Camper Van days 1-3

Wednesday, Jan 21 8:11 pm

Location: Kaka Point, NZ, inside our camper while the rain trickles down outside

I love camper vans. They are so amazing-- it's like being in a hotel, but in the woods by ourselves. After I last posted, T, B, and P left (sad... I won't see them until spring break) and M, D, and I picked up our camper.

Our van is pretty small: it's a Toyota Hiace (which is normally a car somewhere between a van and a mini van), but who's roof has been raised about a foot. It has a little stove, fridge (which we learned only works when the car is on, which is somewhat annoying being that we only use the refrigerator when the car is parked), sink (which, it turns out, drains straight to the ground right below the car), and table/bench area that turns into a bed at night. We also got a tent from the sweet people who own the small home-grown company we rented from, where my dad has been sleeping. We exiled him (it was a little nicer than that. Three people just don't fit inside the van unless one of them is a tiny kid), but he has an air mattress I spend 30 minutes pumping up every night. They also loaned us three very thin, very short sleeping bags, which also useful, are way to small. It doesn't help that my feet hang off the bed even when I'm not in a sleeping bag, but if my feet are at the bottom of the sleeping bag the top comes up to my stomach. There are three seats in the front, which means it's a little squished, by my mom has kindly taken to sitting in the uncomfortable middle seat so my dad can see better and because she feels slightly less terrified there. I love this so much, though. Last time we came to NZ we rented a much much bigger camper (there were five of us) and drove down the west coast. One thing I miss from that trip is that then every single site we went to had at least one giant trampoline. Although most of the places we've stayed so far have had playgrounds or ones nearby, nothing compares to trampolines.


Our first night we didn't have much time to drive anywhere, and wanted to figure out how to use the camper (one more complication is that it is a manual, which my mom doesn't know how to drive. That means my dad has been driving, which I'm not used to, and manuals are terrifying on hilly curvy roads), so we stayed in a town near Queenstown (where T, B, and P flew out of) called Arrowtown. It is an incredibly touristy town, so the holiday park was huge, had pretty small spaces, and very crowded. Part of that is when normally camping we veto any site where we can see another person, although I've been thinking of the camper much more as as a hotel room than camping equipment. The first place we stayed had many showers and a big shared kitchen and very mowed flat grass. We slept well anyways, and I had a very good time. That night for dinner we had the J-F infamous tomato, feta, and garlic on penne pasta. My mom actually invented that dish on the Banks Peninsula by Christchurch during our last camper van excursion 7 years ago, so it was a fitting meal to have.

The next day we drove for about seven hours to our next site, all the way on the southern coast. For the whole trip before the camper we had been staying in very mountainous areas with dramatic scenery, but soon into that long drive everything changed. We shifted from sharp sky-scraping mountains to rolling hills of farms, every other one filled with sheep. We drove though areas that have hardly any tourism industry, unlike where we have been where that is the only industry. I had so much fun on that drive, despite the many times we barreled down hills at 115 km/h, supposedly so we didn't have to downshift as we were going up the next hill (so, they invented automatics for a reason...). We stopped many times at various fruit stands getting boxes and boxes of juicy, flavorful, amazing plums, apricots, and cherries. One stand that we stopped at to buy cherries, the woman who came out staff the stand decided to show us her factory (we had looked back into the factor earlier looking for somebody to give money for fruit, and saw it, commented, so she decided to show us). She was very sweet, and seemed very proud of her factory. She commented that it was one of the most modern cherrie factories in the area. The one-room barn-like building had a giant machine in the middle, which cherries being carried up a white conveyor belt, then sorted into size. About a dozen teenagers with hair nets and gloves were lined up on the side sorting though the berries, who we learned were sorting for quality and shape so the nicest ones could be exported (that batch of cherries was headed towards Korea and Taiwan). Everybody who worked there seemed very happy and smiled at us when we were there. After five or ten minutes, though, we got back in the car and drove on (with our two-kilo box of giant amazing cherries).


After stopping in the town Alexandra (yes, it was named after me. And yes, I took many pictures in front of various signs, such as the Alexandra Fire Dept.), driving though almost empty paved back roads and stopping at a tiny gas station where a man in a blue mechanic suit explained that there wasn't cell phone coverage in that area, we came to the camping ground we were planning to. It was right on the ocean, with small sheltered sites and rusty pipes. It was much less touristy, although there were other people there. The woman who worked there was extremely friendly. For dinner that night we had the most amazing lamb chops I have had in my whole life. I am so glad I gave up the whole vegetarianism thing. Meat is good. Red meat is good. Mmmmmm. I think that shift happened in Fiji, when my body felt threatened by floods and lack of food and so told me to order the steak. Sorry all you veggie- readers, but that lamb was goo-ood. NZ lamb just does not compare.
Before that, though, we walked five minutes down the road to a national-parky area of petrified forests. That basically meant a big area of rock that the ocean was lapping over the edge of (the area is only accessible at low tide) with 160 million year old tree stump fossils sticking up in places. An amazing thing happened then though-- we saw penguins!! Two little black and white penguins with yellow designs above their heads. Those were our first wild penguins. My mom loved them.
The next morning, after a difficult sandy shower that felt like a prison cell but a much better sleep, we had bacon for breakfast. Bacon used to be one of my favorite foods before I became a veggie. It was soooo good. We should probably stop eating like that, though, because I don't really want die of heart failure. It was really really yummy though.

One amazing thing was that there was a pair of bike-packers camping in the site next to us. I can't imagine that. Later, the next day, we saw them many times on the road. They went very very fast. We stopped for longer and slightly more often, but we still kept passing them. That takes some major in-shape-ness.

Today we left that site and started driving NE, stopping a couple times to take beautiful walks and have a picnic. At a tiny store we bought small meat pies, which are popular here, to have for lunch. They were pretty gross. After last night's lamb, they just weren't very impressive. I can see why somebody would find them comforting if they grew up eating them, but not having that experience they weren't so yummy. At one point, near where we wanted to stop for the night, we stopped to get gas and ask a mechanic about something about the car-- on the dashboard a light had been flitting on and off since lunch. We weren't sure what it was, but after the engine cooled down (it was so cool-- the engine was below the front seats) a twenty-something mechanic in a blue suit with grease stains on his face and hands (who, while we were waiting for him, called to the teenager working the store counter inside to ask for some tea with two sugars) looked at the car. He said the problem was with our radiator, that it had oil in the water. He said that it was really bad, and that we should call the rental company and ask for a new camper before this one "explodes" ("could it really explode?" my mom asked with a worried expression on her face. The mechanic laughed a little, and explained, "no, this camper can't be a terrorist van. Yet, anyways."). He topped off the water and send us one his way. Everybody in that whole area was so laid back-- nobody rushed to everything. The mechanic was nice and seemed competent, however we decided to drive a little and see what happened. The light hasn't come on again since.


Now we're staying in a motor camp on a hill by the ocean. This is my favorite place yet. For one thing, hot showers are free (the first place was one dollar for 8 minutes, the second 2 dollars for 5), but we also have a spot basically all by ourselves. The woman who works here is very nice, and said she would send other people other places because we liked the secluded-ness. It has been raining basically nonstop, but that's not too bad. Even though the site is secluded and right next to "the bush," there are many warm, CLEAN showers, laundry, and a huge kitchen where we can wash dishes. This is why I love traveling in a camper so much-- ammenities, but still outdoorsy. It also helps that the camper van esthetic in NZ is not nearly as gas-guzzling republican as the RVs in the states are.

Aahhh...... I'm so comfy.

Well, this is way too long of a post. I'll be surprised if anyone gets this far.

Goodnight.