On the 1st of February, Riss and I moved out of our apartment on Mount Victoria, and into our little green van. We had a bed in the back, gas bbq, chillibin and a box of food. We spent the next 7 weeks travelling around the South and North islands of New Zealand.

Totaranui, Golden Bay. Beautiful place.

I had created a rough map of where to go using a beta version of Weheartplaces, but in the end we just travelled using the lonely planet and my ipad to look up places on the go. As it was, it turned out that a place bookmarking service would’ve been really awesome, especially in finding freedom camping sites, as they are scattered throughout the internet and hard to find.

(As it happens, I’m working on a solution on finding freedom camping sites as we speak).

Camping in New Zealand is beautiful. The doc campsites are the best places to go. They’re remote, cheap, relaxed and have the best locations. My favourite three places were Totaranui, Whananaka North and Aoraki campgrounds. I’m still working on culling and uploading all the photos from the trip - but it was a very fun time - and it’s great to be back.

Gear review:

Nissan 4wd Van - excellent. Big enough to sleep in (although we had a bit too much stuff), small enough to get into all the great little campsites. 4wd was good for rallying up.

iPad w/ 3G - excellent. Hugely useful, but not so capable that I could do any more than briefly reply to emails (can’t do any coding on it, which is good). Vodafone coverage is fucking awful, telecom 3g is much better.

Chilli bin - good. Buy some ice every few days and you’ve got a cheap, easy to use fridge. Only thing missing was it didnt have a tap at the bottom to let out the melted water, and it couldnt fit heaps of beers.

Gas cooker - excellent. You need a twin burner, so you can make fancy meals. We ate really well, and making coffee with the burr grinder and stovetop espresso, while sitting on a remote beach, is really awesome.