You Stay Classy as, Ron Burgundy! (Nov. 25 – Dec. 1)

We spent our last week in New Zealand wrapping up all our bits and pieces before having to leave for Tahiti on 2 December. These “bits and pieces” largely consisted of throwing away heaps of clothing that was no longer fit to travel half-way around the world (again), picking up the Newmans from the airport after their South African holiday, and selling Ron Burgundy. Ron has seen us through almost 30,000 trouble-free kms around the North and South Islands (if you excuse him for the flat tires and dead battery, and we do), so we’re certainly sad to be parting ways with our trusty steed.

To sell Ron, we used our normal tactic of posting ads on all the free classified websites. This technique had served us well when we were selling our cars back home, but New Zealand proved to be a bit different. We got some initial interest, particularly from a finicky South African, but nothing concrete came of it. We did get one really creative would-be buyer who offered us a patio heater in exchange for the car. Hmm….yeah, no thanks.

Eventually, we decided to suck it up and take the typical backpacker advertising route – posting “for sale” signs in the hostels downtown. It proved to be an extremely disheartening afternoon, walking up and down Queen Street posting ads for Ron on bulletin boards already overflowing with other car ads. It did make us appreciate the nicer hostels we had stayed at in Auckland (Verandahs, Lantana Lodge) that were not nearly as depressing as those located downtown. We got a few bites this way as well, but even as we were posting the ads we realized that it would in no way be worth the effort. Moral: stay somewhere away from the city centre and try not to have to sell your car through fliers.

Us, the Newmans, and Auckland in the background

We eventually did manage to find a buyer from an online bulletin board. Our buyer, Bev, got in touch with us and we arranged to meet at her office on the North Shore (anything to save us a drive into Auckland at rush hour!). Not used to driving an automatic, she took us for an unexpectedly amusing test drive around Takapuna. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who was so flummoxed by an automatic transmission, and definitely hadn’t met someone who applied the hand brake every time they approached a stop sign. Anyway, Bev got back to us the next day to let us know she would like to buy Ron. With our departure just about imminent, we took about half of what we paid for the car, $950, which was an OK offer, but I guess understandable given that our WOF was up in a couple months.

"Mushrooms" on top of Mt. Victoria in Devenport

As is always the case, as soon as we agreed to sell the car, we received much more interest than we had the previous days. You have to wonder if we could have gotten a better price (as Ron is certainly a bargain at less than a grand) but with the New Zealand dollar currently so strong against the American dollar, we’re making out okay in the end. As long as the funds get us through Tahiti…

Anyway, this marks our final day in New Zealand. I’m not sure it’s really set in yet. We enjoyed a great barbecue last night with the Newmans, and they’ve been nice enough to offer to drive us to the airport as well. We’ve been really lucky to be able to spend this time here on the North Shore, getting ourselves sorted before we leave the country. It was also great to get to know Rachel and Shanon better, as we had only spent two nights with them on our first visit. At this point, we almost feel like flatmates. We really do appreciate another couple of terrific people that CouchSurfing has brought into our lives.

One last shot of Ron Burgundy...

This might be the last you hear from us until we’re back stateside in San Francisco. Our plans for Tahiti are a little uncertain, although we have managed to line up several CouchSurfing hosts for our stay, so all we can say for sure is that it should be interesting. Beyond that, we’re planning to soak up the sun and go for some hikes. We’re not sure of how much internet will be available, so there probably won’t be any new posts until we’re in San Francisco. And by that time, we’ll practically be home.

We’ll have lots more to say about New Zealand in future posts, so stay tuned!

Driving Like A Kiwi

We’ve been thinking about it for awhile, and for the sake of this post, let's say we're sure the one question burning in everyone’s mind is: how do we find driving in New Zealand? And if you weren’t wondering before, aren’t you now? And after all that prompting you’re still not wondering even yet, why don’t you do it just to humor us? C’mon...

Since you ask, we’ve found the driving in New Zealand to be pretty easy on the whole, despite the fact that, in the British fashion, they drive on the left, and the steering wheel is on the right side of the car here. Given how long we’re visiting NZ, buying a car and driving through the country is a necessity, given how rural much of the country is and how little public transport there is outside of the few big cities. Plus, the freedom afforded by having your own set of wheels is just as significant in NZ as it is in the States. Bus tours just can’t compare (on a side note, and this may only amuse us, but every time we see an Kiwi Experience bus, who are infamous for being rowdy piss-tours of 20-year olds through NZ, we feel compelled to shout out “Whoo! Kiwi Experience, whoo!”)

Getting used to driving on the right side of the car and on the left side of the road takes a bit of getting used to, but isn’t that bad really, it just takes some concentration. For my part, I refrained from texting people while driving for our first few weeks in the country. Most tourist accidents result from the tourist entering the wrong lane on an empty rural stretch of road, driving along for a wee while, and then coming around a blind turn to find a surprised Kiwi coming head-on in their lane. With two of us around to warn each other, we’ve been able to avoid such a calamity. In fact, we might have been a bit too vigilant as passengers in the beginning. To wit, when we first got here we found that being a passenger on the left side was quite odd, as we constantly felt like the wheels on that side of the car were going to go off the road. Our first month featured many “Right, right!” yells before we got over that one, thankfully, since we were fast getting on each other’s nerves.

Me driving on the right side of the car. Is this blowing your mind?

To date Ron Burgundy, our hot 1992 Subaru (say sue-BAR-ooo to avoid confusing the locals here) Legacy, has performed really well for us (knock on wood), squiring us through about 20K km so far with very few problems. Ron doesn’t have a manual transmission, which is good since that might’ve been a bit hairy in our first few months here, especially for Becky. Somewhat confusingly, in NZ the turn signal lever is on the opposite side of the wheel as we know it, resulting in an unintentionally clean windshield for a lot of our turns. Because of this, I expected that the manual gear shifts might be backwards as well. However, they are the same as in the States, with 1^st gear in the upper left, which seems a bit awkward for some reason. Luckily the clutch pedal is in the same place.

Crossing the street also really screws you up at first here. I’ve had “look left-right-left” when crossing the street hammered into my brain for my entire life, and reversing that concept freaked us out the first few days we spent in Auckland. Seriously, we were doing triple and quadruple-takes crossing the streets there, running across mostly empty streets because we were convinced cars were going to just materialize behind us, making exotic turns with which we were unfamiliar.

As for the roads, we’re currently on the Canterbury Plain on the South Island, where the roads have the luxury of being relatively straight and flat. And paved (or tar-sealed in the local lingo), which is nice as well, as when you get out in the sticks a surprising amount of the roads are of the rugged, gravel variety. One thing that is nice is that there’s very little motorway here, probably less than 50 miles of true Interstate-like highway in the whole country. It really isn’t needed beyond Auckland and other big cities, and most of the main highway is two-lane, with the occasional passing lane thrown in. As an example of how un-American NZ highways are, the main highway in the South Island which runs along the sea between Kaikoura and Christchurch has fords to allow rain to run off the mountains above. Not the kind of Fords you’re used to seeing on the road in America. Rimshot! Thank you, I’ll be here all year.

Crossing a river, NZ-style!

Once you get out of the large metropolitan areas, especially on the North Island, the roads turn ungodly twisty on the hills, and in a refreshing change, are largely un-guardrailed. We’ve determined that this is actually probably how NZ most effectively enforces its Warrant of Fitness (WoF) auto regulation. If your brakes aren’t good enough to pass the WoF, they sure as hell aren’t good enough to stop you coming down a mountain pass at 50 kph through the switchback-laden roads. What might be even more amazing is how fast Kiwis love to drive through them. We’ve been passed so many times on ridiculously curvy and steep roads that we can only conclude the country is full of F1-racer wannabes, or that this country has an amazing resistance to motion sickness.

It may seem counterintuitive, but trust us, the key is to take the curves as fast as possible.

In a possibly-apocryphal tale from Matt Pedersen’s father, we’ve heard that the crews that built the roads in NZ were paid by the corner. If you drove the roads here for even a week, you’d be inclined to agree that that was plausible, especially after seeing numerous examples of relatively flat road sections having extra turns where they don’t seem necessary. At this point, we find that curvy road signs are largely superfluous. Some of them look more like a question mark than any road you’d be familiar with. Quick test: are you driving on a straight road? If yes, then you probably aren’t in NZ. Therefore, we humbly propose that NZ change its flag to a Union Jack with a curvy road sign. We kid because we love, but seriously, that wouldn’t be a bad idea. Or if you really wanted to go all the way, have a sheep with a kiwi on its back, holding a rugby ball and jumping over the curvy road sign – even better.

New Zealand does have one truly confounding local traffic oddity: the Gentleman’s turning rule, introduced about 20 years ago to confuse everyone not from here. Basically, if you’re making a left-hand turn and an oncoming car is turning right across traffic, you’re obligated to stop and allow him to go ahead of you, ostensibly for the purposes of keeping traffic moving more smoothly. If you don’t allow him to go, he’ll likely crash into you because he was expecting you to yield to him. For our first few months here, I’d guess about 95% of the Kiwis we met felt obliged to explain the rule to us, even after we swore we understood it. We’ve seen ample drawings, illustrations, walkthroughs, and more than one example utilizing salt shakers as they’ve endeavored to clarify it for us. The GTR is also more than a little unpopular; if we’ve met anyone who’s been in favor of the rule, I certainly don’t remember it. The opinion of Kiwis we’ve met seems to be that it’s a silly rule and NZ is not ahead of the rest of the world on this one.

As a result of the GTR, I’m completely paranoid, looking all over the place for someone who might be turning anytime I’m making a turn. In one of my first weeks here I did remember to wait for the other driver to turn, and in response he just looked at me with a completely puzzled look as to why I wasn’t turning. At that point I thought, “Ha, newbie!”, which I’ll probably have to file under: disturbing signs you’ve gone native…

Meet Ron Burgundy (Jan 14 - 15)

Ron's a handsome bastard, isn't he?

On Sunday, for the relatively low price of NZ$2000, we welcomed the New Zealand Ron Burgundy, Anchorman (erm... Anchorcar) into our traveling family. Ron is a right-side drive 1992 Subaru Legacy with 146,000 kms (apparently low for a cheap car in NZ), and is as burgundy as the day is long. For backpackers touring New Zealand, naming one's car seems to be the thing to do. We quickly decided Legacy is a terrible name for a car, and thus Ron Burgundy was born. The only bad thing we can say about Ron so far is that he doesn't smell of rich mahogany, but we're on the lookout for an appropriate car freshener.

Becky and I may never have children, so for the time being, Ron may just have to do. After a less-than-thrilling trip to the Ellerslie Racecourse Car Market on Sunday morning, we instead accepted a delivery from the Verandahs car stork. Or to be exact, from Ken Thomas, Auckland mechanic/inspection agent/sometimes backpacker car dealer. Ken seems the rather quintessential New Zealand type - no-nonsense hard-worker with a penchant for shorter shorts than most people in the US would find decent (think Larry Bird in the early '80's) and little tolerance for dallying around. We are literally kicking ourselves now for not getting a snap with Ken.

Ron and Andrew look good - this is how we roll

We accomplished quite a bit on Sunday and Monday. Besides getting Ron, we opened a bank account (an 1.5 hr ordeal that is best unremembered), got car insurance, sent away for NZ tax ID numbers, and got a cell phone - 021 178 8755. Apparently we don't get charged for incoming calls, so call away. Remember, however, that we're 18 hrs into the future for those of you on the East Coast, and we can easily retaliate if you call at inappropriate hours of the night here...

Feeling rightfully accomplished, we visited Sky Tower, Auckland's answer to a landmark architectural feature, on Monday, our first day of nice weather in Auckland. Sky Tower boasts some great views of Auckland and the surrounding areas. As the self-proclaimed adventure sports capital of the world, one can ride the elevator, climb to the top, or do a bungee-style jump off the tower. We took the perfectly good elevator to the top.

AfSky Tower, from the ground

Sky Tower, from a bit higher up

After our trip to Sky Tower, we were off to the Auckland suburbs! (Nicer than they sound, actually)