New Zealand Trip Update
I have a rainy day here in Lake Ohau today, so I’ve decided to finally post my first written blog post about my trip so far, to give it some colour. It has been a rocky start to vanlife, I won’t deny it! But I’m also really loving NZ and can see myself being here a long time, assuming nothing else goes drastically wrong! So, starting from the beginning where it all began…
I picked up Molly at Christchurch airport, and it was all very easy. Molly appeared fine despite the obvious stress of her first overseas trip in the loud belly of a huge aircraft not knowing where her owner was. I ordered an Uber pet ride back to my Airbnb rental in Burnside, less than 10 minutes from the airport. The rental was a nice self contained apartment on the side of the owner’s house, but the owner was in China, so I had plenty of privacy. I loved exploring Christchurch with Molly on foot, what a great town it is. Tons of beautiful gardens and parks, and everything is not that far away so we walked almost everywhere, sometimes more than 20 km in a day. I gave myself two weeks to buy a van.
The 4WD van (more like a motorhome) that I wanted was 52k NZD and I knew the price was too high for such an old vehicle (1992) despite all the modifications the owner had done. I then found a great motorhome for exactly half the price and it was almost as good! I thought there must be a hidden problem so wanted a mechanical inspection done first. We agreed on a price and then over that weekend before I got the inspection done, the vendors sold it out from under me, to someone else for a higher price. I was gutted as I knew I’d missed a bargain. Also annoyed they hadn’t given me a chance to bid on it.
With time running out on my Airbnb, I decided to rent a car to check out a van up in Picton, a 4.5 hour drive away at the northern end of the South Island. This van was pretty good and the price was decent, $36k. I didn’t bother with the mechanical inspection having cost me my last bargain, and with time ticking on the Airbnb and having gone to the trouble of travelling all that way and renting a car, I pulled the trigger and bought it. Molly had been an illegal passenger in the rental car, and I had to get it back to Christchurch so I told the vendor Dave I’d be back again in a few days to pick it up.
Renting another car but this time a one-way rental, I travelled back up there and picked it up. Dave gave me the rundown and the following morning, after spending the first night in it parked in his driveway, I drove away. What a great feeling to be finally underway with Molly by my side and mountains in the distance!
The following week was spent in the Springs Junction and Reefton area, doing some day hikes in Victoria Forest Park and camping in the motorhome in the Palmer Road area. I knew this area was good from my pre-trip research, but even then it surpassed my expectations. Picture a wild valley filled with forest (a rarity in NZ where most valley floors have been cleared) and a few small clearings where some hardy off-grid type people lived surrounded by towering peaks and glorious nature. The only road in the valley was this Palmer Road, a very quiet and unpaved road that passes through beautiful forest. I can see myself living here one day, it’s that beautiful!
Reefton is also nice, though it’s a proper small town. It’s filled with old buildings and has heaps of charm, though the river running beside it has some heavy metals from its mining days and there are clearcuts in the forest visible from town. Two things I don’t like at all, but the charm of the town certainly makes it a nice spot to chill at in the freedom camping spot right next to the main street.
I had to stay longer than expected as I had mail I was expecting (my membership package from the NZMCA, NZ Motor Caravan Association, and my registration certificate from NZTA). With the Christmas mail, both packages were delayed so I did a roadtrip around Westport and Greymouth, staying at each town for a couple of nights and meeting plenty of nice locals camped nearby. One was a 99 year old man with all the vigour of a man half his age. He showed me photos of Westport from decades past. Predictably, the weather was terrible- the West Coast gets more rain than just about anywhere on earth, having the Southern Alps blocking the moisture coming from the ocean.
I finally picked up my mail and headed across to the drier east side of NZ, crossing Lewis Pass and heading to Hanmer Springs. The motorhome really struggled to get up the pass, and the stress of driving it with small cars lined up in my rearview mirror was something I was going to have to get used to, as the top speed is about 80-90 km/h.
Hanmer Springs was a nice place to spend Christmas Day, and Molly and I parked next to a trailhead set amongst a lovely pine forest, which we explored extensively. Itching to get to the bigger mountains I wanted to be in, we headed south on Boxing Day to the Methven area, staying there a night in a nearby freedom camping area before going to the Ashburton Lakes area inland an hour’s drive away (see photos from the blog post). Here we hiked on the Te Araroa national trail that goes the length of NZ, into the mountains north of Lake Heron. The views were superb, although the landscape is quite stark being completely treeless and covered in tall tussock grass and having lots of thorny shrubs (Spaniard and Gorse I think) that made the hiking a little tricky for Molly down at ground level. I was worried the thorns would damage her eyes.
That night we crested a pass and descended a small way to a stream to set up camp in my tent. The tent was too small for Molly so I let her sleep just outside the tent. I’d forgotten her sleeping mat, so she lay on the cold ground and as the temperature that night dropped and dropped, I started to get worried for Molly in the bitter cold that had developed- below freezing.
I turned on my headlamp to look at where she was sleeping only to see she wasn’t there. I called out for her and didn’t see anything. My calls and whistles grew louder and louder as panic set in. I could hear my voice echoing off distant valley walls, thankfully I was pretty sure no one else was camped anywhere nearby. Under headlamp I looked for half an hour in the freezing cold darkness, but decided she must have gotten so cold she had gone back to the campervan parked over 15km away. It was a long stretch but I couldn’t think of any reason why she would disappear except this.
So I lay back down in my tent, looking up at the vast expanse of the universe above, seeing shooting stars, satellites and all sorts of cool stuff that would’ve been enjoyable except for the fact I was worried I’d lost my beloved Molly forever. I had taken her harness with her name and my phone number off her that night too, so if she was lost, she was unidentifiable except for her microchip. Maybe Molly would be lost forever in this vast wild area.
Hours passed and I occasionally bellowed out her name from my tent before I decided to get up at the first sign of light in the sky to make the trek back to the campervan where she was hopefully waiting. I didn’t want another hiker or van dweller to come across her first as they may take her thinking she was lost.
On my descent from the high pass I was camped on, in the barely visible trail beside me, she suddenly appeared trotting nonchalantly beside me, as if nothing had happened at all. I was so overjoyed to see her and hugged her tightly. That was a close call! Who knows what she had gotten up to. Indulging her inner wildness I guess. Or perhaps deciding that moving kept her warmer. I had been a negligent owner by leaving both the sleeping mat and her winter jacket behind and vowed never to make that mistake again. Other than this drama, Molly’s first overnight hike in the mountains had been a good one!
Back in the van we travelled to Lake Clearwater for a night (it’s not dog friendly so Molly stayed in the van the whole time). The diesel heater fuel tank on the back of the van fell off onto the road, presumably from the rattling caused by the corrigations on the unpaved roads. We called by a mechanic in Mount Somers after leaving the Ashburton Lakes area, expecting the repair to cost a small fortune. Luckily I found a great bloke and he fixed it for only 120 dollars.
Back on the road towards Lake Tekapo and feeling like I could overcome any challenge now, I was approaching Fairlie when a loud crashing and crunching sound ground the car to a halt, cars honking their horns and gesticulating wildly towards me as the car came to a halt and couldn’t drive any further.
Three hours and 100 phone calls later, the tow truck finally arrived to relieve the stress of cars nearly hitting the van as they passed, as the arse end of my van was sticking out too far. The van was deposited with the only mechanic open in Timaru in this pre - New Years holiday period. This was the start of an ordeal that nearly cost me my sanity. I had blown out my gearbox, a costly thing to happen only 12 days into my trip.
The mechanic’s front office girl Chris dropped me off at a freedom camping area 30 mins from Timaru in the middle of nowhere. There were a bunch of other people camping there, one of whom was friends with Chris, so they helped me settle into my new home far from anywhere let alone a shop to resupply. Staying in my tiny leaking hiking tent in the pouring rain, I couldn’t help but sigh at this wicked turn of events. I had already been quoted between $5-6k for the repair (it would end up being much more!), but the other issue was how long it would take. A new gearbox needed to be ordered from the North Island.
That night I joined some Timaru Facebook groups and asked the town if they knew anywhere budget and dog friendly for me to stay. I was literally flooded with offers of free accommodation from kind strangers, including one who I would later learn was one of the top businessmen of Timaru. I was learning how hospitable these Kiwis are. One lady said she would drive out to me to pick me up so I went with her. This would prove to be a fateful decision. I had chosen the one bad egg in the whole raft of kind souls to offer a bed.
This lady wanted me to help her clean up her backyard, by digging holes and using power tools to cut up giant objects like water tanks. She was a classic hoarder. The whole yard was filled with crap. I’d never seen anything like it. Happy to have a roof over my head though, I decided that helping her out was fair enough given she was offering a bed.
However she proved to be a complete Jekyll and Hyde and suddenly snapped at me when I asked politely for something. I knew I was in trouble then. Later that evening when she belittled me again, I knew I’d made a mistake and calmly hinted that this arrangement may not work out. I’d said it calmly, hoping not to create any drama. Well this lady absolutely spat the dummy and started yelling and immediately said I was not welcome any longer. She was going to kick me out of her house right then and there, being homeless for New Years Eve be damned! I had to pack my bags immediately, including the 200 dollar shop of groceries I had just done.
Walking out her front gate with 30kg of gear in my backpack and both hands carrying two grocery bags overloaded with groceries and Molly beside me, my final day of 2025 was one of the worst endings to a year I could possibly imagine. I looked at my phone's map and chose the first bit of green from where I was standing and headed there, so heavy were the bags I was carrying. I could only walk twenty metres at a time before I had to rest.
There were no dog friendly motels in town that had a bed on New Years Eve, so I knew that I had to tent camp. After about two hours of scouting this green area on the outskirts of Timaru, I found a place to camp that was right beside a walking track. I really didn’t want people to find me homeless, especially on New Years Eve.
Molly and I didn’t sleep a wink that night as fireworks and even gunshots rang out from right nearby. Molly was absolutely beside herself from the noise, and she lay curled up in a ball at my feet inside the small tent. The following day I checked into the Holiday Park campsite for a night before my angel came to the rescue, a lady called Linda. She had also replied to my post on the local Facebook page and so I had reached back out to her for help and she had told me yes it could work. She wanted someone to dogsit for her while she took a few days to go travelling south to the Catlins with a friend.
To cut a long story short, I ended up staying with Linda for 18 days waiting for this gearbox to arrive. One had arrived earlier but it hadn’t fit, they had ordered the wrong gearbox. Quietly furious, I had to wait an extra week because of that mistake. Then this second gearbox had gotten stranded on a broken down interisland ferry from Wellington.
All the while, Linda was happy to have me stay. It was an incredible act of kindness and I am so lucky to have found her. She is 66 years old living with her dog Mabel, and I made sure I was good company, mowed her lawns, washed up all dishes, and walked Mabel twice a day for her. Nonetheless, to have a stranger stay that long speaks to how nice she is, not wanting to boot me out again with nowhere else to go. We are now firm friends, bonding over watching some great movies and drinking wine together each night, both doggos curled at our feet.
I also made another friend from my extended time in Timaru- Anna and her doppelganger red Kelpie Gordo. Molly and Gordo got along great (rare for Molly!), as did Anna and I. She is another friend of Chris from the mechanic shop. Anna took Molly and I on at least half a dozen adventures around the Timaru area which kept us both sane. Linda also drove us both around the area- to Lake Tekapo and even down to Oamaru. What a beautiful town filled with kind people it had come to be.
The breakdown ended up taking 18 days and costing $7k, far above my expectations but a result of all the delays and setbacks the mechanics had encountered. I could get all down at this run of bad luck so early on in my trip, but having recently done another great hike up the North Temple valley with Molly, days like that have solidified my desire to be doing what I am doing. Seeing Molly so stoked at hiking in the mountains just like her owner, was blissful to say the least. The incredibly rainy summer NZ is experiencing is back just now though, so hence the time to catch up doing things like writing this blog post. Future posts hopefully won’t be so long!