Part 1 – Desire, Preparation and Departure

I did a school project on New Zealand when I was at school and fell in love with the images of that remote country there and then. Ever since those early days, I have had on my list of things to do: visit and tour around New Zealand. Luckily, the girl I married had a similar life goal, so when the opportunity came along in 2023 to work in Napier on the North Island of New Zealand, I took it. Well, I took it eventually would be a more accurate way of saying it. But that is a tale for another time and another post.

At the time of writing Sandra and I have been in New Zealand for fourteen months. We have traveled extensively across the North Island and I will regale you with those trips all in good time, but suffice to say we’ve done some miles here, up and down the length of the island. But in my heart of hearts, I came here to visit South Island, as those were the images I saw as a boy; images I cut from travel magazines and stuck into my project book for my geography lessons; images of Milford Sound, Mount Cook and the Southern Alps. Now here was the chance to see the real thing. It didn’t disappoint.

You really only travel by two forms of transport in New Zealand. Air and road. Air transport is primarily covered by Air New Zealand and we flew from Napier on central North Island to Christchurch in central South Island for our starting point. Roads in New Zealand are of a decent quality even right out in the wilderness. Some roads do revert to rough tracks with no sealed surface but the distance we traveled on such roads was quite short, probably 30km, compared to close to 2000km in total. Trains do exist, but the tracks do not cover the miles that roads do, the trains are heavily biased towards freight. Earthquakes and cyclones have done a lot of damage to routes and to the political desire to keep the trains running. There are ferries too of course. But in South Island if you want to see the most you go by motorhome or campervan. So we hired a campervan.

It was the size of a transit van, it had benches that converted to a bed. It had a cooker, fridge, shower and toilet. It had a good deal of storage overhead and lower down. Most importantly it was certified as “Fully Self Contained” which is a requirement in New Zealand if you wish to do what is known as freedom camping.

Freedom camping is pitching up anywhere you are allowed: beaches, verges, public car parks, turning places, viewpoints; anywhere where you are not expressly forbidden to camp overnight. The deal is you take all your rubbish with you (including human waste) when you leave, hence the need for being fully self-contained. However, there are loads of campsites in New Zealand, many of very high quality, and even the less well developed normally have a toilet and cooking shelter, so freedom camping is rarely a necessity, and we only did two freedom camps over our 3 week tour, both by choice.

The thing you have to watch is battery power. The fridge ran off the battery all day, which whilst the vehicle’s engine was on, was fine. But when parked up, you have to decide whether or not to keep things on, like internal lights, water pump for the taps and the fridge, as you don’t want a flat battery! Whilst not connected to power points on campsites, the internal sockets did not work, so to boil water we needed to use the gas burners when freedom camping or staying on unpowered sites. We made sure we camped on a powered site every 2-3 three days so we we able to properly charged the laptops, phones and cameras and also so we could use the electric kettle and toaster for breakfast.

There are plenty of companies in New Zealand who hire campervans, there are the big ones like Maui, Jucy and Apollo. We went with a smaller company called Wendekreisen, as I like supporting smaller companies and the price of hire was decent. We were aware of not packing too much, and the campervan people had a good guide of what to bring and not to bring. Avoid big suitcases, as there is nowhere to put them easily. All bedding, cutlery, crockery, towels, tea-towels, kettle and toaster were provided. It was summer but we knew that the deep South of South Island is notoriously wet and windy, so we ensured we packed our shell jackets and layers for warmth if needed.

As ever in New Zealand you need a wide brimmed sunhat, factor 50+ sun cream and clothes that cover the body to keep the sun off. The air is pure, clear and the Southern Hemisphere summer sees the sun closer to the earth than in the Northern Hemisphere summer, so the sun is strong. And I mean strong. Put aside those wishes to get a nice easy tan out in the warm sun. On a summer’s day in New Zealand you will literally fry in sunlight, and you feel it. One of the biggest killers in New Zealand is skin cancer. You can get sunburn on a light cloudy day. You have been warned.

But to start with we didn’t need the factor 50+ , as we arrived into a rather cloudy and drizzly Christchurch on Monday 16th December 2024 ready to start our 3 weeks of exploring New Zealand’s South Island. It didn’t get off to a great start. We were expecting to be collected by the hire company, but no one came and nobody answered the phone number we had been given. We eventually tracked down an alternative number for the Auckland office and were told that we should get a taxi and that we would get re-imbursed. Fair enough, but not the ideal start.

When we got to the depot, we found the campervan was not yet ready, but they provided a car so we could visit the laundry to wash the bedding before we used it (Sandra has sensitive skin), and to stock up on food and sundries. This we knew we would have to do beforehand, so no problem, but when we got back there was nobody about to take us over the van. Eventually we located one of the technical guys who told us what he thought of the youth of today, muttering about them “heading off for lunch without ensuring that customers were looked after first and foremost”. We didn’t disagree with him.

After a tour around the van, plus a few helpful hints as well as the normal snagging checks, we were finally ready to go, so off we drove out of the depot gates and onto the roads of South Island New Zealand.

In Part 2, I’ll cover the first section of the road tour from Christchurch to Dunedin, our initial hiccups, our van issues, our saviours and what we saw and did along the way.

Cheers

Dave Mc