Car!

Today we went to a Backpackers car market in Auckland and bought a 1993 Mitsubitshi Magna GLX. It's a stick-shift, which is good because I love them and bad because so far, I am the only one of the three of us (me, Joy and Annie) who knows how to drive one. But I'm sure they'll pick it up. It's really not that hard! Anyway, as most of you probably know they drive on the wrong side of the road here, I mean the left... The driver is on the right side of the car. The signal and windshield wiper controls are on opposite sides of the wheel (so I have turned the windshield wipers on when trying to signal.. fun). Driving in Auckland is not fun, mostly because I am so not used to driving on the wrong, sorry left, side of the road. Soon, however, we will be driving out of Auckland, heading out to work on dairy farms and picking fruit.

The woman who worked at the car market was really pushy, so it's a good thing we talked to a nice guy first.. Had we met her first we would have left immediately. She kept going on and on about the same stuff.. how she knows a lot about cars and insurance for travellers. Their car insurance was about twice as much as the one our MIGRANT bank offers, however, so we are going to go talk to them first. If the bank doesn't really offer insurance for backpackers, we are going to go get the third party insurance at a hostel. We are NOT going back to that car market just to have that woman tell us "I told you so!" I wanted to punch her, but I didn't because I'm nice... Somewhat anyway.

Yesterday we went to guiz night at a local pub with the people that work at IEP and a few other travellers. We lost, but it was still fun. There were so many questions about NZ that we did not stand a chance.