New Zealand, Auckland: Kicking Off Our Campervan Tour of Aotearoa

The penultimate country on our 2007 trip around the world was Aotearoa, better known to most people as New Zealand, home of Maoris, the kiwi bird and, well, Kiwis, amongst many other things. We were both excited about travelling to the small country, which could be reached from the UK by flying halfway around the globe or by patiently drilling a hole straight through planet Earth to the other side. We flew, of course, but it was not a far distance for us since we had spent the past five weeks in the nearby South Pacific island nations of French Polynesia, Cook Islands and Fiji. After a relaxing and successful time there, we were ready for a change of pace and weather, and looked forward to the "Kiwi Outdoors".

We decided to keep things fresh in the sixteenth country for us to visit since leaving London at the beginning of January by hiring a campervan for the full month we had planned to stay in New Zealand. We had actually decided to do that back at the end of December when we were making final preparations to leave for our trip, and we had looked into campervan hire with STA Travel in the UK. Initially, we spoke with an agent that seemed to know what she was doing, and we made a booking with her because she was pretty helpful. At the time, though, we had only planned three weeks in New Zealand. When we later agreed to increase the length of our stay in the country to a full month, it was a nightmare changing our booking to accommodate an extra ten days.

The smells and colours absorbed by our senses at the Winter Garden were incredible

Dealing with STA Travel after the booking had been made was a much different and more painful affair than making the booking had been. We tried ringing them up from several different Southeast Asian countries as we travelled across them during the first part of the year. On the rare occasion that we had enough mobile phone credit to be put on hold for 45 minutes, we spoke with an agent who had "to look into the matter further" and would "definitely email us back". The emails never came back until we dealt with a guy named Gavin who seemed more clued up than anyone else we had gotten through to on their helpline.

Little did we know that Gavin had plans to leave the company a few days after we talked to him. The question we had asked him at that stage wasn't if we could increase the booking ten additional days, but if the amount we paid for our booking in January covered the additional insurance option so that our excess would be £0 (that's around $0 by today's exchange rate - haha), should anything happen to us on the road. He looked into the matter, confirmed with us that we had indeed paid the excess reduction fee, and that we were set with our booking. An email had been sent in writing confirming that and we were satisfied.

To increase our booking to a full month, we had to ring STA Travel again to do so. We had many unsuccessful attempts due to giving up after waiting excessively on telephone calls, or getting cut off on Skype since we normally had poor wireless internet connections when we tried to make the calls on the laptop. Another reason that it had been so difficult to extend the booking was because each STA Travel agent that we dealt with had to contact the New Zealand company whom they booked the campervan through, since STA Travel was really only the middle-man for us. Had we known from the start that STA Travel couldn't fully control the booking, we would have tried to find a company in New Zealand that we could deal with directly. In the end, we dealt directly with the company anyway, and we extended the booking for an additional ten days, ignoring STA Travel completely since they had proven themselves completely worthless by that point.

When we added the ten days, we confirmed that the fee we would pay upon our arrival in New Zealand would cover both the daily rental fee and excess reduction fee. When we arrived in the Auckland International Airport on our flight from Fiji, we caught the free shuttle to the campervan rental company, which was located about five minutes away. Our nightmares with the booking continued... STA Travel had paid for the daily rental fee for our booking, but had not paid at all for the excess reduction, and the campervan company wanted an additional $484 NZD (around £185, or $370 USD) for the additional cover. We weren't putting up with that rubbish so we refused to pay, stating that it was a problem between STA Travel and themselves, since we had a confirmation email from STA Travel confirming our payment of the insurance.

After much discussion and arguing with the manager at the campervan rental company, she agreed that we were in the right and she asked us to forward her the confirmation email from STA Travel. We did and we left the rental facility in our campervan without looking back, knowing that the matter was over. A few days later, the manager had touched base with STA Travel who agreed they made a mistake and said that they would cover the extra cost; the manager told us that we had nothing to worry about and for us to enjoy our trip. We were already enjoying the trip, but it was nice to know that the situation wouldn't haunt us when we turned the campervan in at the end of our month with it.

The campervan we were given was a large, white Volkswagen vehicle 6.5 metres in length. Such a length was necessary to accommodate the shower, toilet, seating/sleeping area, and a small kitchen area with a hob (that's the same as a stove for the Americans reading this), grill, refrigerator, microwave oven and sink. The campervan was tall enough for each of us to stand up comfortably inside, and wide enough for us to walk up and down the walkway easily, but it wasn't so wide that it didn't fit within the small New Zealand road lane markings. Underneath the vehicle was a large water tank where our water was sourced when we needed to wash dishes or take showers, and there was also a gas canister that would heat the water in the shower and sink, and was used to fire up the hob and grill. Besides those functional items, the toilet waste container was also underneath the van, but it was easily accessible from the side whenever Dan had to empty it.

Dan's job was to empty the toilet waste, to turn on the gas whenever we needed it for cooking or showering, and to empty the "grey water" waste from the kitchen sink and shower. We made a deal at the start of the trip, that Kyle's job would be to drive the large vehicle and Dan would handle those other items. The agreement worked out well and we were both happy with our responsibilities. Dan didn't want to attempt driving the large manual transmission van on windy mountain roads (all roads in New Zealand were windy and most were mountainous; plus, there was often windy weather outside when we were driving), and Kyle didn't mind not having to mess with the other parts of the van so he could focus on actually driving it, which was scary at first for him.

It probably wasn't wise to pick up the van in New Zealand's biggest city. Auckland traffic was by no means terrible, but there were enough cars on the road and plenty of confusing road signs for Kyle to stress out a bit driving. It didn't help that he was driving on the opposite side of the road from the US, where he had learned to drive and done all of his driving, having not spent much time behind the wheel in London since moving there almost ten years ago. It was fortunate that Dan was in the car because many of the road signs were similar to English ones and there were only a few that required some thought. By our third or fourth destination in New Zealand, we had a good system of driving (Kyle) and navigating (Dan) in place and were quite happy with Bessie, our beloved campervan whom we named for a more personal experience.

With a month in New Zealand, we needed to talk over our route in order to decide how we would travel around the country and see as many things as possible. Auckland was located in the northern part of the North Island and we had to return Bessie there a month later. Therefore, we decided to travel south through the North Island before taking Bessie across the Cook Strait to the South Island on the large ferry from Wellington to Picton. Then, we would drive south along the South Island's eastern half before driving back up north on the western half. From there, we would hop back on the ferry to return to Wellington from Picton and finally make our way back up the North Island to Auckland.

The size of New Zealand's two main islands roughly equates to the size of the United Kingdom, so driving around the country for a month would promise a lot of beautiful and interesting sights. The country itself only had a population of 4 million people with a million of them living in Auckland. In fact, only a million people lived on the larger South Island, and we expected very quiet roads and a lot of natural surroundings when we explored it. Sheep were abundant in New Zealand and you will no doubt hear about them and see many different photos of them in our Kiwi travel journals, since there are approximately 40 million sheep in the country. 40 million!

We arrived in New Zealand at the start of the third week in October and Spring was in full force. The weather in Auckland was chilly, but with warm spells in the afternoons. We saw cloudy skies, which we expected in New Zealand, and we were wondering how much the weather would change as we drove around the two islands. There was a little bit of rain in Auckland, but none that could do any damage, and we actually enjoyed the cooler weather and cloudy skies, since it was a drastic change from the tropical island climate in which we had spent the past several weeks. Even though the weather was bearable, it was still colder than any other weather we had experienced during the year (except for one evening in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia in February and one evening in Xiahe, China in May), and we each needed to buy an additional jumper of some kind to keep us warm, since we had only packed thin and light warm weather clothes.

We budgeted a much lower amount for our New Zealand travel budget than we should have done. One of the reasons that we had under budgeted was because we didn't factor in the full cost of petrol (that's the same as gasoline for the Americans reading this), the additional cost of the campervan for the additional ten days we had added, and the high cost of attractions and sights in New Zealand; in most cases, doing any of the main tourist attractions ate up our travel budget for more than one day. We also ended up spending a lot more on food in the country, most likely because we had eaten so poorly in the South Pacific, where we had to cook our own food every day because eating out was too expensive and we were hoping to stick to our travel budget there. Our travel budget in New Zealand was literally thrown out the window - okay, not literally, we didn't toss litter out - and we have found ourselves dipping into our last savings reserves that should really be saved up for our return to London when we have to find a place to live and get settled again.

At the end of our first day in the country, we were almost £600 over budget (around $1200), and we have had very few days since then where we have spent less than our allocated budget for the day. Some of our friends have asked if we will ever run out of money travelling this year, and we can safely say, "Yes, we will". The reason our budget was hit so badly on the first day was because of the campervan hire and also because of the groceries we ended up buying after picking Bessie up. We spent $230 NZD (around £88, or $166 USD) at Foodland to stock Bessie's cupboards and small refrigerator with food and drinks. By the way, our daily travel budget was only $50 NZD each!

Despite having a campervan, we found that we still had to pay for accommodation costs. Holiday parks were spread throughout the country and offered motel rooms as well as campervan and tent sites. The campervan sites had power and water hook-ups, so we could use all of the facilities inside the van. Without a power hook-up, almost all of the camper's facilities could be used for at least two days until the battery ran down. The exceptions that required a power hook-up were the heater, microwave oven and power points inside Bessie's interior. The price for us to stay in a holiday park averaged $30.00 NZD (£11.50, or $23.00 USD) a night, and we hoped to stay overnight at the side of the road or in picnic areas whenever possible. We received that tip, and a nice little towel that could be used as a floor mat for the inside of our van, from a friendly Australian couple who had just finished touring around the country for three weeks in their van, which was, incidentally, not named Bessie, but was her long-lost twin.

The holiday park where we stayed in Northcote, a suburb of Auckland located a couple of miles north of the city centre, was called Auckland North Shore Holiday Park. There, we learnt how everything on and in the campervan worked and what we needed to do to set things up so we could live in our home away from hostels away from home. To get to the city centre, there was a bus conveniently running along the street in front of the holiday park, and we used that as transport to and from the city. A return bus ticket from there cost $8 NZD (around £3, or $6 USD - slightly more than a London journey!) each, and a single taxi journey would have cost around $20 NZD (you can do the maths on that one), so we went for the cheaper option.

During our bus rides into the city, we were granted views of the Auckland city skyline from the hilly areas of Northcote and also from Auckland Harbour Bridge. Auckland was surrounded by two beautiful harbours, the Waitemata and the Maukau, which provided a scenic canvas for the diverse metropolitan area. Surrounding Auckland and its harbours was 48 volcanic cones, 50 islands, 22 regional parks and more than 50 vineyards. When riding the bus around the city, we immediately noticed that Auckland was not a flat place and we were yet to know that we would experience many more hilly destinations in New Zealand. The bus journey to Auckland proper took just over half an hour and we were able to walk around everywhere once we arrived in the city centre.

During the two days that we travelled to downtown Auckland, we saw many sights and enjoyed being back in the modern world after becoming used to island life; we also treated ourselves to some films and food (of the "fast" kind). There we were, complaining about our travel budget, and we were spending unnecessary money at the cinema and at various eating joints, even though we had a stack of DVDs with us and a lot of already-purchased food from Foodland, all back inside Bessie. Since we weren't big drinkers and didn't go out very often to bars or clubs, we were happy that some money went towards entertaining us in our own way. We were still on holiday, no matter how "extended" it was.

The Auckland Domain was a large park adjacent to the city centre on the east side. It housed the Winter Garden with its two large cool and hot greenhouses, and the Auckland Museum. We spent a few hours checking out both places, admiring many flowers and plants inside the Winter Garden and learning more about Maori (indigenous people living on New Zealand before European and Japanese settlement) culture and native animal species to New Zealand inside Auckland Museum.

The smells and colours absorbed by our senses at the Winter Garden were incredible, and we were impressed with New Zealand's native ferns. In addition to the Maori and animal displays at the museum, we also left knowing more about the natural history of New Zealand and how the islands have formed over the years. One of the best things about the museum was its earthquake simulation activity, where we were able to sit on a sofa in a small house, watching a TV news report on an earthquake that hit our room at the same time.

The heart of Auckland was centred around Queen Street, a long street full of shops, restaurants, cafes, bars and other attractions. There were also many businesses along the street, making it one of the busiest in Auckland. Along both sides of the street, we saw many old colonial buildings mixed in with newer modern office blocks, and palm trees growing on the paths in front of some of the buildings. We were surprised to see palm trees in a country where the weather was chilly and cool for most of the year, but we later learnt that the climate was mild year-round and thus enabled the palms to flourish. They weren't coconut palm trees, but a species of palm tree that was native to New Zealand.

Throughout downtown Auckland, the Sky Tower dominated the skyline, which was no surprise with it being the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere. We saw the tower looming in the air above us almost everywhere we walked, except when we were indoors, of course, unless there was a large window looking outside in the direction of the tower. The Sky Tower was a little taller than the Eiffel Tower, which should give you an idea of its size.

In the heart of the city centre was a large complex called Sky City Metro that resembled a modern and clean version of London's Trocadero. Inside, there were several cafes and food stalls, some shops and a large cinema complex spread over three or four floors. The cinema seemed really new and had several films on offer, of which we saw "The Brave One", "The Kingdom" and "A Mighty Heart" over the two days we were there. We used the cinema to escape from a few short showers that hit Auckland during our walks around the city. Even though we had eaten out a couple of times during our stay in Auckland, we had also made sandwiches and brought them with us to eat in the cinema.

On our way back after our first day in the city centre, we bought our first portion of New Zealand fish and chips from a Chinese fast food restaurant located where the bus dropped us off near Auckland North Shore Holiday Park. The people running the place were friendly and impressed when we recapped the Chinese itinerary from our visit to the country earlier in the year. The fish we were served was either hoki or blue cod, which seemed to be two common fish used for New Zealand fish and chips, and it was very tasty!

Having a campervan meant that we had the independence to do whatever we liked, when we liked. Therefore, we were able to see the outdoors and gain amazing views of the countryside at our own pace, unlike the experience we would have gotten had we booked ourselves onto The Kiwi Experience tour bus or something else similar. The next town we wanted to visit after Auckland was Matamata, and we took advantage of our newfound independence by travelling there the long way, via the Coromandel Peninsula, to see some of the breathtaking views of the New Zealand coast. Whilst you will learn about the gloomy weather we had to face when you read the next journal entry, you should also come to appreciate the beauty of the area, as we did during our afternoon's drive around the peninsula's coastal highway.