Driving on foreign roads, especially on the wrong side of the road, can be a challenging experience but a car GPS system can do a lot to ease the tension.
Retailing around the $800 mark, the TomTom Go 950 comes complete with maps of New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and North America, including Alaska, Hawaii and - crucially for us - Canada.
We had a few familiarity drives around Auckland - where we already knew where we were going - then put it to serious use during a 10-day drive around British Columbia.
The TomTom Go 950 is an easy piece of kit to operate, even though our lack of technical know-how meant we never used the machine to its fullest. For instance, we never managed - though I'm still trying - to sync it with my cellphone for handsfree calling.
But it was invaluable in getting us from A to B in a foreign land. While the system was good for highway driving and finding motorway off-ramps, it really came into its own in Vancouver, which has a number of one-way streets.
