Bevan the Big Kit Camper goes for a tootle around NZ's south island

[bPeteb]

Off we go to NZ. This was supposed to be a lovely warm free camping campervan trip in late summer but due to covid became a bloody freezing powered site campervan trip in early spring aka late winter!

DSC J flights for me that I’ll most likely have to follow-up the DSCs, award flights for bAl.

Everything for this trip was originally planned last year. After our trip around Tassie in an Apollo van we priced what was available for NZ. Prices were more than we expected. So we started searching on campervan company reviews. Wilderness Campervan Hire NZ | Campervan Rental | Wilderness Motorhomes came out on top but their prices were just way out of anything we were prepared to pay. Pretty close to them was Kit Campers Kit Campers. Anyone who used them loved them.

They just have two camper types - Little and Big Kit. Little is little - it’s a Toyota Commuter but it still has a kitchen and a loo. Big is more medium, a high roof Ford Transit and has a ‘proper’ shower and toilet, is stand-up inside and has aircon.

For our original summer trip we booked a Little Kit but then our flights were cancelled due to Covid. The team at Kit was amazing. Returned our payment less a small admin fee. When things started to be looking better in Feb we rebooked flights for September and rebooked the Little Kit camper. Kit wouldn’t even take the deposit until travel looked definite.

Qantas kept changing the flights, cancelling our outward flight at one point, but with lots of sitting on hold I eventually got it all sorted.

When my health deteriorated, and with the fact it was going to be cold, I decided I didn’t want the zero privacy loo of Little Kit nor freeze my bits off so we changed our booking to a Big Kit. This gave me a loo with a door and us access to heating if/when we stayed at powered sites.

Total cost of the van for 16 days was just under NZD2000!

Our plan? We didn’t really have one apart from visiting bAl’s sister and family in Hokitika.

Up until the devastating flooding and damage in the Nelson and Marlborough region we thought we might head there first, go fishing out of Picton, do the mail boat run out of Havelock, visit a couple of wineries, stay at St Arnaud. Then head to Hoki. We also wanted to go whale watching at Kaikoura, maybe go to Queenstown again, possibly do a glacier landing. bAl was very keen on doing some stargazing in the Central Otago dark sky reserve.

In July we booked our first and last night - first night an ensuite queen room at Jucy Snooze Snooze Christchurch and last night at the finally opened Novotel at Christchurch airport Novotel Christchurch Airport

In the week before we left we had a more defined plan and booked whale watching at Kaikoura, powered sites at Lake Tekapo and Queenstown (both seemed busy and we’d later find out why), our Zilch electric car in Christchurch, dinner at Pedro’s in Queenstown, a Dark Sky experience at Lake Tekapo and our big splurge - a flight from Queenstown and cruise on Milford.

The weather for the weekend of our arrival wasn’t looking too great for our whale watch so we requested to change it from Saturday to Sunday.

 

[bPeteb]

With my second infusion of Infliximab on Wednesday done and a big supply of prednisone packed, we headed off to the airport on Thursday arvo for our 6:30pm flight to Christchurch.

The airport was so quiet and yet security screening was pathetically slow and delivered with a disappointing amount of attitude. My passport didn’t work yet again via the eGate. It’s only when exiting, not when returning. I can’t wait to get a new one next year.

Staff in the lounge were so obviously excited to have people flying again. Didn’t bother with anything other than bubbles as we’d have plenty to eat and drink on the flight over.





Crew were nice but I can’t remember them using names during dinner service. I only say that due to the crazy personal service we all got in J on our flight home.

Dinner was maybe lamb



and butter chicken



but not sure. We drank maybe a pinot gris or grigio.The sticky date definitely needed warning. Cold it wasn’t great



Jucy Snooze is in the block behind the Sudima. It was a cold but thankfully dry 10 minute walk. The queen ensuite room was tiny as expected, but was exactly what we needed.







view of the Hagglund track at the Antarctic Centre

 

[Denali]

Settling in...

 

[bPeteb]

Day 1 Christchurch

Breakfast of kings at McDonalds across the road from Jucy then back to the airport to pick up Jacinda, our Zilch Hyundai Ioniq. We joined Zilch Zilch Car Sharing: Hire Electric Cars By The Hour in AKL & CHCH a couple of years back and not for want of trying haven’t been able to use them in Christchurch.

I scanned the QR code on Jacinda’s windscreen



unlocked her via my phone, and away we went in our first ever electric car! It really is the way of the future. So quiet, so effortless.



It was so great to finally meet Cherine at Kit Campers Kit Campers. She had been, and is, just wonderful. Big Kit wasn’t big and we had some decisions to make. We decided not to take the ‘dining’ table and would leave the bed set up for the two weeks. Space was at a premium.



The only time we drive a manual car is when we’re on holiday. Little Kits are petrol autos, Big Kits diesel manual. I just wanted to get away from the office looking like I drive a manual every day and somehow I managed it

Dropped Jacinda off in the city





met up with a friend of bAl’s for lunch



did our first (very ordinary except for beer) shop and drove to our first park-up, the driveway of friends in Christchurch. We got Bevan (Big Kit renamed) set up - my bag unpacked into the limited rear overhead and large over coughpit cupboard, built and made the bed and slid bAl’s bag underneath it.



Had an excellent dinner at Craft Embassy Home. Terrific share food and great craft beers.

 

[bPeteb]

Day 2 Christchurch to Kaikoura

A very ordinary night’s sleep. I’m 178cm and the bed is 170cm long. I was really uncomfortable. bAl is shorter than me at 172cm and he wasn’t much better. This was going to be a long two weeks.

After a lovely home cooked breakfast and a look thourgh our friends' gorgeous spring garden









we headed for Kaikoura. OMG! I just noticed my tshirt has a hole in it! Yikes.





The first of many yummy pies



Lanslide protection along teh coastal raod into Kaikoura. The road was closed for a long time after the Kaikoura earthquake and has been reconstructed with much more protection.





We’re planners and bookers. It was very difficult for us not to have a place to stay booked but we’d decided to work on the assumption that NZ was still quiet, it wasn’t school holidays, and it was only just the start of spring.

Those Alps...

 

[bPeteb]

First stop at Kaikoura was the small museum where bAl found the school records of his aunty in the archives.



Didn’t have time to search for his dad. That can be next time.





Then to Top 10 Kaikoura https://top10.co.nz/park/kaikoura-top-10-holiday-park and hopefully a powered site. No worries, of course they did. Apart from two, every holiday park charged between $46 and $50 for a powered site for two. The Top 10s are formulaic and that is not a bad thing. Great facilities. Hot tubs for hire, great kitchens and bathrooms, covered bbq area, kids areas, lots of grass, tv room/s, and usually centrally located.



Once we were parked and plugged in we went across the road





to The Emporium Emporium Brewing where we consumed and bought more beer



and even got my first t-shirt. The owner had even restored the original mini golf course on the site.

 

[bPeteb]

We booked dinner at The Pier Hotel Home | Pier Hotel Kaikoura NZ | Bed & Breakfast Accommodation, Restaurant & Bar. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It was at the other end of Kaikoura, as far from the holiday park as you could get, and there was literally no way we could get get there except to walk as The Pier was too busy to come and pick us up. It took 35 minutes!

The All Blacks were playing. The public bar was noisy. Dinner was pretty good but not exceptional. My seafood platter looked and tasted good





and bAL didn't offer me a taste of his pork so it must have been just as good



The pavlova was amazing. I surrender. NZ owns the pav.





The Pier would normally have picked us up but due to the game they were too busy. Luckily the game was over when we left and we were able to be driven back to town. We stopped off at a bar in the main street and had another couple of drinks before walking back to the park. We gave the aircon a run to heat the van up before we switched it off and hit the sack.

 

[bPeteb]

Site plan of Top 10 Kaikoura





Day 3 Whale watching and then to Hanmer Springs

Another ordinary night’s sleep



but that was forgotten when stepping outside to see the most spectacular clear blue sky. It was just a little cold.





Gave the kitchen its first workout and it passed with flying colours - porridge and aeropress coffee.

 

[bPeteb]

After swimming with whale sharks just a couple of weeks before, we were REALLY looking forward to seeing a sperm whale or two and Whale Watch Kaikoura Kia Ora! didn’t disappoint.

Many of you will have read about what unfolded the week after our visit where five people sadly lost their lives in the same seas. Life is fleeting. Make the most of it because you never know when your time is up.

Super comfy and super fast boat that got us to Mati Mati the sperm whale pretty darn quick



The boat stops in the area they approximate a whale will be and the captain sticks a listening device over the side of the boat to try to locate it





Along the way we saw a couple of seals and some albatross.

Seeing a sperm whale is not like seeing humpback or minke whales, or orca. A large grey shape the size of a bus just moves along the surface, blowing spray from around its blowhole









then it dives

 

[bPeteb]

Then eventually it comes back up and does it again

A few albatross just sitting around on the super calm sea



















We are both really glad we saw Mati Mati, but don’t go expecting any kind of interaction like you potentially get with humpbacks.

 

[bPeteb]

We did see hundreds of dolphins that did interact with the boat and they were brilliant.







Mobile phones - bAl has a Woolies mobile plan. We decided against paying for roaming so switched it off. We bought a Vodafone SIM from SIM Corner for $65 New Zealand Travel Sim Card (Vodafone NZ) - 40GB that gave me unlimited access to social media, 40GB of data and calls/SMS back home and in NZ. We took my SIM out and put it in bAl’s S21 but we could not ever get it to work on both the Woolies eSIM and my Telstra SIM. This caused us some problems.

Qantas of course have my Oz mobile for contact. Most of the ‘last week’ NZ bookings were made with the new NZ mobile number. Our Latitude/28 Degrees cards had our mobile numbers in our profiles and we found out straight away that any online purchases such as booking holiday parks required a code sent to our mobiles to authorise the bookings. So for anything in advance we just used our Suncorp mastercard. We’re talking under NZD50 so it just wasn’t worth fiddling around with the S21 to get the SIM working. Every time we wanted to buy online it would have been an additional $5 daily Telstra roaming charge. Yeh nah.

The beach at Kaikoura. People catching some big fish down there. No idea what.





The road from Kairkoura to Hanmer

 

[bPeteb]

Hanmer Springs wasn’t a definite until we drove away from Kaikoura. There looked like a possibility of snow and bAl was all over that!

We’ve been before and it’s an easy drive from Kaikoura, or Christchurch. A powered site was available at the Top 10 Hanmer Springs TOP 10 and that was a good thing because the low was going to be under zero. The lady behind the counter put us on site away from the family areas and right near bathrooms and a small kitchen. Nice.





As soon as we were parked and plugged in



we got our gear together to visit the hot springs Experience Hanmer Springs | The Pools | Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa

Like I said we’ve been to Hanmer before but they have spent a lot of money on the springs since we were there last and it was way better than previously. We had a lovely time soaking in various pools as the sun went down.



Dinner was at the Monteiths Brewery Bar Home | Monteith's Brewery Bar Great food and really nice staff. Despite it not being a holiday Hanmer was busy.









When we got back to the van bAl suggested a different way to sleep. Instead of deliberately trying to stretch out (like I was) why not just snuggle with the occasional diagonal stretch, and from then on we slept great.

 

[bPeteb]

Day 4 Hanmer to St Arnaud

Top 10 Hanmer Springs. Check out this 'family' bathroom













After breakfast we drove to Hanmer Forest Hanmer Heritage Forest Trust | Accommodation to check out the carved art. It was super cool. Every sculpture was carved from a single redwood tree.

 

[bPeteb]

 

[bPeteb]

We’ve stayed at Maruia Springs a couple of times, and bAl many times when he lived in NZ. It was owned by a Japanese family and was like an onsen - outdoor pools, segregated bath house etc. The Japanese restaurant was good too. It’s changed hands and is being run as a destination spa and even though we were going to give it a try we couldn’t work out how to book just one night of free camping. Instead we decided on the long drive to St Arnaud and the Kerr Bay DOC campground, one of only three on the south island with powered sites.

Lewis Pass across the centre of the south island from Hanmer











We went for a walk at the Marble Hill campsite to The Sluice Box (actually a rock formation)

 

[bPeteb]

More from Marble Hill and The Sluice Box








then at Maruia Falls. This was just a normal river until the earthquake of 1929 turned the Maruia River into a waterfall.





farmland on the road to Murchison

 

[bPeteb]

Stopped in Murchison for lunch. Sadly NZ’s smallest bakery was closed.




on the road to St Arnaud




Arrived into St Arnaud mid-afternoon and called into the DOC office to get our windscreen ticket then drove down to the campground and parked up. Terrific campground on the lake's edge with a kitchen, bathrooms with hot showers ($2) and even a laundry.



I’m a bit timid with walks of more than an hour. It’s been my limit (when walking) between loo visits, so we just did the Honeydew Walk and added a walk along the shore of the lake.

 

[bPeteb]

The lake, and bush, is beautiful. So much bird song.





bAl even managed a picture of a Tui.





We wandered up to the lodge for dinner but it was closed, as was everything else in town, so we had sausages for dinner followed by some of the fancy beers we’d bought at Emporium. We didn’t consume all of these, the pics are just to show some of what we had in the fridge and the ‘pantry’






The can of peaches - we thought the can opener was some secret kiwi model that we just didn’t know how to use. Used the bottle opener to stab the side of the can and then force it round. Turns out the can opener was just broken and missing the bit to cut into the top of the can…



It got very cold very quickly and we had the heating on and off during the night.

 

[Hvr]

'Fairy bread is a unique New Zealand birthday treat.'

Hmm is this another Australian culinary delight claimed by our Kiwi cousins?
Fair dinkum unbelievable.

Am loving the TR and look forward to reading it all.

 

[bPeteb]

DOC map of the campgrounds around Lake Rotoiti




Day 5 St Arnaud to Mokihinui

We woke up to a frozen world. It got to -4 overnight. All the puddles were frozen over and the jetty out into the look that looked newly varnished was actually a sheet of ice. It was just so beautiful.