Travelling around - driving - whilst on holiday in New Zealand.
There are probably two basic ways to get around New Zealand whilst on
holiday apart from cycling or tramping of course.
Let a tour company take the strain and be shipped around New Zealand by
coach on their itinerary and timings or do it yourself by hiring or buying a
car or motor-home and organise the whole thing yourself.
There are lots of travel and holiday companies who will create an itinerary for you and move you
around New Zealand's North and South Islands visiting lots of different locations - all you do - apart
from pay for the privilege - is sit back on their luxury coach and enjoy the trip and let them do all the driving and
organisation.
The thing with this is that when you visit a location you don't
have a choice of how long you can spend there so if something really interests you and it's time to go then go you must.
A good example of this is for instance when going down to Milford Sound for a
cruise the tour companies do stop off on several places on the way but there is so much to see
that lots more interesting bits are not visited because of their itinerary/time constraints.
The scenery around Milford Sound is particularly
fantastic and when we drove down we stopped many times to admire the waterfalls,
bridges, streams, lakes, woodland, mountains and so on - it took ages to get
there (and drive back). The same sort of problem with stopping occurred when we drove
across the Haast Pass and then alongside the beautiful lakes whilst travelling into Queenstown.
Driving in New Zealand. Driving is
on the left as with England and basically the rules are pretty similar
except when
making a right hand turn across traffic flow - see
this link for a clear item on this.
The general speed limit on main roads etc is 100 kph - as you
approach towns and villages the limit is reduced to quite often 50kph - also on
any bends their are guidance speed limits. If you are travelling around the
mountainous areas and you see a 25 or 30kph warning it's definitely worth
believing it.
Although we did not see any speed cameras whilst driving on New Zealand's roads
there certainly are plenty of police around watching for and stopping speeding
motorists - they also use unmarked cars for this.
You need to be aware of the trucks and in particular the ones carrying logs -
they tend not to stop for anything and really hammer along even on bendy roads.
Many of the trucks pull long trailers as well.
The roads do have to go over railway crossings from time to time and these
crossings generally have stop-lights etc. - we did notice that coaches actually
stop before crossing over and the driver physically looks both ways for trains.
Road surfaces we found to be best on the North Island but in any case the roads
are in a far better condition than the pot-holed mess that ours tend to be in
England.
Another frequent "hazard" are single lane bridges - you do get a lot of
these in New Zealand - as you approach such a bridge their is a priority arrow
showing who has right of way but it's not worth pushing your luck too much if a
truck is the other side of the bridge even if right of way is in your favour...
Petrol stations can be really in-frequent and we always filled up before any
longish trip out especially into the hills. Certainly if you plan on making the
excellent and really scenic drive down to Milford Sound you should have at least
3/4 of a tank full of fuel before leaving Te Anau as there is none available after that.
As mentioned the road surfaces are in generally good condition - however
their is also quite an extensive set of dirt roads - you often find these when
visiting various bays and beaches or when going into the many DOC conservation
areas. It's worth noting that driving on these dirt roads creates a huge amount
of dust (unless there has been recent rain to dampen the surfaces down) and a
good practice when driving on dirt roads and tracks is to have your dipped
headlights on.
Favourite parts of new Zealand which we travelled through:
The best has to be the drive into Milford Sound - amazing mountain scenery,
however
the best also has to be the drive between Haast and Queenstown - Haast Pass
followed by the beautiful Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea.
Car-Hire. We pre-booked our hire car on the web
using a company called About New Zealand Rental Cars
whose website states .."... We specialise in providing quality, late model NZ rental cars for
self drive holidays.." - Although booked 8
months prior and specifically asked for a Manual drive
Toyota and not a Nissan on arrival in Auckland we were given automatic Nissan. *they do state they cannot
guarantee your choice to be fair but that far in advance booking should not have
ended up with the car we had to accept. After 10 days we had to
exchange the car as we had stone damage to the braking
system - still a Nissan but manual - nearly 10 years old and quite a few dents -
it really struggled when loaded up. Once at Christchurch at the end of our holiday we expected
an offer of a reduced rental because of the age etc. of the car - however this
was not to be. Apparently if you hire from About New Zealand Rental
Cars then you can expect to possibly get an 8 or 9 year old car -
this is apparently their definition of a "quality late model NZ rental car". If
we had realised the age of their cars we would not have booked with them
considering the length of our planned trip which involved going from Auckland via
Thames, Wellington, Taupo, Dunedin before going back up to Christchurch.
Apart from this issue with the hire company and having completed our holiday
now - another time we would firstly wait until arriving in New Zealand to find
our transport so we could see exactly what was available and secondly we would
probably hire a small campervan rather than a
car so that we would have the choice and flexibility of camping out in more
remote areas rather than use motels
all the time. Also on reflection the total drive from Auckland down to Dunedin
and finally Christchurch would probably be split more in that we would hire
transport for an area and then fly down to another area rather than make the
huge drives we did this time.
Our New Zealand Main Page
www.foxysislandwalks.co.uk
Another frequent "hazard" are single lane bridges - you do get a lot of
these in New Zealand - as you approach such a bridge their is a priority arrow
showing who has right of way but it's not worth pushing your luck too much if a
truck is the other side of the bridge even if right of way is in your favour...