Been away for several weeks on a holiday down under, we stopped off at Singapore for a couple of days (very nice) then onto New Zealand for three weeks. We were based just outside Auckland with a very good friend of mine for a couple of days then flew down to South Island where we spent a week touring around in a car hired by my friend from a company called "Rent a Dent" and ended up with a god awful one namely a Nissan Bluebird (not the UK one but much later Japanese import), crikey what a pile of poo that car was in just about every way possible.
Christchurch was quite an eye opener as following the earthquake four years ago it still looks like a WW2 bomb site, once we got down to the lower half of what Kiwi's call "The Mainland" (South island is slightly larger than North Island) the scenery really picked up to be stunning. Wanaka and Queenstown (where the high adrenalin sports take place) are very nice, Dawn and I thoroughly enjoyed a jet boat ride across the rapids on Shotover River. On the way down south we came across quite a number of towns which looked as if they were built in about 1960 and nothing done since making us feel as if we had walked onto the set of Heartbeat. Travelling north along the west coast road really did show how remote some areas in NZ are as you can drive for miles without seeing another vehicle.
Back on North Island we visited Rotorua where the smell of sulphur due to the volcanic activity there is quite strong and rather off putting despite the pleasant scenery alongside the lake. Further south we met up with another friend of mine in a very nice town called Taupo, the view from her house across the huge lake with the smouldering volcano in the distance is truly stunning, Taupo even has a road named after me so it left a very favourable impression indeed
. Up in Northland we spent a couple of days in a beautiful place called the Bay of Islands and in particular an idyllic village called Russell.
I found driving around New Zealand to be very interesting, the Police are very active in speed detection (hiding behind bushes etc) the national speed limit is 100 KPH regardless of whether you're on a motorway or passing houses in a small hamlet and rarely do you see many people exceeding the limit by much presumably due to the fear of being caught and the constant reminders by advertising that any speed above the posted limit is inherently dangerous
. One oddity about Kiwi driving is that it's extremely rare for them to straighten bends even when the sight lines are perfect in totally remote area's, I had quite a bit of fun straight lining bends whilst watching locals follow every contour of the road.
Whilst we were there a number of fatal collisions involving tourists occurred prompting discussion as to the cause plus on the back of these a few locals decided to take matters into their own hands by seizing car keys from tourists who they considered to be driving dangerously then dropping the keys off at a Police station,,
Other than around Auckland (where there's enough traffic congestion to match London and possibly worse in some cases) traffic is very light and the roads are well laid out with very few double apex bends making driving there generally very pleasant indeed, one thing that did cause me concern though is that solid lines to stop overtaking (white in UK yellow in NZ) are placed quite randomly often ending prior to vision opening up sufficiently to allow safe overtaking whilst at other times sight lines are quite sufficient yet there's a solid yellow line.
Kiwi drivers appeared to be far more disciplined and courteous than you generally see in the UK, at no point did I see anything that could be described as aggressive driving making the whole experience of driving very pleasant indeed.
It's often mentioned that in New Zealand you'll see a large number of classic cars being driven daily, well from my experience I definitely agree, first day there I spotted a DS, Ford Thunderbird and several Triumph 2000's (common as muck in NZ), cars that over here you only ever see on a sunny weekend are driven as daily drivers and are generally in very good condition indeed.
Overall a very pleasant time was had by all
Back home car wise the MOT on the Mercedes had run out upon my return so a new certificate was obtained and I noticed that I did the grand total of 2,500 miles in it last year.
but I'm also doing window rubbers, door seals plus all the locks as at present any flat bladed instrument unlocks and starts the car, project now on hold pending the welding.
