Driving in New Zealand

I’ve been in New Zealand for over a month now, and although after leaving Costa Rica I vowed that I would try and write more, I haven’t felt that I had much of anything to say.

In a lot of ways, New Zealand is just as I expected: amazing landscapes, rolling mossy hills with pastures full of sheep, winding roads, majestic mountains, aqua-blue lakes, rushing rivers, endless opportunities for adventure and friendly kiwis with their puzzling, but admirable, accents. Yawn, right? (Just kidding.)



Also as expected, it’s quite easy to travel here. English is the main language, the roads are well-paved and fairly easy to navigate, accommodations in various price ranges are typically clean and comfortable, and there are considerately placed public bathrooms, clearly visible, in the center of any township, as well as in regular intervals along the highways, so that one never has to feel too in want of a rest stop or sheepishly ask the local café to lend them their services.


When things are this easy-going however, it’s not great inspiration for writing any sort of revelatory material. That said, there is one thing about visiting New Zealand that continues to prove itself interesting, and that is driving. This includes the highways, the billboards, the road signs, the road kill, and especially, driving on the left.

Driving on the left side of the road is not really that hard. The first few days feel a bit scary, but after that it’s not so bad. However, after being trained in the art of right-sided driving for 16 years, I am amazed at how unnatural and unintuitive the simplest of tasks feel, when they have been switched to the opposite side. Take for example, walking to your car, turning on the blinker, making a right or left turn, or even, when not in the car, just crossing the street.

When crossing the street I am accustomed to looking left first, then right. Here, out of habit, I still look left first, and then right, and continue to waggle my head left and right as I cross, because even if I think about it slowly I never feel confident that I’m looking the right way in order to avoid oncoming traffic. Dennis assessed, and I believe rightly, that this must be one of the greatest reasons for pedestrian accidents – foolish foreigners not knowing which way to look as they cross the street.

When I reach for the blinker, I consistently switch on the windshield wipers instead, since the handles for each are on opposite sides of what I’m used to. When walking towards the car, I frequently mistake the driver’s side for the passenger side, and vice versa. Once, there was a brief awkward moment when I was getting a lift from a local kiwi lady, as I stood for several seconds by the driver’s side of the car, thinking I was at the passenger’s side, and waiting for her to let me in the vehicle. She didn’t say anything to me (I think she was just standing behind me not sure what to do), but when I went, ”Oh!” and walked to the other side, and explained that I was confused since the car seats were reversed, she laughed in relief. How odd it must have seemed to offer a lift to a relative stranger, and then have them stand at the driver’s side, as if they were going to drive your car for you.

I’ve never been great at remembering which way is left, and which is right - I mean, I know which is which, but it’s something that I can easily mix up accidentally (something I blame on being left-handed in a right-handed world). Here however, all is completely lost. I realize now that I have been associating left turns with turns that require crossing traffic, and right turns with not having to cross traffic, as I consistently make the mistake here of mixing them up. The fact that I have to cross traffic to make a right turn here makes it feel instinctually to me like a left, so when Dennis instructs me to turn right, or left, I frequently and unintentionally do the opposite. This makes for a lot of unnecessary U-turns. I can’t imagine what driving a stick shift would be like, and mercifully, they have not switched around the gas and brake pedals.

The highways here are quite different from the US. At home we have massive freeways with 4 to 6 lanes going in each direction. I can imagine now how daunting this must seem to someone who has never seen this before. In New Zealand the highways are just one lane in each direction – unless of course there is a bridge, and then there is only one lane for both directions. What I find difficult however, is keeping up with their standard speed limit for highways of 100 km/hr. This is fine on the long straight stretches, but most of the highways twist and turn around tight mountain corners, and sometimes this just makes the speed limit seem totally absurd (see photo below). I’m not a horribly slow driver, but even though I am driving at my maximum comfort level, there are always many drivers eager to pass me.

There are billboards erected along the highways that seem supportive of my desire to drive slower. They frequently have messages such as, “100 km/hr is not a target!” which are often posted right next to the speed limit sign. Or, “Don’t get a speeding ticket” together with a morbid picture of someone’s toe sticking out from beneath a sheet with an ID tag tied around it. They are constant reminders that driving fast here can be lethal, but the message seems to be mixed. Why allow for such speeds in the first place, if you don’t really want people to be driving that fast?


There is also a surprising amount of road kill on the highways. Once, I counted nearly 20 in an hour. I thought that even though Dennis and I hadn’t seen a lot of wildlife in New Zealand (alive anyway), the numbers of dead bodies on the road were a sure testament to their abundant existence. At first I couldn’t recognize what these squished fuzzy creatures on the road were, but soon learned that they were mostly all possums. They don’t look like the possums in California however. The ones here almost resemble cats with their pointy triangular ears.

At first I felt really bad for them, and I still sort-of do, but I’ve come to learn that these non-native possums (from Australia) are quite rapidly destroying New Zealand. There are between 60 and 70 million possums in New Zealand now, and they are eating/killing 20,000 tons of vegetation each night! The large numbers of these animals is also jeopardizing the national mascot the Kiwi, which used to exist happily in similar numbers as the possum does today, before the introduction of non-native predators to the island. Now however, the number has dwindled to around 700,000 – and that is split between 5 different species of Kiwi.

While on an observation tour of the Kiwi in Queenstown, a caretaker was saying that no other country has had conservation dilemmas like the ones that New Zealanders are facing today. Finding out these facts helped bring into light a T-shirt that I had previously seen and judged as a bit crude which said, “Possums – New Zealand’s little speed bumps.”

A local told me that even the most passive, non-violent, vegan New Zealander can become maniacally aggressive when having spotted a crossing possum on the road, and will swerve purposefully in attempts to squash it. Most of the tourist shops here as well have a section where they sell possum-fur gloves, scarves and hats.

As I said before, I still feel a bit sorry for them. They certainly don’t know any better, and it wasn’t their fault that they ended up here. The possums must feel about New Zealand, perhaps even more so, as do the millions of tourist visitors who come here each year, “Wow! This place is incredible! So beautiful! So green! So safe! I could stay here forever!”

That thought though, didn’t stop me from buying a pair of the super-soft and warm possum gloves for myself to stay warm. ☺

Cheers from down under! Tomorrow we head to Sydney Australia.