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How to campervan on the cheap in New Zealand

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It’s hard to believe that the 2016 Puddle Jumping fleet will soon be sailing into New Zealand for cyclone season. While some of you may be looking for work to fill the cruising kitty as we did when we sailed in nearly broke, others may be looking at a leisurely six months to explore these islands at the bottom of the South Pacific ocean. You’ll find out in Opua that New Zealand is not a cheap place to travel…unless you know how to travel cheaply here. Even if you arrive in NZ the modern way — via plane — here’s our top tips for travelling on a budget by motorhome in New Zealand.

Buy your motorhome or van. Renting an RV or campervan can cost upwards of $200 per day. For trips of a few weeks, that might be the easiest option. But if you are looking to travel for several months or more, it’s much more economical to simply buy one. Start your search on Trade Me. Look for a motorhome or campervan that’s got a recent Warrant of Fitness to avoid any upfront repairs. Make sure it’s Certified Self Contained (i.e. has got holding tanks) or you won’t be able to freedom camp anywhere. Buying any vehicle is simple in New Zealand: all you have to do is bring the registration to your local Post Shop or VTNZ and they’ll handle changing the vehicle into your name, a 5-minute process. When you’re ready to pass it on after your road trip, just pop another ad up on Trade Me and hopefully you’ll get a buyer straight away.

Freedom camping 10 minutes from Wellington’s C.B.D.

Join the NZMCA. For less than $100/year you can join the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association. This is a great bunch of folks and besides their nonstop campaigning for motor caravanning rights, NZMCA provides very affordable motorhome insurance (sign up!), a bi-monthly magazine, resources for free or cheap places to park up (including NZMCA parks and park-over-property sites), discounts on services (Cook Strait ferry crossings, for a big one), an extensive travel directory, rallies, and a lot more. The NZMCA also has a brand new mobile broadband service offered for a fraction of the price cell providers charge.

There's not much freedom camping in Auckland. This NZCMA park in west Auckland was a life-saver during our time there.

There’s not much freedom camping in Auckland. This NZMCA park in west Auckland was a life-saver during our time there.

Download the Wikicamps app. Get this on your phone or tablet — it’s the best app you’ll use your entire trip. Updated constantly by app users, it’s got all the freedom camping sites, places of interest like libraries and laundromats (including waste dump stations — you’ll use those a lot) and ratings and comments of all of the above. You can even save the data for offline use (and you’ll be out of cell range often so be sure to do that).

Get your DOC campsite pass. Your NZMCA membership includes the option to purchase the Department of Conservation campsite pass. Get one! With only a handful of exceptions, this pass allows your family to camp fee-free at over 170 DOC campgrounds around the country. It’s a bargain at $175 for the 2016-17 season, considering current DOC campground charges are $5 – $18 per adult and $3.00 – $7.50 per child, per night.

Avoid holiday parks. Sorry NZ tourism, but at NZ$50-$75 per night for our family to stay in a typical holiday park we avoided these like the plague. Not only are they expensive, but they are often crowded too. There are plenty of free places to park up and spread out. If you do need, or want, the luxuries of a holiday park (a shower or washing machine, perhaps), opt for an unpowered site to save a few bucks. We stayed in a few parks when winter temps dropped below freezing so we had power to run our electric heater; check your Wikicamps app for more affordable parks. There are some gems!

Go swimming. If your fresh water reserves are limited — as ours was — you may start smelling a bit due to lack of showering. Luckily, New Zealand’s got plenty of lakes, rivers, and oceans to have a dip. Or, if you really need a shower, head to one of the many amazing swimming pools found all over. Our kids loved the water slides and giant waves! A real bargain for everyone.

Stay for the winter. I know, you probably plan to sail back to the tropics at the first sign of winter, but in our opinion, winter and spring (June-November) are the best seasons to travel New Zealand, by any means. Crowds are non-existent, off-peak rates apply, whitebait fritters are on, and you can even find some snow to play in. Saying we love winter here would be a stretch, but it’s a great way to stretch travel dollars.

Eat in. But you already know this, having sailed through French Polynesia, right?

Any other tips for cheap motorhome living I’ve forgot? Leave a comment and I’ll update this list.

Respect the signs please, protect our freedom camping rights.

We had the best beach in New Zealand all to ourselves last winter. (Wharariki Beach, South Island)

Parked up at the Honest Lawyer, Nelson. Amazing coffee in the morning to boot!

Freedom camping next to the Whangarei bridge.

We tried to visit the Coromandel one Easter weekend when we lived in Auckland. Last winter we had the whole peninsula to ourselves.

We tried to visit the Coromandel one Easter weekend when we lived in Auckland but the roads were gridlocked and we had to turn back. Last winter we had the whole peninsula to ourselves.

The Wing’n it has landed.

Apr 30th, 2016

by Sara.

15 comments

One of the overarching goals of our extended tiki tour here in Zealandia was to decide which of our favorite corners we should settle down in for a while. Believe it or not, after nearly eight months together in an 18-foot long motorhome we are kind of ready to spread out a bit. Michael got to work on getting his CV out in the IT world again; I gaped at the 3-inch stack of paper that is my first printed draft of a novel (ok, single-sided and double spaced, but still). And the girls were literally begging to start back in school again (it worked…ha!).

But the problem was…where?? We loved boaty, beachy Tauranga, sunny Nelson, Scottish Dunedin. We still loved quirky, cool, windy Wellington and even Auckland with her wild west coast beaches and eastern islands. There is the Bay of Islands full of friends and boats. And what about somewhere completely off the map like Invercargill or New Plymouth? (Or, maybe not.)

In the end, our hearts pulled for Wellington so we pointed Wing’n it‘s bow south for one final time after we arrived back in Auckland from Tonga. But little did we know, back in early February, that our decision-making had only begun. Wellington’s not just a city, but a huge region; commuters flow into the city all the way from the Wairarapa and Hutt Valley to the northeast, and from Kapiti and Porirua on the southwest coast. And then there’s the plethora of funky neighborhoods in and bordering the city proper. All of which are serviced by Wellington’s world-class commuter train and bus networks. Now where do we go?!

Job hunting kinda sucks. Really thankful the girls love the library.

Learning how to skate. A tiny adventure.

And so it happened that by wing’n it, we ended up right where we needed to be. Wellington’s got some choice freedom camping spots and while Michael hunted for work we spent time at nearly all of them. We spent many nights at Evan’s Bay Marina just minutes from downtown and at parks on the south coast watching the sun set over the Cook Strait. But as much as we thought we wanted to live right in the bustling city, after a few days in town we always found ourselves aching for a quiet spot by the sea.

Freedom camping in the city (Evans Bay Marina, Wellington).

Ngatitoa Domain with our new ‘hood in the distance.

Just to the north of Wellington is Porirua Harbour. The city of the same name lies at the southern end but scattered around it are small neighborhoods and parks. We found ourselves coming back to the domain in Mana again and again. With Wing’n it parked right on the edge of the quiet turquoise sea, we most enjoyed unwinding after the busyness of the city. We’d park our camping chairs on the grass and watch: seagulls, families picnicking, kite boarders, sailboats, windsurfers, brave swimmers, fishing-folk. We’d chat with our rotating NZMCA neighbors, walk to the dairy for an ice-cream, stroll over the marina and look at boats. Eventually we stayed so long we wondered if we should register to vote there.

Then, one morning Michael came back from his morning run, all abuzz. “I just found the coolest little neighborhood…cafes, cottages right on the beach, people everywhere chatting and happy. You’ve got to come see this place!” The next day we drove the Wing’n it over for our second coffee and it was exactly as he said: a great coffee shop on the corner, a fish & chip shop, a dairy, Indian and Thai and Polish restaurants, a boating club, a beautiful primary school right there…all with kids and dogs and families milling about everywhere. It is quintessentially Kiwi. Best of all, there is a train station: hop on and it takes you to the center of Wellington city in 25 minutes.

Everything, as it seems to do, fell into place after that. We found a funky old bach to rent right across from the beach, Michael got not one but two job offers, we enrolled the girls in school, and even found the most adorable kitten ever at the local SPCA. We parked the Wing’n it in front of our little garage and moved out. It took about 30 minutes.

That was a month ago and we’re still so in love with where we’ve landed. The girls’ new school is warm and welcoming, shoes optional, and learning is fun, no pressure required. We can walk around the corner to the village for a coffee and ice-cream and hello to a neighbor. Or head the other direction, out to the coastal tracks. Michael takes the train into the city to work, and is home by 6 to watch the sun set past Mana Island, across the Cook Strait, dipping behind the Marlborough Sounds.

A lovely place to just be.

Our new wheels are a little more fun to drive. Sorry, Wing’n it.

Just another weekday morning. We will miss this.

Moving day. Our new little place is the add-on on top of the original bach below. I’m standing on the beach, taking this photo.

We went a bit crazy with our brand-new library card.

The hardest thing about coming back to NZ was leaving our beloved cats behind. We fulfilled our promise to get another as soon as possible. Then this guy showed up. Mr. Mouse. The coolest cat ever.

The hardest thing about coming back to NZ was leaving our beloved cats behind. We fulfilled our promise to get another as soon as possible. And just in time, we met Mr. Mouse. The coolest cat ever.

The walk to school really can’t be beat.

Bach’n it

We Are Learning

Oct 27th, 2015

by Sara.

8 comments

A well-meaning family member recently asked us the question that every single long-term travel family hears, and often: but what about school? Aren’t they going to get behind?

I must admit that I am a reluctant homeschool mum. When we moved back to Olympia last year and the big yellow school bus picked the girls up for their very first day of American public school, I went back into the house, turned up the stereo full blast and may have danced in joy for a couple hours (or at least that’s what it felt like). I had hours and hours to myself to read and write with Michael off to work and the girls off to school.

But then the homework was sent home in my all-day kindergartner’s backpack. And the tears from dealing with mean kids at school. Also, complaints about the computer reading tests foisted upon our 3^rd grader and how so-and-so got a higher score than she did. Fall conference time arrived and we sat in front of our daughter’s kindergarten teacher and tried to pay attention as she went over pages of data on our 5-year-old’s current progress. On her 6^th birthday I brought in class cupcakes and asked when I should come back for the party. “Oh, I don’t know when we’ll eat them,” her teacher told me. “I like to surprise the kids sometime during the day.” In other words, get lost.

A month later I took Holly out of school. We played. Read books. Counted stuff. Shopped together. Made art. She was a happy 6-year-old again.

I took Leah out a month after that. She was becoming increasingly distressed about school. She had made some very good friends, but was bored silly in class. Most of the kids didn’t listen to her teacher and they would have to stay inside and miss recess. Totally makes sense, right? Ever since she was little she’d pick her fingernails when she was anxious; hers were bloody and sore.

So even though my days since have been a little more hectic and it’s been a challenge to carve out time for myself to write, I know that we made the right choice. The past five months of traveling aboard Wing’n it has only reinforced that: not worrying about tests, evaluations, curriculum and pointless busy work has resulted in them being kids again. Happy, curious, thoughtful, patient, and pure sponges of knowledge.

Together, we are learning constantly. We read things, we count things, we draw things. We look up topics that interest us. We look at maps and decide where to go next. We talk about history, geology, wildlife, ecology, conservation, sociology, economics. We visit libraries and read for hours, picking books off shelves that strike our fancy. We’ve learned how to get along living in a teensy space. We talk about budgeting and how we must give up one thing to choose another. We’ve learned how it’s far better to have experiences rather than wasting money on climbing the “property ladder” or buying the latest plastic junk. We’ve learned how to set goals and then go for them.

I honestly don’t know if they are ahead or behind in school. But I do know they are leaps and bounds ahead in life and I think what we’re learning together will serve them well.

Puzzling World, Lake Wanaka

Queenstown/Cardrona late spring snow…first time in the white stuff in over 5 years!

Clifden Caves near Fjordland. (I totally chickened out when crawling became necessary. Luckily Michael is braver than I and he and the girls kept exploring underground.)

McLean Falls, Catlins, South Island

Dunedin Telephone Booths

World Famous Moeraki Boulders

Learning about earthquakes in crumbling Christchurch

Center of downtown Christchurch, 5 years later. The stones in the giant cairn are each written upon with a wish for the city’s rebuild.

NZ fur seal pups frolicking in a waterfall. It’s a 10 minute walk from the ocean; the mothers leave them here in a sort of seal pup daycare. Cute overload. (Kaikoura)