It's now November 2007 and our trip to New Zealand is almost a distant memory, we have now settled back in to life in the UK after our 19 year absence and there is time to look back at the NZ journey.

Overall it was great but any experience leaves you with the skills to at least try and improve the next time you do it and reflecting on our journey it is no different.

Hopefully you will find these thoughts useful if you do a similar journey.

1. We will be going again it New Zealand is a fantastic place.


2. We didn't allow enough time, next time we will either concentrate on a smaller area or allow at least 3 months to do both islands.


3. We can not recommend the camper van company we used (Pacific Horizon). As said before we were given a substandard Camper van. Our arrival in Auckland. was spoiled by their incompetence, it was within their power to have cut aside their own bureaucracy and have immediatly sorted it out. As a result we saw very little of Aukland apart from the freeway and a very impressive bridge.


4. The 6 berth camper we were given (not as requested) was on reflection too large for the 2 of us. The actual size wasn't a problem but as it catered for 6 there were a lot of beds and none were comfortable. a more modern 4 berth would have been sufficient.


5. We should have asked for 2 lots of bedding, that would have allowed flexibility and we are sure that if we had slept separately things would have been more comfortable. We wer told after that if we had asked we could have had some.


6. An automatic gearbox would be very useful, there are a lot of hills. There would be no engine brake on an automatic but I think in general driving an automatic would be best. As it was our van had a broken gearbox with no syncoro's on the first three gears, making hills interesting at times.If I hadn't had experiance as a truck and learned to double declutch we probably wouldn't have made it.


7. Get a decent map and if they do it a Satnav, that would (hopefully) avoid all of those map disagreements with the copilot.


8. Using the Top 10 network of camp sites was a very good idea and the Kiwi site we visited was also to a high standard

Apart from that it was all fine, if you can make sure you have good weather, ours was magnificent.But I am sure we would have still had a great time even if it had rained for most of the time.

If you go say hello to Akaroa for me, it's my heaven on earth :)

I should add that there are some horror stories around of people getting into trouble in New Zealand with stolen property and even campervans. Putting it into perspectivre this is I think is no different to any other country, that sort of news just sells news papers. Compared to most countries the UK and Australia included thing are better in NZ.

We always felt safe while traveling and although the camp sites have very minimal (read virtualy no) security we experianced no problems at all. As with everything in life in a large part it's down to your own attitude and the luck of the draw.

All the best have happy travels

 

Dave