White Knuckled Driving

For the record, it took five days in New Zealand (two of which Kerrie was the driver) for me to go from terrified I'd kill us both while simply trying to drive on the left side of the road to being annoyed by people driving 80 km/h in a 100 km/h zone. The driving gods apparently frown on such arrogance. Yesterday we were making a beeline from Taupo to Wellington and drove through some of the fiercest wind either of us have been in. The rain came down in sheets that looked like they were blowing horizontally as much as they were falling. It was especially bad because the camper van has such a high profile--we were bucking back and forth as the gusts hit us and by the time we stopped for the night (about a hour north of Wellington) my hands hurt from gripping the wheel.

At the holiday park we were told the weather forecast for the area predicted winds of over 140 km/h that night, so we drove to a part of the park that was sheltered by a little hill and some trees, pointed the van into the wind, and hoped for the best. It turned out to be an uneventful night (except for occasional rocking in big gusts) but it was an unsettling end to what had turned into a really long day in the van.