 days on the south island to come to a service/gas station on the north island where their doors were locked after 8pm and they were only performing transactions through a window like a bank teller would.  That was how you could pay for your gas or buy a coca cola, but they wouldn't unlock their doors to let me use the bathroom.  You just feel incredibly safe (and alone in the peace and quiet) on south island and I guess started to take it for granted.  It was a feeling of "I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore."

6. The cars are "nicer".  I saw only one BMW on the south island on my second to last day there and it really jumped out at me.  I hadn't realized I had only been seeing campervans, old sedans, and beater cars until a BMW came around the bend in the road and passed me.

7.  Cars actually speed, whereas on the south island there is no speeding and no tailgating.  Everyone (though they are few and far between) is courteous and conscientious and lets you overtake them (if it's apparent that you are going faster) at their first opportunity to slow down and pull over on the side of the road.

But of course, these are still generalizations and probably bad ones since my time here has been so limited.  There are plenty of roads on the north island that look like ones I saw on the south island and vice versa.  Both islands are just absolutely stunning and each have their share of "jewels."   I am definitely very glad I got to spend time on both islands!