Our plan was to spend five weeks circumnavigating the South
Island of New Zealand in a campervan (known as a caravan in Australia and New
Zealand). We’ve always gone camping, backpacking in our younger days and, more
recently, out of the back of a four-wheel drive pickup on federal lands around
the western U.S. New Zealand would be our first long trip in an RV as a test,
not of our marriage, but of whether we’d like to own one ourselves. We arrived
in Christchurch at midnight. Immigration was automated: scan your passport,
answer a couple of questions, drop your incoming visitor card in a box welcome
to New Zealand. Customs officers asked us questions about food and x-rayed our
bags. A female officer asked if her beagle could sniff us and our luggage for
fresh fruit; the dog tried to climb into Rande’s purse. She had an empty
plastic bag that had carried apples and bananas, which we had eaten before we
arrived. Outside the terminal, we caught the shuttle to the Sudima, a large,
upscale hotel near the airport and fell into bed.
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| Mercedes caravan hooked up to electricity in a caravan park |
