Oops! (for Jan. 12)

A couple of final comments about Auckland. In the downtown, I don’t think there are two streets that are parallel. And I don’t think there is a single street that doesn’t either angle off in a new direction or change its name every four blocks or less. I have never been in a more confusing city.

And a clarification about driving. The drifting to the left is a combination of feeling too close to the centre line (which is far to your right at home) and too far from the shoulder (which is near on your left at home).

We headed south from Auckland through rolling country with lots of corn and some grazing land. We turned west, where the land began to flatten out and become almost exclusively grazing. Then we turned north up the coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. The road snakes above the water at the foot of small, rounded mountains. It makes the old Katepwa road look like a walk in the park, with no shoulder, more turns back and forth, more and steeper ups and downs, and frequent sharp turns. It is very narrow, with some single lane bridges, and one stretch where there was no centre line because it wasn’t wide enough for two legitimiate lanes. Although the speed limit is posted as 80 kmph, turns every couple of hundred meters are posted at anywhere from 35 kmph to 65 kmph. Then there are frequent 50 kmph postings for little one street resort villages wherever there is a bit of level land and a beach. Finally we climbed up an equally challenging road over a small peninsula to the town of Coromandel.

First oops. When I planned this leg, I used the brief description from the self-drive section of the tour company’s travel book. If I would have researched a little farther in the other travel books I have, I would have found that there really isn’t anything here, except a nice quiet, artists’ village. The Hot Water Beach that I was looking for is elsewhere on the peninsula. But we were already booked into the motel and unpacked, so we settled in. We will go by there tomorrow, but the water is hot only two hours either side of low tide, so I don’t know yet if it will be worthwhile.

Second oops. We went for a little exploratory walk, but it was still only late afternoon, so we decided to go for a little drive. First, the excuses. Once again the roads are very narrow with no centre line. I was facing into the sun, driving into a shady area and into a left hand turn. We had previously observed that, when driving into the sun, the dash reflected onto the windshield, creating a glare, much like the effect you get from a dusty windshield. It was particularly bad looking into shade. We had noted that this was quite a design flaw. I was trying to leave lots of room in the centre in case there was someone coming the other way around the bend. Can you see where this is going? Suddenly, bang, rumble! The left front tyre (we are in New Zealand, you know) caught a tree root right on the edge of the pavement and sticking out at about 8 inches high. Blew a hole in the sidewall of the tire (tyre). We stopped to change the tire. I was not a happy camper. Funny how that clouds your judgment. I didn’t put the emergency brake on or block a tire. I am just about high enough to change the tire when the car moves just enough to tilt the jack. So now it’s put on the E brake, block a tire, crank the jack back down, reposition it, and crank it up again to change the tire. With all sense of adventure now snuffed out, we slinked back to the motel and called it a night. There is a car rental office in the town we are aiming for tomorrow, so I will have to suck up my courage and tell them my story.

Other than that, I guess it was an OK day.