Well, we’re now fully fledged camper vanners having been in our camper van for a couple of weeks. At the depot where we picked it up we had to sit and watch an informative video which included the awesome line…. “In New Zealand you should always drive on the left hand side of the road: if you find while you are driving that your passenger is in between you and the lines in the middle of the road please reorientate yourself on the carriageway.”

We went for cheap and cheerful. We had to go for cheap, we were hoping it would be cheerful. We booked the smallest self-contained camper; turned up to claim it and found they’d given us an upgrade (they always make it sound like they’re doing you a huge favour when it’s probably down to an admin error or the original vehicle being dead but we were very thankful all the same). Basically, it’s a Mercedes Sprinter van that’s been attacked with a chainsaw and had windows added all round and various ingenious storage units fitted in. It has the world’s smallest shower/loo – good for washing etc, bad for claustrophobics: fridge, microwave, sink, heater and gas hob and a barbecue which folds out cunningly from the outside of the van but as we’re into N Z winter now it’s probably going to stay firmly tucked away.

(Our sweet “wheels”)

(Ella cooking and either dancing with joy, or trying to keep warm. To her left is the world’s smallest shower/loo)

With the van having the world’s smallest shower/loo it means we are officially self contained and therefore can park pretty much anywhere outside of civilisation and don’t need to be dependant on campsites.

Brilliant.
However, what the blurb didn’t tell us was you can only use the heater (very necessary piece of kit in the increasingly cold evenings) and the electric sockets when the camper van itself is plugged in to the mains which, due to the plugs they’ve got, can only be done when you’re in a campsite. Similarly for recharging the reserve battery which they suggest you do every other day. So, we’re not quite as free-from-campsites as we’d hoped to be.
We have done some “freedom camping” (we stayed at a look out point on the top of a mountain our first night: awesome view – excruciatingly and literally mind-numbingly cold overnight) and also tried a few campsites along the way.
I must admit that, never having campsited before, upon successful completion of the first thorough excavation of the collection tanks lurking in the nether regions of the van into the imaginatively named “dump station” and refilling the water tanks I did feel very rugged and manly even though, as we were the only residents of that particular camp site there was no one around to be thralled at my rugged campsiteness. Ella dutifully swooned but that may have been the dump station fumes.
The main reason I thought it would be a good idea to get a self-contained camper van was so we could sit in the middle of absolutely nowhere (and in New Zealand there are lots of middles of absolutely nowhere) and, if I’m honest, more importantly, to not be on camp sites because camp sites tend to be a gathering place for campsite people. Campsite people are weird. They are permanently jolly and wear shorts they’ve long since outgrown and they always try to engage you uninvited in conversation from their deck chairs and always have kit you wish you’d thought of bringing but they have done this sort of thing for so long it’s a perfect art form for them now but because you are also on a campsite they assume you share some deep bond and, like them, have no shame.
I’m not so into all that chatty stuff. (Add that to the list, along with thumbs ups – see skydiving entry). I want to know how early is reasonable to pull all the curtains closed so you avoid that awkward eye contact of passers by, or neighbours, because when it happens I feel the need to make some ridiculous acknowledging gesture which is bound to be misconstrued as being friendly and they’ll take it to mean I want them to come over and chat. But it doesn’t, it really doesn’t.
It’s meant to mean “this is my cave: admittedly it has wheels and I’ve been forced to bring it into your midst for the purposes of having electricity and heat but it’s still, fundamentally, my cave. Go away.”
Ella has none of these hang ups.
However, as it’s turned out, it being winter here, unsurprisingly the camp sites are mostly relatively, and in a couple of cases mostly totally, deserted.
This is good, and in addition to that I’ve discovered the optimum angle at which to park to leave the minimum of window frontage on display to the passing world.
Ella says I can’t put a fence round the van.

(View from our pitch on one of the camp sites…… And below is the same  campsite the next morning. #perfectcampingconditions)

(And here is a lake I jogged to. Not too shabby)

It’s been fun driving a big long vehicle. I did almost get it inextricably stuck in a walled-in supermarket car park which, once you were in seemed irresponsibly small for large camper vans to be lured into. Nevertheless I managed to park as unobtrusively as possible (which was to unobtrusiveness the same as an elephant carrying a party balloon). Ella went in to the shop and I waited in the van in case people couldn’t get out of any of the parking spaces we were possibly preventing exit from. After enduring a few native hand gestures of welcome I figured it would be diplomatic to leave and find somewhere else to park. This however required me to wait for two cars to leave before I could achieve the right angles to safely manoeuvre out again and nearly scraped a sign on exiting which, I noticed when I looked back said “No Camper Vans Please”. I would contend that, by definition of my not having seen it on the way in, it wasn’t nearly clear enough.

That evening, with curtains satisfyingly completely drawn I managed to destroy 20% of my entire wardrobe in one fell swoop. 6 night light candles burning merrily, giving a bit of ambient light and even a little extra heat, placed in a bread tin (cos we’re safety conscious and the bread tin would keep them safe). Someone opted to place the bread tin onto a dinner plate in case the bottom of it got hot and burned the camper van worktop. Still looked pretty safe. Then someone (I know I keep using the term someone but I’m trying to protect the guilty by keeping her identity hidden) opened an overhead cupboard and a loaf of bread fell down, hit the edge of the dinner plate which launched the bread tin and candles in an arc of waxy warmth all over my trousers and shoes and (my only) jumper.
Never fear, thought I, if there’s one thing being a vicar has taught me it’s how to get candle wax off things (mainly carpets and pew kneelers). So, after buying some brown paper from the local post office the next day I commandeered the camp site ironing board and iron. Unfortunately, in my uber-zealous ironing on the dirt-cheap, waffer thin ironing board I managed to imprint long lines of xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxs from the metal mesh the board was made of and which were hidden under its micron thin cover. Top + trousers ruined. Happily, we’ll be off to the States soon and it’ll be hot so I’m consoling myself with the thought that a.) they would only have been unnecessary baggage in the heat and b.) I might legitimately make the 7kg carry on luggage allowance on the next Qantas flight.
New Zealand is by far the prettiest country we’ve visited. When we were in Queenstown we drove the road to Glenorchy which is on the list of the 10 most beautiful drives in the world. Stunning – with a new reason to stop and take photographs round each of the very, very many bends. We also visited Arrowtown which was pretty and stumbled across a little museum in which many of the exhibits were touchable, climable on, sittable in and contained stuff like huge saws and tools U K museum curators would have slapped barriers round and shouted “health and safety nightmare”. A printing press was there, open to the touch, with a massive roll of newsprint stretched across rollers – you could just reach out and stick your finger through the paper if you wanted. And yet, no one had.
Either, New Zealanders have and use far more respect and common sense than we do and this magically rubs off on visitors. Or, some oik had nicked the barriers and we weren’t actually meant to touch any of the stuff we were handling. Oh well.
Some of the early medical exhibits were interesting – including this everyday essential….

World travel – it’s an eye opener.