Starting in third gear is not easy!

Can you see my white knuckles? You should see how scared Haven looks.
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Our first long drive of the trip,clocking in at about 5 hours, was from National Park to Wellington.  I'd felt guilty up until this point because Haven had done all of the driving so I volunteered to try my hand at it.   We shouldn't have too many other cars on the road and we wouldn't be in any cities so here was a good opportunity. It was quite a daunting combination for me, since I'd never really driven a manual (other than a few short, practice runs with Nick) and I had certainly not driven on the left side of the road before.   But hell, how hard could it be?  Turns out it ain't that easy.

A view of Wellington from the Botanical Gardens
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Things started off pretty smoothly but Haven and I both realized that when driving on the left side of the road you have a tendency to really hug the outside of the lane.   Actually, that's the understatement of the year- you have a tendency to drive on the shoulder.  This is fine with areas of wide shoulders, not fine on bridges and mountain roads with no shoulder at all.   I'm pretty sure Haven saw her life flash before her eyes a couple of times as you get an up-front view of how close the car is to the edge on the passenger side.

Our first views of the South Island.
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As for the manual, I was actually doing OK.  It wasn't the smoothest ride and I tended to stall into my parking spots, but not horrible....until my meltdown moment.   We stopped to get some fruit at a roadside store and I proceeded to stall twice turning around in the parking lot.   That was nothing in comparison to trying to get out onto the fairly busy main road with a car behind me though.   I stalled twice and Haven was like "Do you have it in first."  Well duh, I thought, of course it is.   After a third stall and staving off the paniced feeling of holding up traffic I managed a gas-guzzling jerky start.   Turns out it was in third and, in case anyone, was wondering third is much harder to start in than first.

View from the ferry.
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Needless to say, Haven feels more comfortable as the driver for the rest of the trip.   Luckily I'm a better navigator than driver and I can keep her entertained with the fun road games of "Guess which little town is coming up next!" as I read what the guide book has to say about it.   We have learned to judge the size of the towns (sometimes a term used very broadly) by the reduction in speed limit from the main road.

We did make it to Wellington and it was a lovely city.  Actually the only city I've liked in New Zealand and the only place I could actually see living.  The only downside is that the city sits on the bay and is very windy, not a great attribute in the winter.   The day we drove in it was so windy that the sea was just being whipped into a fury.  We looked at it and prayed it wouldn't be so bad the next day we were signed up to take the ferry onto the South Island.