Behind the wheel

Awhile back you got to hear about my first driving experience on the wrong side of the road. Then you heard about the 1500 kilometers I drove in a week with my brother. My photo filled post of the South Island road trip was an overview of the sights we saw, but now I would like to share a bit of what the driver gets to see as he/she cruises along.

As luck would have it, they speak English here, so reading road signs was not a problem, other than occasionally wondering how to pronounce names. But saw a few fun ones that we thought were photo worthy.

My daddy's name :)

One of the gentler curves I drove around...at a snails pace

Wesport!!! Been there :)

Lucky for us it was not frosty

My momma used to live in Charleston!

 These are just a couple examples of the some of the colorful vehicles we saw out on the road. I think one of the rental companies sends their customers off in these. Our brown Toyota looked rather dull in comparison.

Bridges are cool. When they are not on the edge of a cliff, or seemingly too narrow for your car....or train tracks. Best bridge of the trip (and we quickly lost count of how many we drove over) by far was a one way bridge that is for both cars and trains all at once. Vehicular traffic from one direction yields right of way to traffic coming from the other way, and either direction yields to any trains in the area. The train tracks run right down the single lane, so you're literally driving on the train tracks, yikes!

This was not the narrowest bridge we drove on, and also appeared quite
sturdy in comparison to a few, but we thought it was cute :) we being me....

I suppose this is technically more of a guardrail along the edge than an actual bridge, but it is one example of a point in the road where you have a sign instructing you to yield to oncoming traffic....except the road is windy/curvy so you actually have no idea whether there is any oncoming traffic, so you make a go for it and hope for the best.

I was serious about the train tracks!! This was outside Hokitika.

New Zealand is a gorgeous country. Everywhere you look there is something beautiful to see. And yes, I do know I have said that before, and posted heaps of photos to prove it, but here are a few more. I would like it noted that I did not take ANY of these photos. Instead, I enjoyed teaching little bro the art of quickly snapping a good shot before it disappears.
One thing that I enjoyed about driving so far was the different terrain we got to see. In on a couple hours of driving time, the scenery could change quite a lot.