I usually do Free & Easy Travel thus a lot of "Homeworks" needs to be done before each trip and I find it a waste to just dump it one side after all my hard work. So decided to to have a blog to record some of this up , hopefully someone might find this useful for them.
The next morning , we checked out early and make our way to the airport , cos we arranged for the free pick up for Wilderness there. the only provide free pick up either from airport or nearby airport hotel, if you are staying in the city centre , you have to make your own way there or to any of their free pick up point.
As mentioned , to save $4/pax , we stopped one bus stop before the airport , which is the same place we boarded the bus yesterday.Had a quick breakfast before making our way back to the airport. This meal with 1 coffee and 1 orange juice cost us almost $28 ! ......
After breakfast , did a quick round at the Countdown next to it to get some water and wow the types of chocolate available is WOW ! i did not even take pictures of the Cadbury's range.
We then make way back to the airport , called Wilderness and waited for the to pick us up. It was a short drive from the airport , and since we got all insurance coverage , handling over was very fast as you do not need to check on a lot of stuffs. First they will let you watch some videos ( which i saw all online already ) then brief you on some of the important things and then gave some informations and then off you go. Still it will take about 1-2 hours for all these though , the staff was very friendly and everything went smoothly.
Sink/Stove area
Driving and Dining area
Twin beds , can combine to become one big bed
Stove/Sink/Fridge/Oven area
Fridge + built in gas oven
Toilet bowl + cabinet
Partition "wall" to covert to shower area
The shower area after the partition
These photos of the motorhome interior was taken the day after cos first day we did not had time cos we were rushing to go to the supermarket to pick up groceries and also was trying to reach Lake Tekapo before sunset.Was also hopping to visit a pie shop in Fairle on our way to Lake Tekapo. So it looks a bit messy.
We drove to the Pak'nSave in Hornby ( there are quite a few different supermarket in NZ south island and read online that Pak'nSave is the cheapest and it really was for most things if other supermarket is not having discount/promotions. We bought quite a lot of things as we will be going Mt.Cook in few days time and there is not supermarket there so we thought might as well top up on food and drinks.Also we need to get those basic stuffs like trash bag , toilet rolls , kitchen rolls , seasoning , oil and etc. Think we spent about $250 ? just on all these.
Finally country road
Pork belly with apple sauce and crackling
Sky getting dark, on the way to Lake Tekapo
By the time we finished our groceries shopping , it's already almost 2:30 pm and the drive from Hornby to Fairlie Bakehouse is about 2 hr 30 min, I totally forgotten that they closed at 4:30pm .... did a FB msg to them and was trying my luck to see if they closed later but no luck, however they told me that the BP at the junction not far from them does sell their pies , in fact they had a few locations selling their pies. Can refer to here if you can't make it to their shop. Do try they Steak and Cheese one , personal favourite.
By the time we reach Lake Tekapo was already almost dark , we decided to detour just to take a look at The Church of the Good Shepherd before heading to our "private" campground for the night ...... which turns out to be a nightmare .......
We got our motorhome STUCK in the mud !!!!!! We had booked a private campground from Campable and was given the instruction .... it stated that after 200 m from the cattle stop , turn left and find a flat spot to park for the night. As it was our first time coming across the word " Cattle Stop" so we do not really had any idea what it was. So we saw a sign and said cattle stop , then we past a while gate of some sort and there was a slip road by the left so we decided to just turn in and went up a slope, then we saw a open space and just drive ahead. As we arrived late , so we did not see carefully and just continue to drive in ( though we saw some muddy track in front ) and before we knew it , the front wheels were stuck in the mud. We try to find planks ( there was none ) and try to find some stones to see if we can fill in the gap but nothing helps , only to end up with some mud all over me. I seriously almost cry ! this is the first night we on our motorhome , and Lake Tekapo supposed to have very nice night sky ( we had wanted to star glaze and take photos ).
After seeing there was no way we gonna get out of the mess , we decided to stay stuck for the night , unpack our baggages and just settle with a quick shower and simple dinner then rest for the night. Cos it might be expensive for use to call for tow services at night also they might have problem getting us out as it was late night. It was super windy that night and even though our front wheel was stuck , the howling wind actually shake the motorhome on and off.
It was a really bad start of a supposed to be wonderful holiday but we decided to just sleep it off and make for the worst tomorrow morning when we call the AA for road help services.
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.
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.
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 useCampermate 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.
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 ?
The original plan was to pick up the camper van then hit to Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish market for lunch then do a quick shopping at Ginza.
But things turns out that we spent too much time when picking up the van. Also we spent some time looking for a carpark for the van near the subway station.We did not want to drive all the way into Tokyo central as we thought traffic might be bad so I did some "homework" and found that Minami-Sunamachi seems to fit what we looking for ( about 16 min by subway to Ginza) BUT when we reach there, we found out the parking we wanted to park got a height limit and so we had to look for alternative and the roads there are not very friendly , had to make a few rounds to finally find a parking space ( which was not as cheap as the one we had intended to in the first place).
There are few reasons why we wanted to go Ginza first before hitting on to Hakone.
1) Buy big size work clothes from Uniqlo cos only Ginza there got a section for big sizes ( can order online and sent to your hotel also but cos due to some reasons they don't accept oversea credit card online when I tried to order.
2) Was hoping to go Tsukiji market cos the last time we only eat at Sushi Dai and spent 4 hrs + so did not have chance to explore the other part of the outer market and since there is always rumour about the market moving site.
3) Visit 東京交通會館 , inside this building there is a few shops called 物產館 which sells product from different region of Japan. we always visit 2 which are from Hokkaido and Fukuoka , shall not reveal what we buy as some items are quite limited so .....not telling. LOL
4) Visit the 銀座熊本館 nearby for my favourite snack , its actually some nuts cracker which you can find in Singapore but they had a hint of spicy in it which I fall in love with it the first time I had it during my Kumamoto trip so I usually here if I got time in Tokyo. P/s : I bought 40 pcs this trip which actually took up quite a big of luggage space :p
After all the shopping and had a quick Ramen nearby , we head back to our van and start the trip to Hakone with plan to stop by supermarket to stock up for our trip. Some pic of the Camper van we had below.
Our "Home" for 2 weeks
Learning to put snow tires
Layout of Fridge/Stoves/Etc.
Whole internal view
Eating Layout
Bed set up with additional mattress
Overhead compartment
Stove setup
By the time we reach back to the van was about evening ( bad choice ) cos not only the sky is already dark , the traffic to Hakone area was super jam , even though we decided to cut the drive time short by taking the toll road , still traffic was very bad. We decided to go Aeon Supermarket (イオン大和鶴間店 ) along the way to stock up on groceries and take a quick dinner before trying to find an onsen before we end the long day ( we had red eyes flight the day before and did not had any rest after that + the jam makes the driver really tired ) They had this App on their iPad that allows you to search for Onsen/Sento nearby from the map which was really helpful. Not only showing location , but operating hours and cost also. And some of it got link to their official site which you can see the updated info and type of pools/bathtubs they have. We choose おふろの王様 海老名店 because it was about 15 min drive away from Aeon and also its along the way to Hakone plus also it opens till 1 am. By the time we left Aeon was about 10pm ? The onsen was great with a lot of different pools but it was very crowded at that hour which we did not expect , anyway after a good bath we moved on to 道の駅箱根峠 which we will spend the night over there. This is another 1 hr+ drive from the onsen. Btw, Michi no eki or 道の駅 are actually rest stop along the road for people to rest , there are usually toilets , vending machine and most will also have some shops selling the local products in that region and are of the rest stop are huge. This one we staying overnight is consider a small scale with only 1 shop , few vending machine and toilets ( some rest stop will come with shower or even onsen)
Still to our surprise , there was quite a few cars there spending overnight and also the weather was very cold not quite we had expected as we choose this travelling period thinking that weather should be about 10 deg + but ends up some nights we are opening at 0 deg + even light snow. The weather when we reach there at the rest stop is about 5 deg? ( cos it on higher ground ) or below with some wind make it worst. I only remember that its about 7 deg in the morning when we wake up. Luckily the van rental company gave us extra blankets and sleeping bag , it really helps a lot since we tried not to open the heater often.
I won't say this is a very last minute trip but from deciding/planing to execute the actual trip only took about 5 months ? Plus the fact that this is my 2nd trip to Japan this year ( went Skiing at Zao Onsen in March ) , also this is like the 3rd oversea trip this year, think the most flight so far in my lifetime a year. Had been lazy so had not been blogging those previous trip but once I completed this , I will try find time to do up the Zao onsen trip and the Norway Northern light chase trip.
One of my travel buddy had been mentioning to do MotorHome driving in New Zealand / Iceland but we do not have experiences in driving those so when I read up and saw Japan had these Campervan things , we decided to give it a try. We had planned for an Autumn trip to see the Koyo ( aka red leaves ) so we decided to start from Tokyo to Kyoto and so on , most people would have do Campervan in Hokkaido usually. ( in 2015 we did a Kyushu self drive for Koyo but was very disappointed cos due to weather , most of the trees were "injured" before they blooms.
Decided to fly by SQ this trip as couldn't find other cheap budget carriers ( really missed the $370 flight to Tokyo when I went in March by Philippines Airlines, paid about $750/pax which SQ usually cost around $650+/- if got promotion.
While doing research for Campervan , there are quite a few companies , below will list some that I found but we end up choosing Japan Campers as they seems to have more cars selections and also they offer free ONE night stays at their guesthouse ( subjected to T&C and availability ) and cos we wanted a bigger van.
So you might wants to compare then decide which company is best for you.
Some site that is VERY useful while planing for Self drive in Japan
Car Navigation System
If you use Car Navigation System ( most rental cars do but Japan Campers use their own iPad ) you might need to use map codes. Some link to show how to get map codes
Use the website to count toll amount ( apps must pay for car route search )
Michi no Eki (道の尺)
A Michi-no-Eki is a roadside rest area for those driving across Japan. Michi-no-Eki are located along national highways and provide free parking space, restrooms, and regional and tourist information for road travelers. There are currently over 1,000 locations throughout Japan. ( from their Official site )
These are where we usually park our camper van overnight. Car parks are FREE !
Parking lots and charges
For parking lots and cost I use Times or NaviTime site
Total we drove about 2750 KM in 14 days cos last 2 days in Tokyo we did not really drove around, instead we rely on Metro/Subway. Compared to the initial itinerary , there were some changes due to weather , time and biggest factor is SHOPPING TIME !
