Camper van your way through northern New Zealand
Gunther our camper van locked and loaded, a new adventure began!
Driving on the left side is a bit mind twisting in the beginning, I’m glad Gunther is an automatic one so need to think about the gears, I think most of these camper vans are automatics.
All the time I have to remind myself that it’s left side driving here, also driving on the wrong side in the car can be a bit confusing in the beginning.
After a day or two you’ll get the hand of it.
Buy a van, put a bed in it ,decorate it with some hippieish vibe, put some cool paint on it and go camping where ever you want, that’s what we thought it would be like.
But from 2011 New Zealand came up with this stupid law about freedom camping, saying that to be able to camp anywhere you like, your vehicle have to be self contained, meaning a lot of stuff, for instance it have to have a toilet in it.
There’s a whole list to it.
If you would camp anywhere, then the police can knock on your window and fine you 200 NZD if your vehicle is not self contained.
All this because a bunch of selfish travelers have not cleaned up there mess, if they have the mess then got thrown in a bag into the woods or along the road.
Idiot travelers.
But all over New Zealand you have Holiday parks, DOC campsites and regional campsites, and a few freedom campsites with toilets.
The price are from 6 NZD up to 25 NZD per person.
Holiday parks seems to be the pricey ones, but they all have kitchens, showers and laundry options, many of them also provide WIFI for a price.
At the reception they always have a little shop for you to buy some groceries, snacks, ice and almost always some fishing equipment.
The locations of the “pricey” holiday parks (18-24NZD/person) usually are just right at the beach or at the main tourist attraction, top spots!
Sometimes local people even put up signs at their home or farm saying ‘Freedom camping’ for 10 NZD and you park at their backyard!
For the most of our camping so far we have averaged around 15 NZD a night/person.
New Zealand is absolutely beautiful to drive in.
Up on the north island it sometimes reminds me a bit from back home in Sweden.
Green as far your eyes can reach!
Cows and sheep all over, but here they are climbing up and down massive round hills that you see everywhere!
Probably that’s why the best meat comes from here!
The cattle have to go up and down these hills to find themselves the best grass on their land, they are strong.
It seems like they live a very good life here.
I remember I wrote in one post about Sri Lanka how diverse the nature was over there.
I can tell you something, there is nothing that beats the diversity in nature here!
On one side of the road you can see pine trees cover the hills while on the other side there’s a savannah with weird bonsai looking trees.
Then from nowhere the pine tree branches starting to defy gravity by instead of hanging down kind of growing, they are all growing bending upwards and now they have a different growing pattern in all the small branches, it’s weird but so cool!
Then baaam!
Suddenly there’s a jungle, palm trees mixed with pine trees and weird looking massive bonsai trees!
It’s crazy.
We decided to drive along the coast so combine all that with incredible hidden bays with massive cliffs all around you, it’s an incredible sight!
The roads are extremely windy at some places, so to go 100km can take some time.
Up on the north island there’s a lot of great surf.
We thought it would be easy to find a surf shop and rent a board, where ever we found great surf.
But that’s not the way.
We didn’t find a single place to rent decent boards up on the north of North island.
There are only a few surf schools, but they only offer the big foamy boards.
We stopped at Pakiri beach, Wangarei heads and Waipu cove, incredible surf!
They waves were about 3-5 feet and peeling!
From beach to beach and the surf was just perfect, but no surf board for rent to be seen.
Up at Waipu cove we had enough of all the beautiful bays with all the super surf, we had to go back to Wangarei which is a bigger town, and there try to find a boards to buy.
With all these windy roads it took time to drive even though it was just about 70km.
We almost ran out of fuel because of bad planning.
Have in mind that there can be a long way in between gas stations and there’s many hills to drive up so sometimes expect to see 2L/10km.
In Wangarei I found myself a surfboard for 325 NZD, a green pointy 7’’ Kim Purrington design with absolutely no volume, but an incredible smooth cut through the waves.
I fell on love with it from the first time I set my eyes on it.
With practice comes skill!
I bought it from a couple that had sailed all the way from Germany!
They had been on that boat for about 2 years, that’s passion.
We stayed one night at Uretiti campsite which is a great place, it’s totally worth 10NZD/person a night.
It’s a few steps away from the beach.
After buying the surfboard we headed back up along the coastline.
We first looked up Sandy bay where we heard was supposed to be a good surf break.
Too bad the whole that this time going up there was absolutely no swell, at all.
This time we were prepared with a surfboard and full of excitement, but no waves.
The actually hunting, looking or waiting for waves/swell can be frustrating, but it’s for sure a part of the game.
There are so many factors that play a big role in surfing, you can’t change the way of how nature works.
There are for sure a big excitement in the hunt, and when you find anything surfable you go for it!
When you find the perfect ones you explode in ecstasy.
Traveling in New Zealand is incredible, amazing scenery all the time.
By doing it in a camper van, even though it will cost to camp somewhere, you will save a lot of money in the long run!
Being able to go where ever you want and when you want is less stressful , you get to see way more and the whole camping lifestyle brings you together with some great dudes and dudettes.
Download CamperMate and you are set!
This app gives you a proper map, GPS and it points out anything you want.
In some of the points you are looking for you can click and and read about it, in some of these people have made comments and you can do it to.
It’s a great one!
Fishing is all over, both in lakes and of course in the ocean.
You can go out on a fishing trip with a tour company, but that will cost you a bunch of NZD’s!
The people from here are though very generous, kind and helpful so if you are lucky you might hook up with one of the locals and he or she will take you out with them.
Blue Marlins is what the north is famous for!
I’m not a big fisherman so I stick to the snappers, would be awesome to catch a massive blue marlin though, but for a price 500 – 1000 NZD I will stick to my snappers instead.
New Zealand can be the toughest country to travel in, massive amounts of FOMO, ‘Fear Of Missing Out’.
There are stuff to see and to be done everywhere!
You name it and it is in a few hours reach!
We traveled along the east coast all the way up to Cape Reinga which is the furthest northern point of New Zealand you can get!
On the way there you go a long the huge 90 Mile beach, we don’t have 4X4 drive so we choose the normal road inland, but if you got one of those all wheel drives then you can drive almost all the way up on the beach!
But watch out for the tide!!
There are warning signs everywhere, warning that you can lose your car in the tide, if you would get stuck and don’t have the time to get out of there, the tide will then get in and grab your vehicle and drag it and pull it back out into the ocean.
The Maori culture here seems to be awesome, what a history!
We haven’t really got deeper into it yet, which I will do.
Need to learn more about this crazy amazing culture and thus history.
When getting to Cape Reinga you park your car at the big lot, and from there you do a small hike out to it furthest point, to a lighthouse.
Along the way you can stop and read about the Maori culture and some of their beliefs, it’s fascinating.
The views from here is absolutely breathtaking!
Massive cliffs stretching into the sky and beneath them there are white sanded beaches that makes a perfect transition with the incredible turquoise waters.
If you stand at the light house and look out in the ocean, that’s where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean!
You can also see massive stretches of massive sand dunes!
Does that mean that you can do Sand dunes surfing!? Ohh yeah!
After a day up here we went back down to 90 Mile beach to hopefully catch some waves!
We checked in at Ahipara holiday park, 20NZD/person a night.
This place might have been one of the best places we have stayed so far.
A great camping ground, clean kitchen, hot showers as long as you want, ping pong table, BBQ’s for you to use and all free WIFI, they give you 500Mb first but if you are nice and ask they will give you more.
A 5 minute walk will take you to the 90 Mile beach, this beach is massive.
Even though it’s high tide the beach width is like a length of a football field!
Super cool!
The surfing was not the best at this time, we missed the swell again.
But there were a few waves to be caught and it was fun!
We enjoyed doing a few yoga session here every day.
Before heading to the south of North island we went down to Waipoua forest to see the massive Kauri trees, the spirits of the forest!
Now I know where The fellowship of the Ring got the idea of the Ents, the massive tree gigants!
The first tree we visited was about 51 meter high and had a girth for 13.8 meters, say WHAT!?
Yeah it was enormous!
I felt tiny standing a few meters away from it.
This amazed me even more how nature works and what it can create!
The second tree was just a short drive from the first one.
2 NZD parking fee.
Then you do a 15 minutes easy hike into this even fatter Kauri tree.
This mega tree have a girth for 16.5 meters!
I did not even think trees got get that big!
I’ve always thought that the Redwood trees in USA were the biggest, but they got nothing against these ones!
An amazing experience, a further look into the Maori culture.
These trees of course play a big role in their history!
The weather have been great so far, a few days of rain but nothing major.
Now were are down in Rotorua, enjoying downhill mountain biking, mud baths, hot springs and Geysars!
Tomorrow we are going in for a 5 hours caving adventure, abseiling down 30 meters into a black abyss, climbing up three underground waterfalls and black water tubing to mention a few of these amazing experiences!
Super duper excited!
This country doesn’t stop to amaze me!
Wild horses! Woah!
Gunther, Me and Erin are living the dream.
