Due to fly back tomorrow from my New Zealand driving holiday. Just a few notes of my experiences:
1. Possums, rabbits and hares don't know the Green Cross Code. It is a massacre on the road, any and every road! Whole families......gone!
2. As a result of (1), birds of prey do not need to hunt. Fresh and steaming hot road kill is abundant. In fact, birds of prey stand their ground as a car approaches.
3. Most drivers stick to the speed limit, and on NZ roads, 100kph seems fast enough.
4. However, death toll seems to come from lack of attention rather than speed. I think lack of dual carriage ways on major roads like state highway 1 plays a part. People seem to drift on other side of road on bends. Read of at least 7 or 8 deaths whilst here.
5. Driving the South Island, (population 1 million but bigger than England) is fantastic for scenery and believing you are in the only motor vehicle in the world. Set off from Twizel to drive to Christchurch this morning at 7am, didn't see a single other car until 8.30am ! Mt Cook was breathtaking at dawn break with reflected sun on the snow capped summit. Hard to keep eyes on the road!
6. Mobile phone signal is patchy, and in remote areas, non existent. Car radio reception poor. Many miles covered in silence.
7. Gas stations far and few between and not open early, so fill up night before long journey and early start.
8. Excellent independent cafes serving great coffee and food on main trunk routes.
9. excellent motels with large room, kitchen, bathroom for less than 50 quid a night! Sign up to travelbug.co.nz to search and book, they seem to offer best motels at good prices.
9. Speights Old Dark is a nice beer after a long drive!
10. Road works start at the point road works are needed, i.e. none of this coned off nonsense for 20 miles before (like you get in UK)
11. They sure like their 4x4's over here and they especially love their Subarus! Saw lots of Jap cars of model types I have never heard of before. Lots of old cars here.
12 Hired a car from Ace rentals for £350 for 3 weeks. It was a white 1.5 Corolla auto. It was a heap of fun. Sounded like a bag of nails at start up, hated hills, I managed to open the boot every time I got out the car by catching my right foot on floor mounted boot opening lever. Funny at first....infuriating later. However, did 3500km in it and it didn't let me down. On kick down, the cog fairy in the auto box loaded a few cogs onto the fire, the car screamed like a banshee but with no discernible increae in speed. Worrying up hill with a double trailered Mac truck hauling a whole forest, hanging 3 inches from up your jacksie, hooting and hollering!
13 West coast lakes, river areas full of biting sand flies. Am covered in bites. They are dreadful.
In all, it was a brilliant and relaxing motoring holiday. Loved it. Dread getting to Heathrow tomorrow and hitting the M25.
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An accurate description of South Island driving. North Island is a bit more hairy, and in Auckland you would feel quiite at home.
You were lucky with the sandflies. The buzz that you hear before they attack is the swarm discussing whether or not to drag you back to the nest to share with the others. Being greedy, they usually eat you in situ.
Our elderly car situation is because the Government some time ago allowed open slather for importing used vehicles, so various organisations set up used-imports from Japan and other Asian countries. All legal, as long as they pass the 6-monthly warrant of fitness test [ our equivalent to your M o T.]
Possums and rabbits are legally pests, so the more you can road-kill, the better.
Glad you enjoyed the driving.
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Double trailered Macs.........
A bit closer to home, I drove across Sweden in 2000. They have their own Road Trains - an artic towing another trailer. They can be a bit hairy when you are committed to overtaking and then realise the thing is twice the length you thought........
These rigs are not allowed out of the country. After joining the EU it seems they were allowed to hang on to their own regulations.
I remember seeing adverts for mopeds available in both EU and non-EU spec.
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"They have their own Road Trains - an artic towing another trailer. They can be a bit hairy when you are committed to overtaking and then realise the thing is twice the length you thought........"
That's correct. I think the max length is 30 metres, and max weight 50 tons. But they're allowed up to 60 tons due to the unpredicatable weight of trees.
When the national industry is timber, you have to have an efficient way of moving it around, and stuff the EU rules.
An EU moped is a regular one limited to 50kph. A non-eu one is limited to 30kph, doesn't need registering as such, and can be ridden at a younger age. They're usually like a bicycle with a diddy engine.
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Ah - That would explain why the Swedish spec ones were half the price!
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tack, glad you had a good time, NZ is a wonderful place sandflies aside!
We had very similar experiences with the driving - might have even also used ACE but it makes one think one doesn't need an Audi S8 to get around.
We're just coming back from a long weekend in the west coast of Ireland - saw this, thought it was funny but didn't want to start own thread, apolgies for hijacking etc.
Coming through a village downhill towards a bend, the word SLOW was written across the road as you might expect. What I liked was 50 yards further down, offical writing on the road said SLOWER. You have to admire the sense of humour!
vbr
Lee
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Agree with above. NZ is great - we spent just over a fortnight there last month. We were very lucky with the weather, even at Fiordland (Milford Sound) where apparently it rains 200 days of the year.
Wonderful scenery, especially in the South Island: it is of course unique but there were some reminders of north Northumberland and parts of the Scottish Highlands. Glenorchy, west of Queenstown, even sounds Scottish - Scottish settlers no doubt, as with Dunedin (= Edinburgh). Lake Wakatipu on the road to Glenorchy was very reminiscent of one of my favourite Scottish lochs - Loch Carron (up the hill from Kyle of Lochalsh).
About 90 % of cars seem to be Japanese: a few German wagen but very few French or Italian, and a very occasional ancient Rover. New Zealanders, like South Africans, tend to go for reliability rather than image of performance, the latter not surprisingly given the 100 kph speed limit. I was stopped for speeding - 115 kph, dead straight road, Sunday morning, policeman hiding: they fine you NZ$ 80. He was within his rights but I'd have thought a warning would have done, especially for a tourist.
Thrifty Car hire is a little more expensive than Ace but you get a new Toyota and can save money by leaving it at Wellington, taking the ferry and picking up another at Picton. Interestingly it was in both cases what we know as a Toyota Auris, but called Corolla in NZ - very logically as the Auris is really just a facelift of the old Corolla, more so than the Golf VI over the Golf V.
I still can't think what possessed Toyota to change a perfectly good name, meaning crown, to a word meaning ear. I also can't think why the 1.8 petrol engine which we had, a good match for this car, isn't offered in the UK.
NZ is an interesting contrast to South Africa where we go regularly: obviously a completely different ethnic make-up of the population, and very little sign of poverty or racial tension. The Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 gave the indigenous Maoris rights wehich they've never properly achieved, but someone I talked to said that one of the reasons that there isn't more pressure is that there are very few pure-bred Maoris any more due to intermarrying. There is a minority Maori party in the NZ Parliament which dioes its best to protect their rights.
Anyway we had a wonderful time, and of course the lack of traffic and welcoming, laid-back attitude of the New Zealanders is a delight. Go if you can.
Edited by Avant on 08/03/2009 at 17:34
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spent a lot of time driving in the north island
biggest problem is their routine use of one inch as their default braking distance from the car in front, I've never been anywhere where is was routine to drive so close to the car in front
this is the main cause of the large death toll there in my view
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>>>>driving an inch from rear of car in front>>>>
I agree with that. Some of the local 4x4 drivers who, obviously, knew the twisty roads they were on try to bully slower drivers into moving to the left so they can overtake. passing places are far and few between on south island.
In general, I indicated and moved to the left very often to let people past.....something you would not do in the UK. A lot of drivers seemed to do it. There are reminders everywhere that 100kph is not something to strive for, it is just the maximum allowed. However, many people seemed to try to maintain it regardless of prevailing road conditions.
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ahh yes that's the problem with the auto gearboxes coupled to a small engine. We had a 1.6 3spd auto Corolla in 2002 and driving from Picton -> Fox Glacier in the afternoon was funny, couldn't overtake anything on the uphill stretches. Camper vans were slowing down to let us past but we just couldn't make it up at any great speed so unless they stopped and let us past we couldn't get past them.
I sat next to a 'local' on the Luge lift @ Rotorua and had a discussion about the A-series engine and the Austin Mini. It made my day.....
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