Camper van adventure New Zealand

Wellington New Zealand 23rd of January.

I slept the most of the flight from Den pasar Bali to Wellington, with a quick transit in Brisbane.
Virgin airline is for sure cheap but as almost always you get what you pay for.
Leg space great, pretty comfortable seats and decent food, the one thing that was horrible was the blasting aircondition.
People were coughing and snoring and I was hugging myself trying to use all my body heat to warm me up.

No TV’s in the airplane, which makes no sense to me.
Some people struggle through a plane ride, trying to give them the best of comfort for a cheaper price would just be fair.
One little TV screen in each seat or at least a few big ones in the aisle would cost nothing for the airlines, but would higher their ratings for sure!

When traveling remember to bring a sweater and maybe a sarong or something like it to stay warm in an ice cold plane or bus, in a hot country!
It’s something that not many think about, but keep this in mind.

In Wellington Erin just fly by with her Canadian passport.
Didn’t even had to go through normal customs, she just passed everyone and went straight for the “digitial” customs.
A few machines were you just go and scan your passport, and you are set to go, welcome.
It’s called E-pass.

For me it was more of a struggle.
At the first desk at the customs a chief of foreign something stopped me and asked questions about my travels, previous ones and upcoming.
I also had to show him proof of credit, which I did through my internet bank.
Totally forgot to print this in beforehand and didn’t even think about showing him my internet bank, smart!
Save the nature, use less paper!

Second customs desk sent me back to their operation area.

Proof of credit again, what’s my profession, previous travels and upcoming, how to finance my trip and how to get income.
Do I do drugs?, party a lot, brought any fruit, any medicines and so on.

Went through my bag and did some swab tests for drugs.
Had to declare some medicines, but didn’t even had to show them.

Everything went smooth but it took time to do all this.
I thought with a Swedish passport you just fly by!

Canadians can do this working holiday visa before 35 years old.
Swedish people are only allowed until 30.

At Wellingtons airport they have a massive sign were it says – Welcome to middle earth.
Pretty cool.
*We are taking the hobbits to Isengard* Check out the 10 hour remix on youtube.

From the airport we took the public bus 97 into Courtney place which is basically in CBD, city center.
9 NZD for a 20 minutes bus ride.
There we checked in at YHA Hostel which we already booked in advance, a double room 100NZD/night.
This is a big chain with hostels all around the world, decent but expensive.
A great way to start your trip, they always have a lot of brochures and information about things to do, how to get there and help you book it.
They usually have a bulletin board were people put up ads, things they want to sell or maybe they want to share a ride to somewhere to save some money, you will find anything on these boards!

We spent two days in Wellington before we headed up to Auckland.
It’s for sure a beautiful city that we will explore more of when we get back to it.

What we tried was the yoga at Wellington hot yoga.
A 1.5 hour session of hot yoga, kind of like Bikram yoga if that tells you anything.
They crank they heat so it’s almost like a sauna, not quite but almost there.
Just by warming up you sweat.

When you are about 30 minutes in the session you are dripping, it is hard!
After an hour the yoga mat are covered in sweat, unfortunately we forgot to bring towels.
At this point I was sliding everywhere, trying to do warrior one, two and three.
It’s hard to breath and you start thinking about giving up, this can’t be good for you.
All these excuses are sneaking up on you.

1.5 hours later it was done, once we got out from the room and drank some ice cold water we felt re generated, yoga are truly an amazing practice that energize you , gives you focus and it gives you top exercise !
For a drop in class it cost 20 NZD, but if you are staying in Wellington for a while they have way better deals for you.
They also have other kinds of classes.

Bring a towel!

7:30pm we took the Intercity bus from lane 9 at the main train station, the last lane is a bus stop.
It took about 11 hours up to Auckland.
A nice double decker bus, “first” class downstairs and general ticket upstairs.
We paid 40 NZD.
Comfortable seats that you could reclain a lot!
The only problem we had again was the aircon.
It was freezing for the most of the trip.
I had a sweater on and Erin had her sarong, but at this time not even that helped.
Should have had pants, gloves and a beanie!

After about 5 hours of driving the driver finally put on the heater, and we could finally get fall a sleep.
Fantastic!
But only for about an hour or so , then he cranked the aircon again…

We arrived safe and sound in Auckland though! Weeoow.

We checked in at Nomads backpackers on Fort street, walking distance from the bus station.
For 70 NZD/night you get yourself a private room, with a bunk bed though!
This place is huge, 7 floors + a basement where they operate a travel agency from, Mad Travel.

On the second floor you got a lounge area, beanbags and couches together with a big TV and a dvd collection.
If you exit this floor using a door next to the elevator, you enter the bar and restaurant.
They offer great food and a big variety of beers and drinks.

On the rooftop, floor 7 you have your kitchen and nice seatings on an outdoor patio overlooking the harbor and the city, it’s a great place to enjoy your morning coffee.
You also have a jacuzzi for you to use at any time, until 10pm.

This big hostel chain is definitely one of the best ones there is.

When applying for bank account and tax number you can use their address if you stay there more than 2 days.
It’s all free and they give you an signed address confirmation for you to hand etc the bank.

On the website Backpackerboard.co.nz they offer an mailing service which I fell for, I bought their package for 29.99 pounds and that would cover a whole year.
They would forward all mail to me where ever I were.

Before knowing it was already free from Nomads backpackers I signed up for that.
When asking Nomads Auckland hostel about this they didn’t even acknowledge Silverfox LTD or backpackerboard, they said it is all a scam.

You sign up, they send you name and info to the Nomads backpacker hostel and then they charge you 30 pounds for it, no more then that, even though it’s all free from Nomads.

Been trying to get a refund and they have said they would, all this the same day as I signed up for it.
But I haven’t seen any money back yet.

To open a bank account you might have to book an appointment, the banks are very busy.
If you take a train or bus to outside of Auckland you might be able to just drop in and open one right away.
I chose ANZ because they are one of the biggest banks, you see the ATM’s all over, no need put in any money to open the account and it doesn’t cost anything to have it.
While other banks might charge you and have a deposit fee.

Auckland.
A beautiful city, way bigger then Wellington.
For me it kind of have a bit of the same feeling as Vancouver Canada or Melbourne Australia, smaller though.

Restaurants, bars and cafés all over, many different options.
My favorite restaurant in Auckland was for sure Sushi Train down by the docks, around where you take the ferries out to the islands.

Wide selections of restaurants, bars and cafés!
Chinese , Sushi and burgers seams to be the thing here.

Shopping malls everywhere, if you are looking for a bit cheaper but still great food, try the food courts in one of these malls.
About 10 NZD will give you a proper of whatever you want.

We had two days in Auckland and our main mission was to find a camper van as soon as possible.
They say that the best thing to do is to buy in Auckland and sell in Christchurch.
So we were pretty busy trying to find one.
We sent a lot of emails and did a few phone calls, we also checked the bill boards that these hostels have.
Nomads backpackers have their own folder with just camper vans and cars that you can take a look at.

We actually found our car by going to one of the “Backpacker Car lots”, mainly there to sell camper vans to backpackers!

We tried one just 15 minutes outside the city, which was great one.
A very helpful guy came up right away and gave us some advices depending on the information we gave him, basically how long our trip were and what we wanted.

We found a Toyota Estima which seemed to be the best car for our trip around New Zealand.
A 8 seater van that you convert into a camper van, take out all the seat or maybe even leave the ones behind the front seats.
Then you build a bed and a tiny kitchen area in the back.
You can even make them to build a table and bench that you can fold into a bed, it’s all depending on your budget.

We took this car in mind but continued to search.

You want to feel comfortable about the car and the price.
Make sure they have done some kind of service test on it before you even consider to buy it.
WOF is there way of safety check there car via licensed mechanics.
But don’t think if the car have WOF then everything is good to go.
WOF is there absolute minimum standard safety check you have to have on your car to be able to drive, this check up doesn’t contain other important factors you have to have looked up before buying the car.

We found this other Backpacker car lot 40 minutes outside the city.

Pars Auto LTD (Backpacker)
0274726055
www.pars-auto.co.nz
Ahmed who was running the place had a lot of ads up on Trademe.co.nz which seems to be one of the best sites to look online.

He was selling a Toyota Estima 1999 with both WOF and it was registered and it only had 226000km on it!
To convert it to the simplest package, give us all basic camping equipment and change oil, filter and a tire he gave us a very good price, what we could understanding by doing all the research online.
This silver metallic Toyota Estima 1999 with a new WOF and all ready to go, 4000 NZD!
We named this car Gunther!
A turbo disco van pumping bass beats adventuring around New Zealand!
Ahmed is a great guy that will advice you the very best and he will also give you a 2 weeks engine/gearbox guaranty , so if anything goes wrong he will fix it.
I actually looked into the seller and buyer law in NZ, it seems like that is already implemented, as well as the hole car.
If someone sell you something very shitty and you are unknown or it’s something that is very unexpected on the info the seller gave you, then you have the law on your side for within 2 weeks.

If you want to pimp it up and buy some more camping gear I recommend you to go to Warehouse, a great store with a lot of weird stuff for a decent price!

That same second day in Auckland we left the big city for a new adventure to the east coast!

We have now been out for about a week traveling in this beautiful and amazing way.
This is the way to see a country!
Every day is a bliss, this might be the most beautiful country I’ve been to!
The diversity of nature and the cows and sheep that covers the hills, the fantastic bay’s that all of them have their own amazing white sand beach.

It is truly that country where you get all four seasons in one day!
We have encountered a few problems, one of which we had to change name of our camper van, to Dirty Gunther.
But now our little disco boy is fixed again, it’s was a minor problem but he is running like ever before!

The internet connection here can be a bit out of reach, so it’s really hard to blog here.
At the same time my mind is running on full speed to analyze all the beautiful information I get every day from this country, so some days it feels like I am super busy enjoying so no time for blogging.
But I will do my best, because I really enjoy telling my stories, write,  helping people with their adventure and at the same time I’m writing my own diary!

One thing!
Buy your surfboard before you hit the road.
We though renting would be available all over, but it’s not!
So make sure you do this before you start the adventure, if it’s your thing of course!

Need a phone number and some internet on you smartphone?
I found Vodaphone to be best, or at least to have the best deal for travelers that need internet data.
49NZD for 3Gb and it lasts 2 months.

I’ll hit you up with some more dope information about traveling!