Just got back from a great top down trip around the South Island for 2 weeks.
Bumped into a very friendly MX5 owner in Nelson at the start (think he must
have been a club member, drives a BRG) and a Club outing at St Arnaud near the
finish (chatted to MX5A about his boot rack: Hi if you're reading this).
Having just driven 2,250 kms on some great (and very empty) roads several
things occur to me:
1) I wish I lived there, but work prevents it
2) It is lucky that Auckland isn't where Wellington is, otherwise there'd
be a lot more people going over on the ferry and the roads would be more
crowded
3) Why on earth would anyone ever want to move from the South Island to the
North Island?
4) Nelson has a traffic problem
5) Where were all the police gathering revenue? My last trip in the SI (by
camper van as it happens) we saw 3 police cars waiting to pounce within an
hour between Cromwell and Wanaka. This time we saw one mufti ute who had
stopped someone somewhere between Arthur's Pass and Springfield and that was
it.
6) I can understand why the only petrol station in Franz Joseph would be
charging 162.4 c per litre of Premium and not advertising the fact, sucking in
the unwary, when the same petrol down the rest of the West Coast was 151.9 c,
but why would fuel in Nelson, Marlborough and Christchurch be 4c per litre
cheaper than fuel in the Wellington region?
I thoroughly enjoyed being able to drive the MX5 for distances in excess of
100 kms at a stretch without ever catching a slower vehicle or having anyone
catch me. The road to yourself. Bliss. Can't wait to go back.
Oh well, back to North Island reality: traffic queues, speed cameras, highways
where Tranzit has been busy engineering every bend up to (?) a standard where
a campervan can take it at 100 kph
Tim
MY2CTA
