Travelogue

Our CampervanThis was it. The big day where we'd pick up our camper van and begin our 15-day road trip around the South Island of New Zealand.

This was not our first time traveling abroad via camper van. We had traveled around the Alps (Germany, Austria, Northern Italy, and Switzerland), Spain, and Iceland’s Ring Road.

However, each of those trips had been in a 6-meter van. This time the only van we could get was a 7.4-meter one that slept 4 people - much more space than we needed. That extra 5-feet was definitely going to make parking and driving a lot more stressful on the narrow, steep, windy roads of New Zealand. Plus, we had to get used to driving on the left side of the road.

It was pretty spacious though and had a king-size bed and a separate toilet and shower. Still we would have gladly taken a smaller one.

One might think a camper is an inexpensive way to travel, but it’s really not. Our van cost $4,650 dollars for 15 days, which is $310 per day. Then there is the campground fees, which probably averaged about $30 per day. You can get a pretty nice Airbnb in New Zealand for that price.

Up in my bedroomStill, we like that mode of travel. We don’t have to pack and unpack every time we move to a new location, and we always have a refrigerator full of cold beer and wine. Also, the campgrounds in New Zealand are usually in very scenic locations.

The first destination of every campervan trip is a grocery store to stock up for a few days. Sometimes grocery stores in different countries are a bit challenging, but the Woolworth’s near the rental place felt pretty much like a U.S. grocery store.

So, excited and a bit nervous, we set out for our first destination, which was Lake Tekapo, 3 hours away.

After about an hour on our way, the camper decided to die at a stoplight along a busy 2-lane highway in Ashburton. It was not a particularly safe place to be stuck as cars were coming pretty fast and we were afraid we might be rear-ended.

The manager from the Toyota dealership nearby came running out, told us to get out of the vehicle and started waving traffic around us. He said the same thing had happened two days ago and the people had gotten rear-ended. He then got one of his guys to come tow us off the road. The hospitality in New Zealand is pretty amazing.

We had already put in a call in Wilderness Motorhomes Road Side Assistance to let them know what happened. When the mechanic showed up, he said that our battery was totally dead and would not hold a charge. We would have to get a new one, which was not an easy thing.

We spoke to a woman at Wilderness Motorhomes, and she suggested we drive back the hour to Christchurch or drive 1.5 hours south to Timaru to try to get a battery there. When I mentioned that we were afraid to do that as the battery could just die again, she suggested that we just don’t stop.

We told her there was no way we were going to do this, as it was not safe, and that it was their responsibility to bring a battery to us. I must have raised my voice a bit, because she said, “If you are going to raise your voice, I’m going to hang up.”

New Zealanders are extremely friendly and polite, and I guess they expect to be treated the same. I apologized and she said she would call us back with a solution.

Our road-side mechanic was a hero. He very persistently called around for a battery and found one in a shop 5 minutes away.

He charged our battery so we could get to the battery shop, and an hour later we were on the road again with a brand new battery.

I was so relieved. We had lost a few hours, but our trip was saved!