Home Sweet Home!

After 5 months of depending on others to get us from place to place, we decided to get our own set of wheels to tour both the North and South islands in New Zealand.
Unfortunately, this convenience also has a cost.  Being on a tight budget, we went for the cheapest option.  We rented a micro-campervan.  I think that it sounds much fancier than it really is.  The micro-campervan is really a four cylinder station wagon where the front and back seats fold forward,creating a small sleeping area in the back.  The  “campervan” is outfitted with a tent that when the back hatch door is open, you can wrap the tent over it. 

Our campervan, that we have nicknamed
“Speed Demon”, is somewhat cramped at times.  We have to take out all of our equipment, backpacks and food and leave them outside when we want to sleep.  On our first night in the Speed Demon, set up took us a total of 40 minutes!  We hope to be able to report at the end of the trip that we have cut that down to 7 minutes. 

The Speed Demon has given us the freedom to go wherever we want, whenever we want.  That is a great feeling.  We are not convinced that it will make it through the entire trip.  It is already making funny noises and when you go over
80 km/hour it feels like you are going 150 km/hour.  Thankfully we have all the supplies we need should we break down in the middle of no man’s land.

Joe has been doing a good job driving on the left side of the road.  Everything in the car is on the opposite side of what we are used to in Canada.  Other than using the windshield washer control instead of the flicker and almost going the wrong way when we left the camp ground today, he has been a great driver.  My turn will be coming up… I am a little nervous about it!