Van Hunt Auckland, New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand

Arriving in Auckland we were about to embark on another new experience, Couch Surfing. Having Helpxed our way through Australia we assumed that we would be doing the same in New Zealand however Helpx new Zealand is another world. The days of cleaning pools and walking dogs for 2 hours a day were gone and digging trenches for 8 hours for a mattress on the floor in a cold barn with 4 hot water bottles was the norm!! Thankfully Couch Surfing saved our day. A little nervous we sat outside the play area of Macdonalds in the airport waiting for our CS host to come and collect us. Tim was so concerned about our first CS experience that he actually sent his Mum the name and address of our host just in case we vanished. Thankfully Barry turned up at the airport and picked us up as arranged and thankfully he was not a serial killer and we have lived to tell this tale.

Barry kindly agreed to let us stay with him for a week in Onehunga (pronounced On-Knee-Hun-Ger, not One-Hunger as Tim thought) so that we could find a camper van and set off on our journey. Little did we know that finding a campervan in Auckland was going to be one of the most difficult and soul destroying missions we have undertaken.

Anyhow, our host Barry had kindly taken us in whilst his wife Tomomi was away visiting family in Japan, we were so grateful and did everything we could to take care of Barry and made sure he had a good hot dinner waiting for him after work with plenty of left overs to make into his lunch the next day.

We had a great time with Barry and his awesome cat Kotoro (Little Tiger in Japanese), we got thoroughly addicted to all the terrible NZ TV we could from Shortland Street to Police 10/7 and Barry even introduced us to the world of Kiwi cinema. Best of all we watched Barry’s own movies which gave us an introduction to New Zealand life and even a glimpse into the crazy world of student life in Dunedin in the 90’s, then we moved onto some of the best films we have seen in a while from Boy a kiwi classic that everyone should see, to Goodbye Porkpie an 80’s classic.

We did manage to give Barry and Kotoro one night of peace and quiet from our moans of ‘this van’s too expensive’, ‘too rusty’, ‘too high a mileage’ or ‘too much like a shed on wheels’ when we were kindly invited for dinner by an old family friend of Tim’s family Helen. It was so nice to be treated to a home cooked meal and for Tim to have a catch up with Helen after 15 years. We even left with a hot water bottle each to help us get through the NZ ‘summer’ and her husband Chris kindly drove us around a few car lots on our way home, this resulted in a slightly crazy encounter with a mad drunk man who was trying to sell us huge old ford transit. He certainly put on a good show but we were not convinced that a mattress and a cool box was going to make this van ‘the one’.

We spent hours sat at Barrys dining table browsing Trade Me, the Kiwi equivalent of Ebay for our perfect van. The problem with camper vans in NZ are that there is very little in the middle price range. For $1,000 to $5,000 you can find any terrible backpacker car you like. The trend in NZ has been to rip the back seats out of estate cars, put in a piece of wood, a mattress and a gas stove and call it a camper. Needless to say for flashpackers like us this was not going to do. The next lot of vans available in their masses were ex rentals from the higher class companies like Wilderness and Kea who wanted $18,000 to $30,000 for vans with a million km’s on the clock! We searched and we searched and we saw a few vans and our hearts just kept sinking. Our hopes were all hanging on the two weekend car markets. First the backpacker market in the city on Saturday morning and secondly on Ellersly car market on Sunday.

We were all set on Saturday morning ready to get the train into the city to visit the backpacker car market when we discovered that they train into the city had been replaced with a series of buses, thankfully our super kind host Barry offered to take us into the city and then onwards for a day trip to the beach and little tour of the best of Auckland. When we pulled into the car market there was one of the typical aforementioned backpacker cars being delivered back to the car market on the back of a tow truck, this is never a good sign and rest of the offerings were of a very similar standard, there was not a single van even worth looking in let alone test driving. Thank goodness we hadn’t had to endure the bus to town for this as we may well have ended up in the pub for the day drowing our sorrows. Thankfully we were whisked off on a magical mystery tour. First to an amazing view point over the coast, then to a huge and wild black sand beach.

I might not have mentioned yet that we were freezing in NZ, after the 35+ degrees that we had had in Asia for months the bitter southerly winds were chilling us to the bone so sitting on this hot black sand was just blissful.

Next we headed into the city to a stunning park with blue skies and views out over the sea. Our last stop before home was definitely one of the best, a huge hokey pokey (Crunchie) ice cream. What a day, we may still have no camper van, and no idea where to get one but we had a great tourist day around Auckland thanks to Barry.

The following day was our final hope, Ellerslie car market. We had driven past the huge signs and flags at the race course where the market is held and got the bus full of hopes and dreams that our dream van would be waiting for us……

We walked in and the vans and cars were grouped by price so we walked through the market with the prices slowly increasing and the standards staying surprisingly the same. Even when we reached the top price section there was nothing more than $10,000 and nothing worth looking at. Whilst we were pretty disappointed we couldn’t help but feel devastated for the poor little young back packers who had arrived at the car market straight from the airport with all their luggage in tow and they had no choice than to drive away in one of these mystery machines. You could literally smell the desperation in the air, it was not a pretty sight. We treated ourselves to a coffee to warm up, watched the madness and sadness unfold and took ourselves back home now knowing that the only place that we would be finding a van was on Trade me and we were going to have to lower our standards, raise our price or hope for a miracle.

Just when we were giving up hope, I found something…. It was not perfect as it was not the configuration that we like with the bed at the back of the van, but it was a professional conversion, low milage, in our price range and from the few photos on the advert looked to be in good condition. There were two problems, firstly the advert was over a month old, so the chances of it still being available were slim to none and secondly it was in Wellington 641km away. With nothing to lose we contacted the seller and low and behold the van was still for sale, after a chat on the phone with all the vital details we were pretty sure that this was the van, but we had to make the call, do we put everything on the line for this one van and drive to Wellington to see it, or do we keep looking.

On the verge of outstaying our welcome with Barry and with nothing even close to this van appearing on Trade Me we made the decision to hire a car and head to Wellington, fingers crossed this is the Van else we are now in another city with fewer people and fewer vans and we might need to totally rethink our NZ travel plans!!

With another CouchSurf set up for a couple of nights in Wellington we set off in our little Jucy hire car on the 641km trip, more or less the length of North Island.

Please, please, please let this be the van!!!!

Thank you so much Barry for being an amazing first CS host and for putting up with us for so long, hopefully we can pass back through and see you an
d Kotoro a.k.a Rabbit Tail and meet Tomomi.

Wellington here we come…