Ginger Without Borders

In the “old days” of travel, you looked at a map and hoped your maps were accurate. Dawn and I wandered off to some interesting places as a result, including the time in Crete when the “road” we chose ended in an olive orchard in a remote valley. But such adventures are what we enjoy about traveling. So now to the Garmin.

We actually like GPS when it works. Because the maps on our phones are easy to access (and relatively inexpensive under our phone data plans), we rarely use the Garmin anymore. When we traveled to Eastern Europe with Lena (the trip that began this blog), “we” used the Garmin because the Verizon phone plans were expensive. I say “we” because Dawn drove and Lena navigated the Garmin. I was relegated to the back seat with strict instructions not to meddle. Of course, that didn’t always work, particularly when we were 20 miles past Budapest and our hotel was in the center of Budapest. But that is a story that each of us recalls differently.

So when we began to plan this adventure, Dawn and Lena thought the Garmin would be best, so we would need to purchase the Australia and New Zealand map updates. I thought we could just use the GPS on my phone since I am buying a SIM card for each country. I researched the cost of SIM cards and the costs were comparable to the Garmin updates (but the SIM card costs were only estimates and could run higher). Reece, our son, voted with Dawn and Lena, so we ordered the Garmin updates. Since Lena had done all the navigation in Europe, she had to give her Mom lessons in using the Garmin.

I have had a lot of experience driving on the wrong (sorry to those poor misguided English folks in the few countries that still do drive on the left) side of the road. Even did it in a straight drive car in Ireland once. But it does take a lot of concentration at first. Australia is one of those misguided countries, as is New Zealand. They even WALK on the wrong side of the footpath (non-American for sidewalk). So Dawn and I agreed that she would operate the Garmin and I would drive on the wrong side (sorry again, left side) of the road.

Why are the roads around virtually every airport in the world with international arrivals designed like someone dumped a bowl of spaghetti on the design table for the road engineers to duplicate? In Brisbane’s case, you can also add bunches of roundabouts. And not the American single lane roundabouts, but those devilish two or three lane ones. And they make you do it on the left.

In the Avis parking lot, Dawn and I carefully assembled and installed the Garmin and tested it to be sure it had the map to the hotel in downtown Brisbane. Confident that “we have this”, we left the safety of the Avis parking lot. First, we quickly noticed that there was no map voice to tell us where to turn. Second, as we were making this discovery, Dawn announced that the Garmin had decided to recalculate our route. But we had to make a decision to go right or left, so we remembered (wrongly) right. By the time the Garmin had recalculated, it realized we were not where we should be and recalculated again just as we had to choose again. You know what happens now. So by the time it had recalculated the third time, we were on the M3 (British for Interstate) going away from downtown Brisbane. By now, Dawn was extremely frustrated. I was still trying to remember that the turn signals were on the same side as the door. The windshield wipers were where I am used to the turn signals being and do no good to indicate which way we were going. The Australians are almost as polite as Canadians, so I only heard one horn.

The Garmin then got us off at the first exit from the M3, about 10 kilometers later. After 15 minutes on the side streets, we were finally back to the airport. Now we were faced with the right/left decision again and both of us agreed that it appeared that the Garmin map showed left. Repeat line from above. Luckily, we only had to go 3 kilometers the wrong direction before we got to the dreaded triple lane roundabout. And it was the first roundabout I have ever experienced that was at a dead stop with traffic. By now it was 8am and we were in work traffic. Once we cleared the jam, we were off into the 6.5 kilometer Airport Link Tunnel, the longest under city tunnel I have ever experienced. It even had three side exits.

Shortly after the we cleared the tunnel, the Garmin had us exit the M3 and enter into city traffic. In the middle of Brisbane, it directed us to go straight into a one-way road that was soon closed by construction. The Australian workers were very nice (one admitted he hated Nav devices) and said it was OK go the wrong way on the road, since no one else would be expected to use it. The Garmin kept directing us left when the Australian workers had told us to go right, so we drove through the city center of Brisbane, finally ignoring the Garmin. As we drove by the Botanic Gardens (on the southern end of downtown Brisbane), the Garmin put us back on the M3! Shortly thereafter, we arrived at the Best Western Diana Plus, where a very accommodating Best Western employee got us early entry into our corner room and was very surprised to hear that the Garmin ever told us to leave the M3.

The hotel has WiFi, so we eventually asked Lena why the Garmin didn’t have a voice (we did not bring up the early exit from the M3). She said we must have set the volume too low. Well, we didn’t set anything, so I located the Garmin manual on-line (I am not so ancient that I haven’t figured out everything is on-line) and, sure enough, the volume was at 0.5%. It is now at 85%, so Dawn warned me that it will probably yell at us when we begin to use it again. I also finally got my SIM card (that is the next story) and, sure enough, the cards were on sale! So if the Garmin acts out again, I have enough data to switch to my phone map. Of course, now that the Garmin has competition, it will be perfect.