Driving in New Zealand can be an interesting experience. Except for the big cities (Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch) there are no divided highways, all the roads are two lanes.
Driving on the left was terrifying for the first half hour, but it quickly became second nature. Until the first round-about! (first of many!!) If you learn not to look to your left you'll be ok.
New Zealand has one unique road rule. If you and an opposing car are both turning into the same side road, the car turning right has the right of way! Canada has the same rule, of course, but they're driving on the left. They are planning to phase this rule out, but I don't know how they are planning to do that.
Blind corners, narrow roads, no shoulders, shear drops with no guard rails and this is the speed limit.
But it's a great place to drive, and a lot of fun.
Notice the dashed passing line down the center of the road. I think they just wanted to save paint.
You're cruising down the road and you see this. The sign means there's a single lane bridge ahead and oncoming traffic has right of way. I hope you're paying attention.
There are a lot of single lane bridges even on the main roads.
Sometimes you have to worry about more than oncoming traffic.
'Hey! Get off the bridge'
Of course there are single lanes for other reasons as well. Here they cut out half a tunnel as a narrow ledge beside the river.
And the occasional landslide.
There a lot of cyclists on the roads as well. These guys wish they'd taken the bus.
There are many strange vehicles on the road. This is some sort of train car.
With the mountains and rivers there are a lot of tunnels and bridges, mostly single lane of course.
Although there's not many cars on the road, sometimes you get a few followers who are very patient with us tourist types. But there are many places to pull over such as these extra wide outside corners. Often you get a thank you 'toot-toot'.
By the way, this is our trusty steed with some other car. I'll let you guess which is which.
And this is a good reason to always get the full insurance package on your rental
To wrap up, driving in NZ is a hoot!
These are some random road shots.
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