Auckland to Kerikeri

As you may have gathered from one of the last post, I am now navigating the roads of New Zealand in a 1994 Toyota Land Cruiser. This vehicle has been generously provided by our friends Bruce and Carolynn who we can’t thank enough but whose sanity we do question.

Just to make things interesting the Land Cruiser is a standard. Now normally this would not be a problem but remember that the wheel is on the right and the shift is on left so I have to train a different hand to move the stick. (Geez, I just wrote that and it does sound kind of obscene doesn’t it?)

Anyway we dropped them at the airport and proceeded to drive out of the Auckland area. Hence the police report. By the way Lana says that anything she says as navigator is always put in the nicest terms and that report is somewhat inaccurate.

Once we were away from the cursed Auckland roundabouts (or was that me cursing) we made good time toward the Northland.

The roads in NZ are almost all two lane blacktops and, for the most part, they only have two speeds – 50 km or 100 km. Every road outside of a town is 100km regardless of how much they twist and turn or how narrow they are. To say that I was working the stick would be an understatement.

Now not a lot of people speed on the roads for two reasons. The first is that you would end up in a ditch and the second is that they have hundreds of cameras that automatically spit out a ticket if they catch you going more then 10km over. This is especially true when you come to a town and the speed drops to 50 km from 100km.

We travelled up the east coast passing through lots of grazing lands covered in cattle and small little picturesque towns with names like Waipu, Pukaroro and Ruakaka.

There is lots of road work being done according to the signs along the way but we didn’t see a single worker. Guess they are all off for the Christmas holidays. Nothing like navigating a twisty road and seeing the standard temporary 30km area (for all of 100 metres) then seeing that 100km sign again.

One of the highlights were the bathrooms in Kawakawa. Seriously, they are on the list of 101 things to do in the north and we just had to stop. Built as some sort of art project they are built as with randomly sized pieces of coloured tile. Nice but nothing that I would write home about.

Stopped at Whangarei to see the spot where the Maoris and the British signed their treaties in 1840. The Maoris, alone among native inhabitants of the Empire, weren’t ever defeated by the British since they gave as good as they got. The signing was something that both sides did since peace seemed a better alternative to an ongoing war.

Stayed the night in Kerikeri at a backpackers lodge where, when I went in to register, the manage thought I was a local landowner looking for cheap labour. Must be the Land Cruiser.