some notes from the road

Now that Ella has gotten you all up-to-date on our pursuits (well, pre-Wellington anyway), I thought I'd share a few of the funnier highlights of our NZ trip thusfar. Our first big snag has come in with street signs-- Most things are, for the most part, pretty straightforward, whereas others warrant extensive conversation on our parts about what exactly they might be. Our favorite caution sign is simply an exclamation point, though our overall favorite sign is probably the "aged persons crossing." Ella and I have been having a hard time figuring out why it is that only older people cross the road at that particular junction, and why it's important to watch for older people crossing as opposed to people in general, but the people in charge of signs have deemed it important enough to warrant its own sign. Another sign we couldn't figure out is what I thought at first was a wing, while Ella thought it was a cup of coffee with steam coming off it. Ella finally realized that we were on the Thermal Highway, and that the weird squiggly lines were not a wing or a cup of coffee or tea but rather an indication of thermal waters. Good thing it wasn't anything important, since it took us a few hours on the highway to get that one straight.


Roundabouts are another New Zealand specialty. In the States, as many of you know, roundabouts (or rotaries or traffic circles, whatever you are inclined to call them) are not exactly a frequent occurrence- at first, the only one I could think of was the dreaded Sea Pines circle (we have now added a few outside of Boston to that list, but it's still quite short). This country has a love affair with roundabouts. Not only are they at practically every other intersection, they are oftentimes not justifiable in the slightest. Most of the time they are for two intersecting streets, creating four possible exits on the traffic circle, but sometimes they are only three exits. What's wrong with a stop sign? Maybe a traffic light in an extreme situation? Driving on the left side of the road was nervewracking at first, but now that we are experts, even anticipating all the oncoming traffic circle traffic from the right is not too terrifying (especially since we have had what seems like hundreds of times to practice).

Driving is not the only quirky aspect of New Zealand life. Lots of Kiwis (that's New Zealanders for those of you not hip to the lingo) we've met, while incredibly friendly, have been their own brand of quirky. Probably the best example of this is the entire town of Tirau, which we bumped into on our way to Rotorua. Tirau is a town obsessed with corrugated iron- I'm sure it is a gimmick, to some extent anyway, but it's EVERYWHERE in this town. Two of the buildings are shaped like corrugated iron animals (a sheep, no surprise there, and a dog), the "Welcome to Tirau" signs are made out of corrugated iron, most of the shops have corrugated iron signs, and almost as many of them have some kind of gigantic corrugated iron statue to go along with the store. The garden store has a giant corrugated iron sunflower, the teddy bear shop has a giant corrugated iron teddy bear, and outside of one store there's an entire corrugated iron "safari," complete with an elephant, two giraffes, a leopard, a gorilla, and a sign to tell you that it's a corrugated iron safari.

On a more personalized level, we met a particularly hilarious shopkeeper in Taupo, a tourist destination that we stopped at for lunch on our way to Napier for Ella's birthday. Our car is equipped with FM stations between 76.0 and 90.0, leaving us with very few radio options and a tape deck. We walked past a music store and, feeling a little desperate, popped in to see if they had any tapes for sale. Much to my delight we found a best of The Kinks tape, and decided to see if we couldn't scrounge up another gem. One of the guys working at the store pounced on this opportunity to show us the collection of mixed tapes he had made and was selling. After giggling at a few of the selections (which prompted him to say, "I got all the good ones, eh?"), we eventually settled on his mix titled "Old Skool," a compilation of hackneyed songs that should never be put on one mix together but was a better selection than any of the other abismal choices.

What I guess I'm trying to say here is that although we've done something beyond fascinating essentially every day since we landed in the country, it's all the in between things that are similarly fascinating and oftentimes hilarious (and what we continue to laugh about for days and days after it stops being funny). Ella is a good travel partner for that sort of thing. On that note, we need to get our things together to head out to Napier, so I hope everyone is doing well, and keep the comments and e-mails coming-- it makes us feel special/delighted when we hear from people!