After South America we explored New Zeland, Australia and Vanuatu. As always, so much to see and never enough time. Nevertheless most of the time we had fun in Oceania and like to give you a short overview.
New Zealanders are lovely people, until they sit in a car. Somehow sitting in a car transforms those nice people into bad behaving idiots. According to their driving we came up with the assumed theoretical driving test
Question 1: On which site of the road do we drive?
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Left Right |
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Question 2: Who has primacy?
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I Depends The others |
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Question 3: What are shaded areas there for?
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Exclusion zone Extended space to take over, stop or get already into the lane Where are those? |
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Question 4: When should I indicate when turning/ chancing lane ?
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✓ ✓ ✓
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Before After Never Whenever |
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Question 5: How should I behave towards pedestrians?
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✓ ✓ |
Ignore them, they can jump/run Give primacy If she/he is hot, I might stop See question 2 |
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Question 6: Where can I park?
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Only at assigned parking areas Wherever If there is no sign, parking is permitted, even in curves |
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Question 8: Should I be personally offended if I have to drive behind a clearly marked rental car?
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Yes Sweet as |
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Unlike most of the other countries, Australia did not win over our hearts. For us, it was too exhausting, too expensive and too regulated. I cannot put a finger on it, but overall I think it was the price-value ratio that did not feel right. Also many services simply did not work, for example free WiFi; 1 out of 10 McDonalds had working internet. All of this does not mean that there are not tons of good things there. Below you find a list of our Australian favorites (family excluded).
Instead of checking out Australia's Gold Coast, we made a detour to Vanuatu, the happiest country in the world. We have not heard much about it before, but all the descriptions sounded promising. Vanuatu did not let us down. Although they rely on tourism and set up pretty adventurous things (well you have to if you want to entertain Kiwis), it did not feel crowded. Especially in Santo we were kind of blended in, as there were not many tourists around. The atmosphere is always relaxed and the people friendly. Also there are fewer regulations which makes it easy to be totally relaxed in no time.
The South Pacific region is definitely high on our list for the next travels.