i've made it as far as wellington now and of course its windy and raining and i've decided to stay for a week, so hopefully the weather shapes up soon or i might be forced to take a tour of the parliment buildings.
i decided today that i was going to make the 15 block trek in the pouring rain to the driver's services center to see about getting myself a kiwi licence so i don't have to take my passport out with me. apparently citizens of select countries.. like canada.. have to take a written test and then they give you a full licence but don't have to do an actual road test. it cost me 80 bucks for the first attempt at the test and the licence fee, the guy bent the rules a bit (or a lot) for me and said i showed proof of address even though i don't have an address. i managed to get 31 out of 35 on my first attempt at the test, and you need 32 to pass, not bad for blind guessing, even the guy was impressed that i did that well without having read the book on the road rules. there was a lot of random questions i had no idea about: how many meters a load can stick out on front or behind the car, how far a towed thing can behind the car, how fast a car w/ a trailer can go, what yellow reflectors on the road mean, when the 2 second or 4 second rules apply ummm.... ? apparently i got all the hard ones right and managed to get the easy ones wrong... ah well so for another 30 bucks i got to try again and before the guy gave me the test he told me to come and see him if i had no idea what the awnser was and he'd work through it with me (read: he'd tell me the awnser so i didn't fail again) hehe but i managed to only get 2 wrong on my second attempt w/o help. so i now have a kiwi licence coming to me in the next couple weeks, which means my decision on where to go next has been made for me since the only place i could get it mailed was hamilton. so i guess i'll be in taupo at xmas and hamilton around new years then head straight back to welligton and over to the south island and back on the bus.
