Transportation in New Zealand

It was head-scratching when come with the kind of transportations to take in NZ.

I will first talk about driving car in NZ:

Personally, this is best choice because the driving experience in New Zealand is so much easy with GPS (I’m using garmin Map).

http://nzopengps.org/

• Remarks: this is an open project and map is updated frequently.

Advantage of taking car

- Stop and drive without any constraints. It is best suits for photo taker. You know you can’t miss a good shot by stopping by.

- Easy to plan itinerary with car. Some places need to depart in early morning in order to get there before too late.

- Economical if not rent high-end vehicle.

- Good for exploring. Bus will not make to that place if the road can’t fit a huge vehicle.

Things to remember when choosing Car Rental Company

- There are plenty of car rental companies, there are fall into these categories budget (ACE, OMEGA, thrifty, Jucy, budget, apex, go) and normal (Avis, Thrifty, Hertz, Europe car) and etc can’t remember that much. Choose your car by considering your budget.

- Get the promo code (if any) to get discount

- Some companies offer discount package tour or ticket admission when you rent a car from them. Check for their promotion before you choose.

- Always ask the customer service if you are unsure anything. I kind of like the online chat services just like ACE and JUCY and I got the response from them in so fast by chatting and save the chat log for reference. Trust me, you can do it in quick.

- Print out the booking details for your future reference.

- I’m personally advised to take insurance. There is no guarantee that you can drive without any accident. Rock fall is always happened in hill road and you have no control what will happen to you. Windscreen damage is most common. To driving with release, take risk free insurance and we don’t want a disappointing ending at the end of your trip.

- If you are not plan to take insurance, check the excess you need to pay in the event of accident. Some companies may charge the excess goes up to 2500 NZD.

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Things to remember when renting and taking the car

- Renting a car in NZ need not to own a local driving license. One can use his/her country license or they may use their international license. For my case, I need to get a translated license (of course it must be written in English) and hand it to Car Rental Company for their verification and that’s it.

- Make sure when collecting your car, it is in perfect condition where no scratches or defect found in car body.

- If you are collecting your car after-hour (it will cost you 20 NZD), make sure you find your way to pick up location (for my case, I walked for 2km from airport to collect my car) and normally they will provide you the password to open the unlocker to get car key.

- Normally, your car is filled with full tank and you need to return in full tank gas.

- Always fill your gas fully because some urban areas have no gas station and the petrol is higher prices than in the city.

- Use your grocery receipt to redeem some discount for gas filled.

Things to remember when driving

- New Zealanders drive on the left-hand side of the road and driver is driving on right-hand side.

- Road distances are measured in kilometers unlike in US it is measured by miles.

- Speed limit is 100 km/h on the road and 50km/h in urban areas. Don’t ever speeding because you may get caught.

- Cutting the car in crossing lane ONLY. It is very dangerous act because all roads in NZ are mostly single lane.

- As usual, drive with enough of rest and no alcohol taking.

- Beware of dead animal body, don't let your steering lose control

If you need any help, please leave me a comment :)