Driving in New Zealand is actually incredibly relaxing – slow pace, well-maintained roads, gorgeous views, no traffic.

And, of course, the views are gorgeous! Plenty of the roads I was on had places to pull over, stop, relax, and snap a few photos, so I did! Clouds and mountains are some of my favorite landscape features and I was really awestruck by how pretty this stretch of my trip was.

These photos are all from State Highway 6 between Wanaka and Franz Josef. Thankfully, I only got lost once in the whole road trip (Of course, since I had no GPS and my maps weren’t great, it took me a good 30 minutes to figure it out.  But once I did, very easy to get found again!)

What I don’t like about NZ  is that being a passenger on the wrong side of the road makes me – for the first time in my life – carsick, especially when turning. One of my friends drove me around a parking garage and I almost lost my lunch.

I’m not at all prone to motion sickness (I can read on the buses here quite happily and love boats) so I think this is just an extreme reaction to a tiny voice in my head going “YOU’RE GOING TO SMASH INTO ONCOMING TRAFFIC AND DIE YOU’RE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD THE END IS NEAR!”

Just writing this post actually made me a little queasy! Oh, well, hopefully with time I can calm down and take advantage of the opportunity to sit in a car and look at the gorgeous landscape instead of fixedly staring at my hands and muttering, “the left side is the safe side” over and over under my breath.