I have written before about how when Sean and I travel together things aren't always sunshine, unicorns and rainbows. We get on each other's nerves, know how to push the right buttons and are getting quite practiced at bickering like a married couple. When things get stressful and if we're tired, lost and hungry, the tension is magnified exponentially.
Consider the usual scenario of a husband and wife driving together on a vacation. They might get lost and have to stop and ask for directions which could spark an argument. Now consider a situation when a husband and wife are driving on the opposite side of the road in a city that is under construction due to devastating earthquakes in a vehicle that they are not familiar with. This was what we experienced in Christchurch; the day after we bought our car we took off on a 6-hour drive to Queenstown. It was TERRIFYING to drive on the other side of the road, we had no idea where exactly we were going and got lost a lot, we weren't 100% on all of the road rules (they have some strange ones), and we were traveling in an unfamiliar car. It was a bad idea.
Sean did all of the driving while I attempted to navigate. I can't even begin to explain how stressful this was and we had to pull over a few times to calm down, look at the map and repeat over and over to 'stay on the left.' It was insane. We had to totally change the way we thought about driving and everything seemed messed up and backwards. Even our car was arranged differently - the blinker and windshield wipers are on opposite sides and you have to shift with your left hand. For about a week straight, whenever we wanted to turn left our windshield wipers would go on.
Sean did great throughout the whole 'learning to drive' ordeal. He was farily tense and nervous the first couple of days but he got used to it pretty quickly. I am embarrassed to admit that I have yet to try driving on the left - I am too scared. I am not that great of a driver in the U.S. and I am afraid that I would space out and just drive like I would at home which could have devastating consequences here.
The two most difficult things to master here are the roundabouts and an odd give way rule that only exists in New Zealand. Picture this: you are driving in the U.S. and you want to turn right on a side street. Now imagine that that there is also a car coming from the other direction waiting to turn left on that same side street. In NZ, the person turning LEFT has the right of way, not the way we do it where the person simply turning right gets to go. Now reverse this in your head and switch it to driving on the left. See what I mean? It's like impossible mental gymnastics. To make things even more interesting, NZ has decided that this rule is bad (due to all of the accidents caused by foreign tourists who don't follow this rule) and is changing it in 3 days. I figure maybe I'll start learning how to drive when all of this ruckus over the driving law change calms down.
The turn signal/winshield wiper thing was the funniest! The best part was when we came home from N.Z., Ross accidently turned on a wipers a few times when he meant to signal a turn.
I have to admit, I was nominated to sit in front and navigate to a business lunch in my own town yesterday and couldn't find the restaurant I was thinking of. So we went somewhere else. I'm the worst navigator ever!
OMG. I remember my parents learning in Oz... hahahaha