Camped at Taranaki, or Mount Egmont

In September 2024, my wife and I spent a month travelling around New Zealand by campervan. What an astonishingly beautiful country! Such diversity packed into a relatively small area (but then again, pretty much everywhere is small compared to our homeland, Canada). Opportunities for hiking, nature-encounters and adventure tourism abound. Over the course of a short hike, you can walk from an ocean beach, through rainforest, along a turbulent river to the tongue of a glacier. You can view all manner of sea life from fur seals to albatross to sperm whales on the same day you ride New Zealand’s longest ziplines and see a coastal village taken over by thousands of vintage cars and campers of all description. You can trace the sets and sites of one of the great movie franchises of all time, and then take a boat trip through caves and tunnel to marvel at the cave ceilings bejewelled by a bioluminescent “night sky” created by the glowworms that make this one of their few homes. You can dig your own hot tub in the sand on a geothermal beach, and stick around to view the celestial night sky at its most magnificent expanse in the dark sky preserves, surely Mother Nature’s greatest light show.

Epic Campers in Aukland provided our campervan. The Epic+ experience worked perfectly for us. From first contact until we dropped off the van at the end of our trip, Andy Ford and the Epic team were helpful and always responded to all our questions and concerns. The van itself was well-suited to the type of travel we enjoy - no set route, no reservations and no particular destination – going where the wind takes us. We were able to camp in glorious places we would not have been able to with a standard vehicle – beaches, mountainsides, valleys, riversides, glacial tongues….

The van we drove was custom outfitted, and carried the self-contained eco certification required for New Zealand Freedom Camping (fixed toilet and holding tanks). Travellers in New Zealand can take advantage of this policy on public conservation land and specially designated sites, with the requirement of practising LNT (Leave No Trace) camping. Details and regulations can be found at the New Zealand Department of Conservation website. Many thanks to Andy and his team for making this style of travel possible. We would highly recommend Epic Campers to anyone who enjoys this kind of travel. (https://epiccampers.co.nz/ ; Phone: +64 (0) 9 275 5360 Email: hq@epiccampers.co.nz)

Several apps, notably Rankers, are helpful for finding and booking campsites at the numerous campgrounds throughout New Zealand. As we travelled in September, the shoulder season, there were few other campers and we were never at a loss for a place to stay (sometimes at prime locations such as geothermal valley hot springs). We were able to cook, eat and wash up in the van when we chose Freedom Camping. We also made sure to take advantage of the fully-appointed, gleamingly clean, professional-level kitchens in the cookhouses at the campgrounds. These places foster a real communal sense, with a kind of upscale hostel atmosphere to them, as travellers cook and dine together, and share their day’s adventures. Your fellow chefs and diners will be from far-flung parts of the globe.

A word of caution: drive times in New Zealand can be much longer than anticipated due to winding, mountainous roads, daunting switchbacks and a multitude of roundabouts, sheep!! – not to mention the caution required of Canadians and others unused to right-hard drive on the left-hand side of the road. That being said, every curve opens up onto something glorious. A month allowed us to take all this in at an unhurried pace, and to make the most of discoveries by chance. Ultimately, we traced a large figure-8 through the North and South Islands: “Tracing Maui’s Fishhook.”

More entries and details to come on specific locations and activities in New Zealand