The quintessential New Zealand adventure is to rent a campervan and drive across the country, so we naturally had to give it a try. New Zealand has a wonderful “freedom camping” rule where you can park and camp most places in the country for free as long as your van is self-contained (has a toilet). But beyond that, there are campsites all over the country that are completely free to stay in as long as you’re certified self-contained, most of which have bathrooms, drinking water, and a sink to do dishes. We picked up our self-contained “Spaceship” van rental in Christchurch and gave ourselves 3 weeks to explore the South Island – and boy was that not nearly enough!
Our van – Spyro (his given name by the company, not us) – was probably as small of a van as you could find that is self-contained. We chose it because it was the easiest on our budget, but we had a few regrets once we realized we couldn’t even sit up inside the van unless we were in the front seats. Nevertheless, they really did make an impressive use of all the space with a bed, sink, toilet, refrigerator, and plenty of storage inside of a minivan and we really grew to love our little Spyro over our road trip.

The East Coast

After picking up our van in Christchurch, we headed to the grocery store to pick up supplies and our first lesson in how to be strategic about space for perishables in our little fridge. Since this was John’s first chance to drive on the left side of the road, we decided to keep our first driving day short and went to a highly rated free camping spot on the Banks Peninsula near Christchurch. It was essentially just a parking lot, but right next to a beautiful lake with incredibly clean facilities. We were off to a good start!

The next few days we spent near the town of Dunedin, a beautiful college town with a Scottish heritage. We spent a few nights camping on the beach near the town, and during the days going on coastal hikes, penguin spotting, and just enjoying the city. The highlight was the Dunedin Botanical Garden – we planned to take a quick walk around the park but ended up spending hours because it was massive and beautiful. If there’s one thing New Zealand towns all have in common, it seems to be their dedication to huge and well maintained public parks.

On the very south end of the South Island is the Catlins Forest Park, full of waterfalls, coastal hikes, and a large petrified forest that is covered by high tide everyday. The petrified forest is located in Curio Bay, and is one of the largest petrified forests remaining from the Jurassic period and is believed to have been created from massive floods of volcanic debris. It’s a pretty big tourist site, but we actually learned about it from a kiwi paleontologist we camped next to the night before who was excited to tell us all about the geological significance and fossils they’re still discovering (we also learned from him that sea kelp is not a type of plant at all but a totally separate biological kingdom, protist. Who knew van life was going to be so educational!)

After the Catlins we had officially driven the entire east side of the coast and it was time to head inland. It was also desperately time for a shower – five days in and we hadn’t quite figured out how to pull off a shower when staying in free campsites. We finally discovered the secret in the southern city of Invercargill – public pools have showers! And being such a campervan friendly country, almost all of the pools will let you pay just a few dollars to use the showers without the pool. Best $5 we’ve ever spent.

• Animal Highlight – Penguins!
• Camping Highlight – Beach camping at Ocean View near Dunedin. Big sheep farm on one side, beach on the other!

Te Anau & Milford Sound

On our way to Te Anau and the Fiordlands we learned first hand why spring is the shoulder season for New Zealand – most people don’t want to live in a van while it’s snowing! We had gotten used to it getting down to about freezing every night (gotten used to it but still complained about it), but a late season snow storm really caught us by surprise! We decided to hunker down and treat ourselves to a holiday park in Te Anau that had an indoor kitchen, hot showers, and even a TV room we could hang out in. We still had to sleep in our van, but it felt like true luxury and it was the only place we paid to camp our entire 3 weeks!

One benefit of the snowstorm was it made the drive to Milford Sound even more gorgeous than it typically is. The road is said to be one of the prettiest drives in the country, and our timing was perfect to see it as a winter wonderland and also have it almost completely to ourselves. Apparently shoulder season + snow storm = no tourists! We did a few different walks around the lake and took in the gorgeous scenery. On the way back we stopped to do another hike up to the Key Summit, and the 360 degree views of snow covered mountains at the top made it probably the prettiest hike I have ever done. It was the New Zealand scenic day people dream of!

NZ has several long, beautiful hiking trails that are well maintained that they call their “Great Walks”. We had planned to do the Kepler Track, one of the Great Walks in the Te Anau area, but the snowstorm made it so the top of the track would require ice-climbing gear. We weren’t quite up for that! So instead we opted to just do the first night of the track and hike up to the beautiful Luxmore Hut. It was freezing and had 60 km/h winds at the top, so we made our way back down pretty quickly after eating lunch and exploring the caves. We had enough of this winter weather by this day so we started to make our way up north!

• Animal Highlight – Kea birds are an endangered species, but we saw a few near Milford Sound. They are so smart, they crawled across our car and pecked at our windows looking for food. Sad because clearly tourists have fed them before, but they were also so cool.
• Food Highlight – Venison pie in Te Anau! John’s first time having venison – but we’ve had it many many times since.
• Camping Highlight – The little town of Lumsden had a wonderful freedom camping area fully catered to campervans – super clean bathrooms, a sink with sponges/soap to do dishes, fresh water, and a self-service laundry station on the street. The best part was to take a shower, you had to go to the local grocery store and ask for the keys to the local pool. It was the most small town thing I had ever heard, and so trusting!! Also side note that the grocery store baked their own fresh scones and they were amazing, a true highlight.

Queenstown

Queenstown is the definition of a tourist ski town – which we honestly kind of loved. The main part of town is set on a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains, and all of the restaurants/shops cater to skiers. We even went to a ski themed brewery (Altitude Brewing) that had old ski lifts as benches – cute!

We didn’t plan to spend much time here, but John discovered a rental shop with a great deal on snowboard rental gear, and it was the last week of the season so he took advantage and went up to the Remarkables ski area for a day (and yes, he says it was indeed remarkable). Apparently the snow was “classic spring snow” and “like mashed potatoes”, which I’m sure means something to people who ski.

We camped at the closest free campsite to town for a couple nights, a beautiful park on a lake about 30 minutes south. Our last night a huge windstorm came in and it wasn’t exactly a pleasant night sleep, but being in our van definitely beat being in a tent!

• Animal Highlight – During the windstorm our last night, John was trying to figure out the safest place for us to park away from the big trees. While he was out there a tiny black kitty ran up to him and was clearly very scared! We pet him for a while but he eventually ran off, and John found a local Facebook group dedicated to lost kitties and contacted them. Long story short, someone from that group found the kitty, took it home, and eventually reunited it with its owners!!
• Food Highlight – Fergburger – everyone told us we had to try Fergburger, it’s famous and has a long line no matter what time of day you go. We don’t typically eat burgers, but we made an exception. They were very delicious – not sure if they were the best we’ve ever had, but definitely worth trying! (however John got the venison burger and it was called the Bambi and that just felt wrong)

Wanaka

John’s big 3-0 birthday coincided with our time in Wanaka, so we had a great time celebrating on both his NZ timezone and Seattle timezone birthday. On his New Zealand birthday we hiked up to a viewpoint of Rob Roy glacier, the trail head of which started at the end of a very long dirt road through someone’s private farm and required 8 different river fords (our little Spyro did great). That night we treated ourselves to an actual indoor room (!) and stayed at a cute lodge where the owners cooked us breakfast in the morning and then visited some breweries. On his Seattle birthday, we went wine tasting at a local winery, then made our way back out along that dirt road and re-forded the rivers to start our next backpacking adventure. We backpacked through the Matukituki Valley – through someone’s private farm land next to a bunch of cows and sheep – to Aspiring Hut which had a gorgeous view of Mt. Aspiring. This concluded John’s birthday celebrations – good tip to celebrate your birthday across the world so you’re not limited to one day! 😉

• Food Highlight – Reminding us of Portland, Wanaka has a big pod of food trucks. Given it was John’s birthday and we were treating ourselves, by the time we left we had tried something every single one of them and they were all so good! We got coffee/bagels, sushi, pizza, Thai, and the most delicious fried chicken we’ve had in a long time.

Twizel

Our time with our dear Spyro was coming to a close, so we headed to our last destination of the little town of Twizel near Mount Cook. This area of NZ is really spectacular, with unreal blue lakes and mountains all around. We hiked along the Hooker Valley Track on a particularly cold day, which ended at the Hooker Lake full of icebergs! If you’ve ever had the Glacier Freeze Gatorade, the color was absolutely made to match these glacier lakes. Gorgeous!

We spent one night camping along the huge Lake Pukaki, which for size reference it was the first time we ever saw a tsunami warning sign along a lake! We camped at a more woodsy campground the other nights to get a break from the wind, plus there seems to be no such thing as a bad view in New Zealand.

• Camping Highlight – We met an elderly couple from NZ, Elaine and Duncan, camping in an RV near us who were very friendly and we ended up spending several hours talking with them in their RV after dinner. They told us stories of their travels and Elaine ended up planning out our entire next leg of our journey when we told her we didn’t know where to go next. No joke, she spent about an hour planning out our day by day locations and what we should do in each and texted it to us. She was the best!
• Animal Highlight – Elaine and Duncan have the sweetest pup named Marshall who we fell in love with. He is way bigger than he realizes and wants to be a lap dog, and was so excited to show us all of his toys.

Returning Spyro

Our last night in the van we decided to actually “freedom camp”, meaning we just found a random neighborhood in Christchurch and parked our car on the side of the road. We found a spot by a park that had a public bathroom, and that was really all there was to it! It wasn’t quite as nice as the dedicated camping spots we’d been staying in, but it was very convenient to just park wherever we wanted and sleep.

By the end of our 3 weeks, we really did come to enjoy our van life. Next time we would ideally be in warmer weather so cooking outside at night isn’t quite so miserable, and maybe even get a van where you can sit up inside, but this definitely won’t be our last campervan experience!

Christine