Chapter One

DAY ONE

Excellent news: I am still alive after a full day of driving on the "wrong" side of the road. In New Zealand, you drive the British way — on the left side, not the right like we do in America. My non-stop Air New Zealand flight arrived on time yesterday morning at 5 a.m., a 12-hour, surprisingly pleasant marathon from Los Angeles. I managed to sleep about five hours, passing my awake time with bits and pieces of four inflight movies and two delicious meals.

Clearing customs was a snap, and I was soon aboard a shuttle bus for a five-minute ride to Maui Rentals to pick up my Spirit Four motorhome — a 20-footer with a six-speed Mercedes engine.

My motorhome. At only 20 feet, it had all the comforts. On the road, the diesel engine purred.

After a short rundown of the unit’s systems — not dramatically different from an American motorhome — I was "on the road," a man alone in a far off land in the right seat of a pint-sized rolling motel, ready to resume my finger-biting habit of years past at my sudden fear of turning my Mercedes RV into a lane where it didn’t belong.

Auckland is a city of 1.1 million people — no backwater burg. Even in the pre-rush hour morning, traffic was busy, about the same as in my gridlock-prone hometown of Seattle. And, I’m telling you, it is a very, very weird feeling to be driving on the left side of the road — very weird — and scary, too. "It’ll take you a few hours and you’ll be fine," several of my friends who driven Down Under had advised. Some friends! It took me two days.

The freeways thru Auckland aren't any different than ours in America except you drive on the other side of the road. Auckland's Sky Tower dominates the skyline of downtown.

I decided that I would prefer to spend this time on rural highways rather than crowded city streets, so I followed the directions provided by my Maui check-in representative. I figured I would return to Auckland in a few days when I was more at ease behind the wheel.

But being a guy, and being prone to wanting to "get going" rather than listening to directions," I believe I turned left when I should have turned right. The result: I was lost, and headed deeper and deeper into urban, traffic-frantic Auckland. To make matters utterly unacceptable to me was the fact that everyone was driving on the wrong side of the street, a monumentalassault on my very survival. I envisioned myself as a crash test dummy. "Does this motorhome have airbags?"

I paused in a few quiet residental neighborhoods to regain my sanity and my bearings, too. But my bearings were nowhere to get, and my map was proving useless. I didn’t have a clue where I was, or where I was going. What am I doing here? I thought. I should just be in Arizona, for Pete’s sake, where the big challenge is dodging sagebrush and wayward rabbits.

Still, brave road warrior that I am, I rejoined the traffic and tried my very best to make left turns only, which are the

Signs everywhere remind you to stay left instead of right, like in the USA. These signs come in very handy when you are just driving along and day dreaming, and have a momentary lapse in memory of where you are.

equivalent of right turns back home. I believe the result of this safety measure was that I was basically driving in wide circles.

After awhile, I landed on a high ridge with a splendid view of downtown Auckland and its 600-foot Sky Tower in the distance, perhaps five miles away. This was a welcome sight, as this meant there was a slight chance that I was, indeed, heading out of town. At this point, feeling very jetlagged, I didn’t care where I was only, only that I ended up somewhere where I could drive in peace and get accustomed to this new way of motoring.

I rounded yet another left corner and was greeted with a very welcome sight: a big supermarket with a big parking lot. This was good: I could load up on food and ask directions at the same time. Being a male, it is not instinctive to ask directions, but being in a foreign land and fearing for my life due to a head-on collision, I decided I would make an exception and seek aid.

Clutching my poor excuse for a city map, I approached a man who was loading bags into a mini van. "Excuse me, sir," but could you tell me where I am?" He sighed and looked sad. "You don’t live here, do you?" I asked, and he nodded.

Inside the market, a man about my age was loading a small bag onto the back of his bicycle. Surely, he was a native. And he was. He pointed on the map to where we were, which was across town from where I thought I was, and told me how to get to Highway One to go north, where there were few people, which meant my chances for a head on collision were significantly diminished, obviously, due to fewer cars to hit. And, truth be known, this is where I wanted to spend my first few days, anyway. I knew, for example, that somewhere north of Auckland was a place where you could watch sheep getting sheared and even feed baby lamps with a baby bottle. So going north was good. Very good.

Oh yes, the reason why I must see sheep being sheared is that in this land of only 3.3 million people there are 88 million sheep. So to come to New Zealand and not learn a bit about sheep would be like coming to America and not learning how to microwave a frozen dinner.

But more about the cyclist giving me directions. He said I needed to make only three left turns to get onto Highway 1 which was where I wanted to go. The fact that I could accomplish this by making only left turns was like a blessing from heaven, for, as I have said, I was very much into left turns at this point. Later in the day, I began doing much better with left turns, which are often accomplished using roundabouts, which are called rotaries back East in America. We have one roundabout in my hometown of Edmonds, Wash., which, to be perfectly honest, I have not yet mastered fully in five years. So you can pretty well conclude that doing it fifty times a day while bearing left rather than right, was a monumental challenge. I quickly learned, however, than when in doubt, simply follow the vehicle ahead of you and silently pray. And if there is no vehicle ahead, then pray out loud.

One excellent thing about traveling in New Zealand is that you can understand the language, although there are a lot of funny terms which I will tell you about later. And the road signs look very similar to ours back home — same color and typestyle. Of course, speed limits are in kilometers per hour — 100 kph on freeways (about 60 miles per hour). But I have done quite a bit of driving in Canada so I am used to instantly understanding the true meaning of these figures.

The grocery store where I shopped was Pak’ N Save, and it was a huge place — like a big warehouse — with shelves to the ceiling and miles of vegetables. The place, however, was busy — more crowded than any supermarket I have ever shopped. And while the New Zealanders may be friendly people, they are crazed shoppers — pushing their shopping carts with wild abandon. Even though the aisles of Pak’ N Save are wide, people race through, banging each other’s carts in the process much as the same as if they are driving bumper cars — and they never say, "excuse me," when they make contact. One fellow came zooming past me from behind, sideswiping my cart with a huge jolt, and he never even made eye contact. He just kept on going — intent on getting to the next aisle.

I had planned to spend some time at my first New Zealand supermarket, checking out what I could buy that was different from back home. But this place was just too bumper to bumper with shoppers for me, so I raced around like everybody else, and figured I’d do my serious shopping (and shoppng research) later.

I can’t tell you about the prices of things, because they take time to figure out. For example, if something costs $1 in New Zealand, that’s only about 40 cents in U.S. dollars. As far as I can tell, I’m coming out very good on this exchange. At the airport, for example, I had to kill an hour before Maui RV Rentals opened, so I did what everyone else did and opted for a snack at McDonalds. I opted for pancakes, which cost $3 in New Zealand money, but only $1.20 in U.S. dollars. I don’t think I could do this well back in the States.

And about McDonald’s: they appear to be on every corner here, just in the USA. I am making notes about all the U.S. businesses I find here and will report about this later.

But more about the supermarket, I was lost when it came time to figuring out how much vegetables and meat cost because the weights are listed in kilograms. Being the product of a suburban Los Angeles education in the 1950s, I did not learn anything about metrics, and still don’t know much. So I don’t know what I paid for my three Dole bananas.

NEXT INSTALLMENT: Highway One and beyond.

All content copyright 2001 by Chuck Woodbury