NZ South Island Motorhome Road trip 2018 Day 1

First day of the trip , we decided to just stay in Christchurch cos if we were to collect the motorhome , we might not make it to Lake Tekapo before nightfall as our flight reached NZ around 1 pm. This is also to have a better rest as we had red eye flight from SG to Oz to NZ. And because we got a night free stay voucher from Amex , so might we well make full use it.
Bus fare in Christchurch is not cheap unless you get a metro pass , but since we are just staying for one night , we just paid the normal fare. *Do note that the bus fare is more expensive if you take directly to and from airport. Please refer to my first page on informations on how to save money for this.
Basically when we reach hotel is about 2-3 pm so after we check-in , we decided to go to the city centre to take a walk , just to revisit the Cathedral ...... which was destroy by the earthquake in 2011 ? I had been to Christchurch many years ago so i had seen the Cathedral when it was not destroy.

Taken in 2005

Taken in 2018

It's quite sad to and iconic landmark left to rot like this , apparently no repair had been done for the past 7 years after it was destory by the earthquake.
Next I was trying to find the "185 Empty white chair earthquake Memorial" and the Re:start containers but cos did not had wifi with me and i forgot to save the location on my google map so I couldn't find it. In the end , i think the re:Start was already closed in 2017 and when we took the bus then we saw the white chairs memorial. :(
We decided to head to Pedro's House of Lamb , we actually wanted to dine at the main outlet at Colombo Street , in the end , we took the wrong bus and ends up at their Merivale outlet. ( one is south and the other is north) think we took the wrong bus route. So we ends up takeaway and decided to just walk back to our hotel which was about 25 min walk. We had the Lamb at the hotel with beer and L&P ( my fav drink in NZ ) Best to pout into champagne glass and act Atas !

View from our room

Hotel Backyard

Free cookies from the hotel

We stayed at Chateau on the Park , a DoubleTree by Hilton , We stayed for free cos we had a complimentary hotel voucher. The location is a bit off from the city centre , don't think we will had stay here if it's not free but there is a bus stop for the airport bus nearby so it make it easy for use to get to/fro from the airport.
Nothing much is being done other them things mentioned above , plus did a bit shopping at icebreaker - a company dealing with Merino wool , we have outlet in SG but finding my size is much easier there and price is a little bit tad cheaper. ( SG can be cheaper if having promotion ) I seriously recommend everyone to own at least one merino wool base layer. Had one when i was in Norway ( but was using Minus 33 one then ) and it really didn't stink at all though i wore it for 10 days and it was really comfy.
That's all for Day one ........ looking forward to tomorrow where we will be collecting the motorhome from Wilderness , which will be out home for the next 2 weeks.

New Zealand South Island Motorhome Road trip 2018 Preface

Been lazy and had not been updating this travel blog for a while , just came back from New Zealand and decided to update on this recent trip before going back to complete the previous Japan camper van trip. This NZ trip was again a last min decision , we were debating to visit either Europe ( for ski ) , Japan or NZ but ends up with NZ self drive due to the following reasons

• Europe is summer now , which means things/lodging will be more expensive and it will be more crowded.
• Japan is summer now which means there will be a lot of fireworks but it also means HOT , the weather had not been very good for Japan recently.
• We kinda of enjoy the camper van trip while in Japan and then we saw the motorhomes in NZ from some video blog and think its will be cool to stay in one of these. 

So the final decision ends up going to NZ cos of the scenery and the motorhomes ! From planing to actually executing it takes about 3 months , as per normal we always ends up doing last min trip , which will means air tickets will not be cheap as the dates we wanted was quite specific. Direct flights are too expensive so we ends up taking Qantas and transit Australia. Flight is not exactly cheap also cos we paid about $200+ more per pax for seat selections , Total cost adds up to $1284/pax for the whole trip.
This is actually my 2nd time visiting NZ , so from previous experiences , we decided to just spend 2 weeks in South Island , taking just a slow , free and easy trip. Thus in terms of planning I did not planned as detailed as those previous trip ( in fact , my itinerary was only 75% completed when we flew there ). The first part of the planning was looking for a motorhome aka RV company for our rental , did a few research and saw some blogs/youtube vids and plus after reading come review ( of cos price as well ) we decided on booking from Wilderness. I had to say one of the reasons why Wilderness is because I saw the vlog of this couple Heath and Alyssa Padgett ( their youtube channel btw , its because of them that I was a bit disappointed when we collect the motorhome also , more about that later ) and also Wilderness had a few "how to" videos on youtube on showcasing their motorhomes and their operational instructions, which makes me feel this company is more reliable. Of cos online review shows that most customers are very positive about rental with them. We got the Alpine 2 , which features 2 twin bed which is perfect for us ( we did worried that the motorhome might be a big long for us cos the last camper van we had in Japan was 4.99m but this was 7m ) and also we were lucky enough to get a discount on the VIP insurance cover. Actually when i first booked , i did enquired if there was any promotion ( cos i saw their site had some special promotion column ), I was told there was no promotion ongoing BUT just few hours I made my booking , their site refresh with 50% off Insurance cover. I was very sad and pissed off cos its only few hours difference in my booking and i did asked them at time of booking ( of cos i understand that staffs won't reveal this informations to customer ). But just to try my luck , i wrote in to their customer service and after a few exchange of mails , they revert and offered me the discount !!! this came at a really huge surprise for me as most company will just ignore as what paid and booked means over and done with. Was really happy with how Wilderness had handle this and it really makes our days as this saved us about $450+ in rental. The rental consist of basic rental fee + any extra insurance chooses , they had 3 plans ( link here ) I will highly recommend the VIP , cos not only it comes with a lot of freebie like , BBQ store , picnic table/chairs , snow chain , etc. Also cos there are a lot of gravel roads in NZ , so chances of the motorhome getting scratches/ windscreen got cracks by stones , etc. Plus one good thing is compare to normal car rental , by getting the VIP insurance , collecting the motorhome is much faster as you do not need to go through all the scratches/dents/defect of the motorhome when collecting.

If you are into photos , below are all the link to my FB albums cos there's too much to post here.

• New Zealand South Island Motorhome trip Part 1
• New Zealand South Island Motorhome trip Part 2
• New Zealand South Island Motorhome trip Part 3
• New Zealand South Island Motorhome trip Part 4
• New Zealand South Island Motorhome trip Part 5
• New Zealand South Island Motorhome trip Star Glazing

MISC Infomations

View from the Bus stop ID : 17102

• Taking bus from Christchurch Airport to the City Centre : IF you take bus from the airport terminal ( Eg. Bus 29 / Purple Line ) , it will cost $8/pax BUT if you walk about 5 - 10 min to one bus stop away ( Memorial Ave near Spitfire Square , Stop ID : 17102 , There is a Countdown supermarket behind it ), you only need to pay $4/pax ( that is 50% off ) and on top of that , with the bus ticket , you can take another bus for free within 1 hour with the ticket ( this only applies if you not taking from/to the airport). This also applies when you going back to the Airport , just tell the driver you alighting ONE bus stop before the airport ( Memorial Ave near Spitfire Square, Stop ID : 17379 ), you only need to pay $4 instead of $8.

• Storing of luggages at Christchurch airport , we used Luggage Solutions at the airport BUT do take note the prices is not like what it stated on the website , we kept for 1 day and it cost us $30 !!! instead of the $15 stated. They had a different price list when you are there , the $15/calendar day is for 5PM - 5AM only !!! Do take note of that. ( Felt cheated ) 

• In terms of driving around , we only use Google Map ( did not even once on the GPS that comes along with the insurance cover ) Tips* do try and download the google offline map if possible just in case there is no reception at some areas.

• For overnight camping location ( and parking , dump station , water tap , point of interest and basically everything ) , we use Campermate app , did use campable once/twice. But seriously , if you planning on driving around NZ , be it motorhome/car , go download Campmate straight away. It not only covers location for camping but also many place of interest , dumping station ( will come into this later ) and petrol/gas top up locations, best of all , there are fellow user comments where you can take into considerations.

• For information on where to see and what to do, can visit Backpacker guide NZ.

• For hiking wise , booking with Wilderness , the actually passed us some books , ( got E version also available for download) one of them is NZ frenzy South Island. This is a black and white book with many wordings , if you prefer colourful pictures, less words, do go visit the author's link here. This is for south island , the other for north island is here.

Met another Fellow Wilderness Motorhome 

• For motorhome rental , as mentioned we went for Wilderness Motorhome.

• Petrol ( desiel in the case for the motorhome ) and LPG gas refill seems more cheaper at the smaller towns then bigger one , Also always go for LPG top up then those "Swap n Go" , it's more cheaper , all you have to do is to bring down your LPG and pass to the staffs at the station and the will help you top up. 

My LOVE for Pak'nSave

• Supermarket , we mostly prefer Pak'nSave ( they do charge for plastic bag ) as things there are general cheaper but if you want different varieties ( more atas food ) can go for the others like Countdown ( they are very cheap with their promotions items , i got some stuffs at 50% off ) New World and Four Square ( they seems more expensive to me though ).

What we covered in 2 weeks of the south island , approximate 3000 km ?