Keep Left

That's what the sticker said on the dashboard of my rental car.

Keep Left.

With an arrow pointing in that direction.

Sage advice for those of us conditioned to "Keep Right" on the roads, I suppose, and the first thing I noticed when I hopped in the car in Auckland for what turned out to be the 8 day drive down to Queenstown, near the bottom of the South Island. But before we get to that, there is the matter of leaving Russell after six months of working and playing in the little town that closes at Midnight.

My last shift at the restaurant in Russell was Saturday, April 19th, by which time the chef was already on vacation in his head and I was the last of the original foreign hospitality crew to still be standing. In a word: depressing. Bernard, the chef, had had a change of mood over the course of the last month before shutting the doors to the restaurant for 10 days, beginning the 20th. Disappointed by the numbers for the summer, I think he was contemplating giving Russell one more summer to try to make money with the restaurant and, barring an unexpected climb in visitors to town, perhaps leaving New Zealand altogether for more profitable shores elsewhere. So the mood in the restaurant was demonstrably dour over the last couple of weeks as Bernard hit the wall and friends began one-by-one and two-by-two to leave to begin their travels around New Zealand or to return to their home country. The final week was fairly sad: just me and the Swedish cook, Hampus, remaining to serve out our sentences as the rest of our friends began another chapter. We felt left behind.

Nevertheless, on the 23rd of April, the Wednesday after the closing of the restaurant, I said my goodbyes to Mark, my roommate with whom I had a fantastic summer experience drinking and philosophizing and just plain goofing around, and got on a bus headed south to Auckland, four hours away. Once there, I met up with Laura, an English friend of mine who had also worked in the restaurant with me (pictures in previous posts) and Hampus, who was waiting a week for a flight back home to Sweden. For two days we grasped to the last vestiges of our Russell friendship. But it almost felt like we were shellshocked. I had spent six months on what is essentially an island (it's really a peninsula), cloistered and subsumed by the culture of small-town life. I left Russell maybe three of four times, each for a day or half-day trip, so the vast majority of my time was spent in a radius of no more than a kilometer. With the three of us in Auckland, it almost felt like we were privy to an experience no one around us could relate to--if you watched the Lord of the Rings, I imagine it's something akin to what the four hobbits felt upon their return home as their friends in the pub around them were oblivious to the adventure they had just undertaken. They shared a secret and drank a last beer together, smiling quietly at one another, each acknowledging with a look that no one would believe them anyway if they tried to describe the experience. In short, we were in Auckland, but we really weren't in Auckland. And so, two days later, I rented a car, said a goodbye to Hampus, and dropped Laura off at the airport for her return flight to the States.

And then I started to drive.

Keep Left...it takes some getting used to, especially when you make a right turn and have to look right first. You're just not conditioned to having to do that, but despite a couple of close calls, you force yourself to follow the advice of your parents and look both ways before you cross the street. I had no plan on where to go, really, just the Bible...er, my Lonely Planet, and gas in the car.

I've never had more fun driving than I did while I was in New Zealand. I had the car for two weeks and just as I had been told and had read about prior to arriving, the country simply does not disappoint. Much of the South Island reminds me of Colorado, with the Southern Alps substituting for the Rockies. Though the Rockies are decidedly taller, New Zealand compensates by throwing in some of the most stunning coastline you can imagine. The combination of the two, and the fact that the country is so rural, its remote two-lane roads dissecting one mountain range after another, makes my advice to potential visitors really very simple: rent a car and drive the country.

After Auckland, I headed east to the Coromandel Peninsula, a region known for its spectacular coastal views. Winding my way through and around one mountain after another, ascending, descending, and hanging perilously close to the edge of a steep cliff with a sheer rock wall on one side and tropical rainforest on the other, I made it to my first hostel near Cathedral Cove, a beautiful rock formation at the water's edge that draws tourists in for photographs by the thousands. Naturally, I took pictures after arriving after a scenic 30 minute walk from the carpark. After some time there, I headed 10 minutes down the road to Hot Water Beach, a tourist draw for the warm water pits you can sit in at low tide. Because I arrived at high tide, I snapped a few obligatory pictures, got back in my car, pulled out the Lonely Planet, and headed south for the Tauranga (pop. 100,000)/Mt. Manganui (man-ga-noo-e) area.

After a couple hours of driving the infamous winding New Zealand roads (there are no straight-ahead highways in this country, I don't think), I made it to Mt. Manganui, a nearly 300 meter mountain that oddly rises up out of nowhere and sits perched on the water's edge, all alone, with an almost 1,000 foot sheer drop on its back side. I climbed the mountain, having been passed by a few joggers doing the same and after making a few smart-ass comments about being "shown up" by the cardiovascularly bionic. Despite having two strokes and needing defibrillation on the way up, I emerged on to the mountain's crown to, of course, unbelievable views of the Pacific, Tauranga, and miles of coastline. Looking straight down, nearly 1,000 feet, to the water below almost induces a case of vertigo. I don't really know what vertigo is...but it sounds bad and I think I had it. Suffice it to say, the juice was worth the squeeze. A great workout with the added benefit of an even better view.

I managed to make it an hour or so south to Rotorua thereafter, the adrenaline-fueled city that smells like sulfur from all of the volcanic activity simmering beneath the surface. I spent a couple of nights there, riding the gondola up the nearby mountain for views over Lake Rotorua, and luging--getting in a sit-down luge for a run down the hill on a concrete track. I met a friend from Russell, who happened to be in town, for a couple of drinks, found a gym for workout, and then visited Te Puia, a Maori cultural site that offers guided tours of the on-site geysers, boiling mud pools, a sighting of the rare kiwi bird, as well as a look at a Maori traditional wood-carving and weaving school (both on-site and fully operational, as well). Finally, entrance gave us the privilege of enjoying a 45-minute traditional Maori concert, which included, of course, the famous haka dance, guitar playing, and singing. Having had hit my quota for all things culturally sensitive, I drove straight south, through the Lake Taupo area (the biggest skydiving site in the world) and found myself in Wellington again, nearly 7 months to the day that I was first in the capital city.

I didn't need to see Wellington again. Been there, bought the t-shirt, nearly been blown away by the wind. I spent one night there, then early the next morning caught the Interislander car ferry across the Cook Strait for the three hour ride to the South Island. Emerging to a rainbow straddling the small port town of Picton, I had arrived into unchartered territory, excited by the near unanimous rave reviews of the South that I had heard over the months from tourists who had already visited.

What does one do in such a situation? Why, pick up Lonely Planet from the front seat and find out.

Part 2 coming...