Off we go to NZ. This was supposed to be a lovely warm free camping campervan trip in late summer but due to covid became a bloody freezing powered site campervan trip in early spring aka late winter!
DSC J flights for me that I’ll most likely have to follow-up the DSCs, award flights for bAl.
Everything for this trip was originally planned last year. After our trip around Tassie in an Apollo van we priced what was available for NZ. Prices were more than we expected. So we started searching on campervan company reviews. Wilderness
Campervan Hire NZ | Campervan Rental | Wilderness Motorhomes came out on top but their prices were just way out of anything we were prepared to pay. Pretty close to them was Kit Campers
Kit Campers. Anyone who used them loved them.
They just have two camper types - Little and Big Kit. Little is little - it’s a Toyota Commuter but it still has a kitchen and a loo. Big is more medium, a high roof Ford Transit and has a ‘proper’ shower and toilet, is stand-up inside and has aircon.
For our original summer trip we booked a Little Kit but then our flights were cancelled due to Covid. The team at Kit was amazing. Returned our payment less a small admin fee. When things started to be looking better in Feb we rebooked flights for September and rebooked the Little Kit camper. Kit wouldn’t even take the deposit until travel looked definite.
Qantas kept changing the flights, cancelling our outward flight at one point, but with lots of sitting on hold I eventually got it all sorted.
When my health deteriorated, and with the fact it was going to be cold, I decided I didn’t want the zero privacy loo of Little Kit nor freeze my bits off so we changed our booking to a Big Kit. This gave me a loo with a door and us access to heating if/when we stayed at powered sites.
Total cost of the van for 16 days was just under NZD2000!
Our plan? We didn’t really have one apart from visiting bAl’s sister and family in Hokitika.
Up until the devastating flooding and damage in the Nelson and Marlborough region we thought we might head there first, go fishing out of Picton, do the mail boat run out of Havelock, visit a couple of wineries, stay at St Arnaud. Then head to Hoki. We also wanted to go whale watching at Kaikoura, maybe go to Queenstown again, possibly do a glacier landing. bAl was very keen on doing some stargazing in the Central Otago dark sky reserve.
In July we booked our first and last night - first night an ensuite queen room at Jucy Snooze
Snooze Christchurch and last night at the finally opened Novotel at Christchurch airport
Novotel Christchurch Airport
In the week before we left we had a more defined plan and booked whale watching at Kaikoura, powered sites at Lake Tekapo and Queenstown (both seemed busy and we’d later find out why), our Zilch electric car in Christchurch, dinner at Pedro’s in Queenstown, a Dark Sky experience at Lake Tekapo and our big splurge - a flight from Queenstown and cruise on Milford.
The weather for the weekend of our arrival wasn’t looking too great for our whale watch so we requested to change it from Saturday to Sunday.
