To Kaukapakapa

The only person I know who bought their driving licence is my grandfather who bought his UK driving license in the 1930’s and now in the 2010’s I’ve bought my driving license too, a full New Zealand driving license for $52.10 and twenty minutes of my time in an AA centre. A recent change in the law means that a person holding a full UK driving license is just given a full New Zealand license as long as they can provide a UK passport, proof of permanent address in New Zealand and, of course, their UK driving license.

Following this and unrelated to it I took my new car for a drive. I wanted to experience some urban and rural driving so I chose to head from Takapuna to Kaukapakapa to the North West of Auckland. Before I set off I noticed stickers on the accessories like the alloy wheels that said 'racin’ function'. Yeah, like I’ll be doing any racing, or spellin’ like that. A two litre engine is cavernous and my finances aren’t, so I set myself the challenge to see if I could drive about making good progress without exceeding 2,000rpm.

One of the first things I realized was how glad I am that I took out comprehensive insurance, the driving quality and the road design quality is terrible. I set off in a general northerly direction along roads that are built to the width of football pitch and this, as far as I can tell, is how all roads are built here. Soon I found myself having to make a right turn across five lanes with two lanes of traffic moving in each direction and a median lane (no man’s land) in the middle, this must be what it’s like for pilots taxiing their aeroplane onto the runway prior to take off, I thought, but some idiot in a car won’t drive into them.

The next obstacle was a set of traffic lights where without warning the two lanes merge to one immediately after the junction, this happens a lot. Merging in the UK means finding a gap in the cars and fitting your car into it or allowing a gap to form in front of your car for a thankful motorist to move their car into, this happens mostly seamlessly. Not in New Zealand though, you all have to drive side by side until one car cannot physically continue or another driver realizes that there is a car in their blind spot that they are about to turn into...

I continued along the road when suddenly I realized that all the other drivers and I were straddling across two lanes and in lieu of road signs or road markings had to make a snap decision over which lane to go into and the rules for this as far as I can tell are that the person who changes lanes latest, without checking their blind spot and aiming at as many other cars as possible wins. I don’t know if these are the unofficial rules, I just presume they must be. After waiting an inordinate amount of time for a green light you continue to see this sign in front of you: ‘You should’ve chosen the other lane.’ Well, at least you can do U turns wherever you want in this country.

The urban density was lowering by now and there were overtaking lanes going up hills, except there weren’t because the left hand lane was used as a car park so the overtaking lane was the only lane. Finally I left the urban area and the houses disappeared, suddenly I was driving through wilderness, by British standards anyway, I there were kilometres between passing cars. It was difficult to keep within the 100kph (62mph) national speed limit because the roads are so wide so compared to the UK it felt like I was going really slowly, but as this kept revs down I was happy.

I arrived in Kaukapakapa which for the most part is composed of long driveways with letterboxes where they meet the road and presumably these are linked to far away houses; this is how I presume the American mid-west to be like but Kaukapakapa has more grass. Eventually buildings appear next to the road and this culminates in a newsagents (or ‘dairy’ as they’re known in New Zealand), fire station, off license (liquor store), primary school, cafe, a railway level crossing and the last petrol station for 47km.

 (Kaukapakapa; the cafe and tumbleweed are just out of view)

I had a Snickers bar from the dairy for lunch because they lacked vegetarian sandwiches and made my way back to Takapuna. I got back fully intact and without needing to call my car insurance company but most importantly did I manage to keep my car below 2,000 rpm without holding up traffic? Almost entirely yes!