Month: April 2024

Kia Ora, everyone!*

*This is the standard greeting in New Zealand which you will see and hear everywhere. It’s te reo Māori (“te reo” means “the language of”) but used by everyone across the board here, Māori or otherwise. It literally translates to “have life” or “be healthy,” but everyone uses it in place of “Hello”.

I can’t believe this is my first post in a month; so much for my goal of 2-3 posts a week. I actually have been doing a lot of writing for my blog, and have about a dozen drafts going right now. I just get so bogged down in the details and fact-checking that I get overwhelmed and decide to “come back to it later.” I do post regularly to my NZ Chronicles Instagram account, so if you’re not already following that, you should (I don’t think you need to have an IG account to see my posts…?). I’ve started posting videos as well as photos, and with the help of my new car dash mount, I’m about to start posting videos of what it’s like driving around the Coromandel Peninsula. You will be astounded by the beauty of it.

Anyway: my car!

When I lived in New Zealand for three months last year and told people back home that I was thinking about buying a car to use while I was here, most of them thought I was nuts. One friend even said “Do you mean bring a car? Like bring your car over?”, because apparently the idea of paying god knows how much money to ship my own car to and from New Zealand for three months was somehow less insane than buying a used car while I was here and then reselling it when I went home.

Believe it or not, buying an old(er) car when you land in New Zealand, using it while you’re here, and then selling it back when you leave is a surprisingly common practice. Purchasing a car or campervan for your NZ road trip can be significantly cheaper than renting a car (I’m talking if you’re here for a month-long road trip, not like a 3-4 day road trip). I have a friend from the States who is studying here for six months and just bought a 23 year old Subaru which she’s going to resell when she leaves (I should say “if” she leaves. Chuck, I am in no way convinced that you won’t be canceling that return flight at the end of your semester 😊). A lot of older cars are imported to NZ from Europe and Japan, so it’s not uncommon to see “fancy” older cars being driven around (ahem…).

When I got here in January 2023 for three months and decided to buy a car, Stu knew just the guy to ask. One of his friends is a skilled self-taught mechanic who has a little side hustle finding used cars for friends; he knows how to spot a good deal and he loves the thrill of the hunt. Stu called him and asked him if he could find me a car. Within a few hours, his friend sent him a listing off of TradeMe (which is like a combination of Craigslist and eBay and is used by tons of people here). I took one look at the listing and thought his friend was joking. “There’s no way I could drive that”, I laughed. I forwarded the listing to my sister and said “HA, could you imagine if this was my car?? 🤣”. I forwarded the listing to my Mom and said “Could you imagine if I drove a James Bond car?!” to which she responded “You wouldn’t be driving a James Bond car. He drove an Aston Martin.” (I’d gotten the fancy car names mixed up).

I laughed because the car was one of those fancy kinds that make you reflectively say “Oooooo 💅🏻” in a fancy way when you hear the name. But Stu’s friend was not joking, and an hour later he showed up at the house with the car so that I could take it for a test drive.

Wait, let me sum that up in Kiwi English: my partner rang his mate, who rocked up later that arvo with the car. Speaking of Kiwi English: one of my best friends here is a fellow American who has lived in NZ for 6 years. I told him that I’d started saying “reckon” to Stu in a *wink wink nudge nudge* way, as in “I *RECKON* we should go for a walk before it rains….eh??”. My friend chuckled and said “Yeah, that’s how it starts. You start using Kiwi slang a joke and before you know it, you’re just saying it.”
I reckon everyone back home is allowed to slap me upside the head if I rock up at your house with an accent.

Back to the car. So the friend shows up with the “Oooooooo 💅🏻” fancy, albeit very old, car for me to test drive. When I sheepishly said that I couldn’t possibly drive an [insert make of car], both Stu and his friend were confused and surprised. Me: “But it’s so fancy!!” Stu and his friend: “Seriously?.” (I later spoke to my American friend about this, with Stu present to witness the conversation. Me: “Back me up here: if I post on social media that I’m driving an [insert make of car], people back home are going to think I’m some spoiled little princess, right?”. Friend: “Oh, yeah, totally, you can’t post that online.” Me to Stu: “See?! I told you!” Stu: “[baffled]”).

So Stu’s friend rocks up with the car for me to test drive, only…I couldn’t. I couldn’t drive it because it was a stick shift. To clarify: I am a lifelong diehard stick shift driver, but I was completely unable to wrap my head around the idea of driving manual transmission and shifting with my left hand while sitting in what my brain still thinks of as the passenger seat. So Stu took my potential new car for a test drive while I rode in the (actual) passenger seat. He said he liked the way it handled, and I said I liked the way it felt, and even though I still felt suuuuuuuper weird about buying this “Ooooooo 💅🏻” car, it was a really good deal and I went for it.

That, my friends, is how I ended up the owner of this cherry red, five speed 2002 Alfa Romeo 147.

💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻💅🏻

I purchased it with the agreement that his friend would buy it back from me when I left, at a slightly lesser price to be determined when the time came. I paid $2,200 NZD and sold it back for $1,800 NZD, meaning that I ended up paying $400 NZD–around $236 USD–to have a car for two and a half months. I would have paid that much to rent a car for a week. Like I said, it was a fantastic deal.

It took me several dozen slow, hesitant trips around and around and around our little cul-de-sac before I was suddenly able to drive with ease and confidence, and within a few days of owning it I drove the incredibly windy and scary road from here to Tairua and back (which is about an hour and a half round trip). It was a zippy little car in great condition, but it came with a whole bunch of charming quirks. The radio was held together with a paper clip which had to be twisted around every time the stereo shut itself off. The fabric lining the interior roof of the car was held up with push pins. The entirety of the car’s cherry red paint was covered in little bumps due to a poor paint job on someone’s part. And at one point the driver’s side window fell down and got stuck inside the door somewhere (Stu’s friend fixed it immediately). But I adored it, paperclips and thumbtacks notwithstanding. And at 10.87 km per liter, or 25.58 miles a gallon, it was really good on gas/petrol.

I fell in love with that little car, and as luck would have it, Stu’s friend was so taken with it himself that he ended up keeping it, sprucing it up, and then selling it back to me–for good this time–when I got back this past January. I paid him $4,000 NZD ($2,370 USD). The paperclipped radio and collapsing roof fabric were both taken care of, and he’d always wanted to try his hand at repainting a car, so the exterior is now smooth and gorgeous. It still has some charming little quirks–some fun, different ones this time!–including the fact that the power window buttons rattle around like loose teeth and there’s a 50/50 chance that if you roll down the driver’s side window it’ll either roll back up with ease or take five minutes to s-l-o-w-l-y squeal its way back up, which is really fun when it starts raining.

So that, my friends, is why I’ve been so shy about sharing the fact that I’ve been zipping around New Zealand in an Alfa Romeo 💅🏻. I promise you that I’m not a spoiled little princess 👑 😊. Things just work differently here.

SOME Q&As ABOUT BUYING A CAR IN NEW ZEALAND AS A TOURIST

HOW THE HELL WOULD I GO ABOUT BUYING A CAR IN NEW ZEALAND?

Facebook Marketplace, TradeMe, and Turners Cars are the best places to look, which you can do before you even get here. You may be able to line up a sale from the States, which will save you valuable time when you arrive. Heads up that you’ll encounter lots of car models you’ve likely never heard of, such as Toyota Starlet, Toyota Wish, Honda Jazz, and Subaru Exiga, all of which sound like jokes that would be used in a round of “Bluff the Listener” on NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me .

This website has some good basic info about buying a car as a tourist. You want to make sure the WOF is up to date, which you’ll be able to tell by the sticker on the windshield. WOF is a Warrant of Fitness; it’s the same as our inspection sticker. You should also check for a valid “rego” (registration) sticker on the windshield (or “windscreen,” as they say here).

HOW WOULD I GO ABOUT PAYING SOMEONE FOR A CAR?

For a small fee, you can do a bank transfer via the Wise app, which usually goes through within a few hours. Tip: if you know you’re going to be buying a car in NZ, set up the Wise app on your phone ahead of time so that you’re ready to go. You’ll need to input your bank account/routing information and add money to your account. The Wise fee varies depending on the dollar amount and currency being exchanged. When I sent Stu’s friend $4,000 NZD in January, I paid a fee of around $11 USD.

DO I NEED A SPECIAL DRIVER’S LICENSE TO DRIVE THERE?

NO! As long as you have a valid US license, you can drive for up to one year in NZ, after which you’ll need to get a NZ license. I made the mistake of paying about $25 for an international license before my first trip to NZ only to find that it was a total waste of money.

HOW EXPENSIVE IS GAS?

It’s expensive (and it’s also called “petrol” here, and is priced by the litre rather than the gallon). I talked about the price of gas in this blog post dated January 12, 2024. At that time, it was about $6.75 USD/gallon, so you’ll want to find a car that gets good mileage.

I highly recommend downloading an app called Gaspy. The adorable logo icon indicates that it’s supposed to be “Gas Spy,” though I can only ever say it as “Gasspy” in my head. No matter how you pronounce it, it’s invaluable. When you open the Gaspy app, it detects your location and tells you where the cheapest gas is around you.

Another way to save a little bit of money is by purchasing something at a New World, a national grocery store chain. It tends to be a bit pricier than the other grocery stores, but if you spend more than $1 NZD at New World, you get 6c off a litre at their petrol pumps. Your fuel voucher is printed off along with your receipt, so don’t toss it. The discount is good for a week, but the one catch is that you have to redeem it at THAT location, so make sure you use it right then and there. If the New World that you’ve visited doesn’t have its own pumps, the fuel voucher is redeemable at Z Petrol stations.

As an American, I was thrown off by the prices listed on gas station signs. Using the photo below photo as an example, I would go “Oh wow, gas is only $2.05 a gallon here??,” but of course it’s not. They go by liters (“litres”) rather than gallons, so that would have been $2.05 a litre. One litre is about ¼ of a gallon, so if the gas station has a sign saying $2.05/litre, that’s around $8.20/gallon, not $2.05/gallon.

DO I NEED CAR INSURANCE?

Crazy but true: no one is required to have car insurance in New Zealand. That being said, I’ve found that it’s quite a bit cheaper to insure a car here than it is back home, so you should at least consider getting third party insurance. AA Insurance seems to be the biggest and easiest-to-work-with car insurance company in New Zealand. As long as you have a valid US driver’s license, they can cover you for as long as you’re driving in NZ. Before I got here, I chatted with AA Insurance on WhatsApp (having WhatsApp on your phone is an absolute must when you’re traveling abroad). They were able to answer all of my questions, which was handy since I then had everything in writing. Their number for WhatsApp is +64 9-966 8131.

To insure my 2012 Toyota Yaris back home, valued at $4,900 USD, it costs me $585 USD/year. To insure my Alfa here, I pay $274 USD/year. Anyone else who drives my car, as long as they’re over 25 years old and hold a valid license, is automatically covered by my insurance; I do not need to add their name to my policy.

In addition to having AA Insurance, I also pay for a roadside assistance program through AA Roadservice, which is essentially what AAA is back home (yes; it’s confusing: AA = insurance, AA = roadside assistance, and AA = support group for alcoholics). I have read that AAA members in the States can get a discount as an AA member in New Zealand, but I have yet to talk to anyone at AA who has ever heard of that.

IN CONCLUSION: Let me know if you have questions about anything that I didn’t cover here! I may or may not be able to give you an answer, but I’m happy to try. 😊

I hope everyone back home is doing well and enjoying the arrival of spring! I promise I’ll post more regularly.

Aroha (that means “love”!),

Hilary