David and Yanmei

From Fox Glacier we continued north along the coast. It rained on and off all morning.

Yanmei picked out a nice, unpowered campsite on a little lake for us to try. We cooked up some pasta and enjoyed the tranquility.

This campsite actually got fairly crowded too, which surprised me for a Monday. Apparently all the schools and universities are still on summer break. These unattended, unpowered camps are low cost but not free, it works on an honor system, you put your fee into a payment lockbox near the entrance. This one was $13 NZD per person. It pays for the flush toilets and some sinks with running water to do your dishes in. A park ranger actually came by and checked if people had paid (we had).

The next day we headed back inland through an mountain pass. I tried recording a time lapse video of part of the drive.

Our destination was a free camp not too far from Christchurch on small Lake Pearson. Luckily we arrived in the early afternoon to get a good spot. Some friendly ducks stopped by for a visit.

Finally the next morning we cleaned up the campervan and headed back to Christchurch to return it. We’re staying in Christchurch a couple more days before flying to Australia.

Overall, I didn’t enjoy the RV experience too much.  I’d rather just rent a car and stay in an AirBnb or hotel at each stop.  The RV is too inconvenient, once you get to a camp in there is something a few miles away you want to do, you either have to stow everything, unplug and drive there in a difficult to park vehicle or you skip it.  We ended up skipping stuff we might have done if we could just throw our luggage in a hotel room and drive a car somewhere.  The actual driving of the RV was pretty easy, it handled fairly well even on the mountain switchbacks.

I understand some of the appeal of being self contained and getting away to enjoy nature, but it didn’t work well for sightseeing.  I also think it would be better to do it at home, so you can load up all your stuff.  We each just have a carry-on that we’re traveling with, so we had all this empty storage space.  If we were leaving from our home we could load up with gear like fishing rods, a yoga mat, a frisbee, my camera tripod, etc. Maybe some bicycles too, which would be a good way to get to nearby activities.  The experience grew on Yanmei and she was enjoying it quite a bit by the last couple of days as she became an expert at cooking in the tiny kitchen and picking out good campsites.

David