In 2010 I quit my IT job of 13 years and set out for a
couple of years of traveling around the world with my paraglider (a couple
turned into almost 5 but that’s another story that you can read about in
earlier entries). I briefly stopped in
Iceland before heading to my cousin’s place in England where I set about buying
a campervan to cruise around Europe in.
I bought a Ford Transit with a raised roof and decided to call it Betty
after US President Gerald Ford’s wife who started the Betty Ford Centre for
alcohol and other drug addictions. I
figured that if I had major problems with this van that it might drive me to
drink…somewhat turned out to be true as boy did I have problems with Betty. To prove it, here’s a picture of me where the
engine should be! An amazing French
couple helped me change out the diesel engine in their backyard over a week and
a half.
Coming to New Zealand, the plan was to buy a camperized van,
or self contained as they are known as here.
There is this thing called “Freedom Camping” in this country where your
vehicle has to be certified as such with a sticker on the back. A big stipulation is that you must have a
toilet, a porta-potty will do, and a new rule coming into effect is that you
must be able to actually sit on it inside your vehicle so having a station
wagon with a potty isn’t going to cut it.
That being said, as I scoured a Facebook group for vans prior to coming
here almost every vendor stated that the toilet was unused as it was quite easy
to find public toilets wherever you went.
With the help of an app called CamperMate, you can easily find free or
low cost campsites where only self contained vehicles are allowed. What a cool idea.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I found a Toyota Hiace for
my “home” in New Zealand. My first day with Betty 2.0 I spent the majority of the day
shopping for bedding, kitchen items and essentially kitting her out. I finally pulled out of Auckland after 4pm
and headed south an hour and a half for my first experience of “Freedom Camping”. Surprising to me, it was just an area outside
of a small town’s rugby club. Half a dozen
other vans were already there and I found a flat area to park in the
grass. There were toilets and even a
shower and a sink to wash your dishes…all for free. It was a peaceful night, quite a contrary to
my first night with the original Betty in a stadium parking lot in the city of
Reims where suspicious cars came and went throughout the night (I suspected either
drug dealing, prostitution or bother were happening).
The interior:
At the bottom of the statue it says "If you are feeling sad, just think of Jimmy" (the guy who sold me the van).
How cool is this Freedom Camping! We don’t have this in Canada that’s for
sure. I look forward to many more
Freedom Camping nights in the months to come.
very cool again
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