Amazing campervan adventures by Ahmad Shazali Zakaria PART 2

Breakfast by the lake
Ahmad Shazali Zakaria

 One of the best thing about traveling with a campervan in New Zealand is that you can park anywhere for the night (public land) as long as you have a fully self contained campervan which means that the campervan is able to store freshwater and wastewater. For a more detailed information, visit this link. Plan your trip so that every 2-3 days you have a camper site that you can park the night to charge your campervan, replenish freshwater, empty out your septic tanks and garbage bin. 

Charging at camper park
Ahmad Shazali Zakaria

Cooking inside the campervan
Ahmad Shazali Zakaria

Most places that you plan to visit in New Zealand's north island will have a small town that you can stop by to get petrol and groceries. Again, its best to plan your trip to factor in supply stops so that you wont ran out when you are in the middle of nowhere. Monitor your use of supplies eg. water, electricity so that you can make as little stops as you can and focus on your trip. There is this one night where we had to make an unscheduled stop as the road condition was not safe to drive (heavy fog) and our electricity is close to empty. It was late April so the weather is really cold at night and seeing that our electricity is running dry, we had to crank up the heater from the driver & passenger side as it was running from the campervan's engine for 30 minutes to get the whole campervan heated up and then we proceed to sleep in the cold. We woke up freezing like crazy with mist coming out of our mouth.

Dumping out septic tank
Ahmad Shazali Zakaria

Literally the sh*tiest job ever! Dumping out the septic tank is not the best part of traveling with a self contained campervan. Make sure you follow the instruction given for the septic tank especially the part where you put in the tablets that breaks down your waste so it won't be smelly.

Despite the tedious job of dumping out the septic tank, traveling with a campervan is the best way to travel in a country such as New Zealand. You never know where you spend the night and the amazing view that will greet you in the morning. Plus you can stop anytime along your journey and take some photos. Just look at these amazing views!

After the rain
Ahmad Shazali Zakaria

Ahmad Shazali Zakaria

That's all she wrote! Stay tuned for more postings soon. 

Campervanning in New Zealand (North Island)

Amazing campervan adventures by Ahmad Shazali Zakaria.

Amazing campervan adventures by Ahmad Shazali Zakaria.

First Time Campervanning (New Zealand - North Island)

The year was 2014. It was sometime in April we decided to travel to New Zealand for our first foray into traveling in a campervan. Seeing other blog-post on traveling in a campervan had convinced us that we too can do it. After countless google searches, blogs visited we had decided on apollo campervans as they had the best offer.

First impression, amazing! We had no idea how spacious our campervan was. Cozy enough for the both of us. The campervan included built-in shower and toilet, gas hob, sink, prep table and two long benches which is converted into a super-single sized bed.

It took less than 5 minutes to convert the benches into our bed.

I must say that it took me a little while to adjust driving a large vehicle, but as I gained more confidence, the drive was smooth and surprisingly the campervan was easy to maneuver. We didn't take the GPS package so we relied on Google maps for our journey.
(Stay tuned for more!)